Craft Stamper Challenge::Potato Printing

It is time for the Craft Stamper May "Take It Make It" Challenge!  This is not only a good place to stretch  yourself creatively to use a technique that is out of your comfort zone but also to try and win some great prizes.  Here is the new challenge.....Potato Printing.

Technique: Revisit your childhood and get potato printing! Take any old potato and carve a shape that you can then use to print with. These prints can then form a background for your project. We will still need regular stamping on the project as well as the potato prints! The REAL challenge with this theme is to see if we can take a technique used by 3 year olds and turn it into something any arty grown up would be proud of! 

I've never done this before so here goes, I'll show you the finished product and then give you a short tutorial walking you through my process.

 I started by trying to carve something on the potato.  I quickly realized why I'm a stamper not a sculptor!

A simple flower and leaf shape seem to be the safest  bet for me.  I used the same tools that I would use to carve a rubber stamp, the smallest V-shaped lino cutter in the pack is my tool of choice.  After I had my design in place I used a paring knife to cut away the parts of the potato that I didn't want to print.   I put paint on the potato to see the parts I wanted to scrape away.

My leaf

My flower

I looked around in my stash to find a large tag that already had a Pan Pastel orange background with some aqua acrylic paint stenciled randomly on it.  Gesso seemed to be the best medium for me to work with so I painted white gesso on the flower and black gesso on the leaf.  I turned it over and pressed down firmly onto the tag to make a print.

To finish the project I added yellow acrylic centers to the white flowers, which turned a little orange and outlined them with a black permanent pen.  Then I stamped Dyan Reaveley's text circle in the center of each flower.  I thought the one word stamp "Serendipity" on an old Stampers Anonymous stamp seemed fitting.  I wiped off the excess yellow paint on the tag randomly to tie it together.

A few ribbons laced through the tag top and it is finished.

The potato art project produced by Helen Chilton for this Craft Stamper Challenge is truly a work of art.  You might want to take a peek at her work in the latest Craft Stamper magazine, it is extraordinary.  Please give it a go and enter your masterpiece at the CS "Take It Make It" Challenge for May.  You can go directly there from HERE.

Thank you so much for stopping by today!  I hope to see your creations posted through out the month of May.  In the meantime, take care.  Hugs~Renee

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