Making a Dala horse stamp

Last week I had a lot of fun making a Dala horse stamp for "Dala horse craft-a-long", a cute idea of four talented bloggers (Carina, Hanna, Pam and Kathryn).

You can join, if you want. This game has simple rules: make by hands an object related to Dala horses, photograph it and upload the photo in the dedicated Flickr group.

As I read about this idea, I wanted to join, of course.

I like the idea of working intensively around a subject and to do that with a lot of people in the world. Amazing!

But I haven't a lot of craft material here in my new house (no fabric, no embroidery thread, no watercolors...), so I decided to handcarve a stamp.

I took some photos of the process...

... and I tested it in my moleskine journal, as usual!

I like it! :)

I decided to embellish my horse with a simple geometric decoration, probably really far for the traditional patterns used in Sweden (if you are interested, read Hanna's posts about where Dala horses are made and about the traditional painting tecnique).

I used a sheet of Adigraf: it's simple to carve, but I'm not fully satisfied by this material (it's too thin and soft, in my opinion).

Probably I'll fix my stamp on a wood board, like I did with my two stamps of the little prince. I think this is an important trick when you work with Adigraf; the print on the paper comes out better.

I hope this post gave you some inspiration to join this game and realize your Dala horse! And if you are not a crafty-person, well, you can read all the posts about this topic written by Carina, Hanna, Pam and Kathryn. Don't miss them!