Creating Scenes Using Rubber Stamps

This post shares my journey with creating scenes using rubber stamps and hopefully provides some inspiration for you to experiment with whatever stamps you have. Years ago now I was inspired by cards created with ‘Stampscapes’ rubber stamps and managed to track some down from a supplier in Australia so that I could try my hand at reproducing these amazing scenes. The cards that had caught my eye were mostly done on glossy cardstock using inks to create beautiful (planned) backgrounds that were then stamped to create a scene. Sometime a white gel pen was used to add highlights.

I thought these scenes were just magical and atmospheric – often showing reflections of moonlight on water in lovely scenery or of a sunrise or misty moody nature scenes. I was hooked! I started to experiment with creating scenes on more random backgrounds to see if I could bring out something magical in them. And I also got more adventurous with different ways of using the stamps such as stamping an image first and then colouring the scene using water colour pencils or crayons, or stippling using distress inks. I found my happy place in using a very similar background but trying to create a very different scene by varying the wildlife or the people doing different activities. I also tried to create a different feel by showing a bright summer day or a moody stormy day or a misty morning atmosphere.

But before long I got a bit frustrated that these scenes were very North American, featuring pine forests and log cabins. I wanted to create scenes that were more like those we find in New Zealand (we do have pine forests but not in the same way). So I started to experiment with other stamps that I had to see whether I could create more authentic NZ scenes. I carried on my approach of using the same basic background and trying to create a series of totally different scenes by varying the detail stamps and colours. My first series was using a background stamp that could be interpreted as a waterfall or as just a stream flowing over rocks – this provided an extra challenge to try to get the perspectives right depending on the size of the flora and fauna stamps I had. This was such fun and I managed to use so many different stamps of NZ wildlife, creating intimate shaded forest scenes through to backgrounds behind a feature and even a much ‘larger’ scene with a man fishing by a waterfall.

Then I was away … using whatever stamps I could find to create some more quintessentially New Zealand scenes – many at the beach or in the mountains and bush. I started first with some basic backgrounds, such as a river bank or wharf, and tried to make them look like a NZ beach in many different ways. Here are some of my creations. I hope they may inspire you to try this as well.