After seeing my horse couch I made for East Coast Creative, I had several people request the tutorial for the horse stamp. Making a stamp is very easy, and you could make any shape, pattern, or design of your choice.
Here's how I made mine.
I Googled "free black vector horse." Click on "images." It will pull up a lot of horses for you to choose from.
After picking out my horse, I drew it onto my 5" x 7" linoleum block that I purchased from Michael's in the painting department. I am fine with looking at something and drawing it as is, but I know many people cannot do that. If you are one of those people, I suggest printing out the picture and tracing it onto the block.
Here's a TIP: Remember the stamp will print in the reverse. Important if you stamping out names or anything else that is needs to face a certain way.
To carve out the horse, I used a few wood working tools. One is a knife to get into the really tiny areas, and the other one is a V parting tool that has a small V tip. I used the knife to cut along most of my drawing lines, and I used the V tool to carve out the rest. I recommend practice cutting in the negative space of your stamp since that will be removed anyways. That way you can get the hang of it before you attempt your design. You can also use your knife like you do to peel apples and such with a paring knife, but be very careful as to where you place your hands!!
But it's really easy to carve.
I would recommend testing the stamp on a scrap piece of paper. That way if you have any spots that are as high as the design itself, you can carve those out.
Pretty easy, huh?
For my couch, I used silk screening ink because I found the latex paint dried too quickly on my stamp. Fabric ink needs to be heat set, but for the competition, I did not do that.
If stamping on textured fabric like I did, it could result in this:
I really like what B Mom had to say when she commented on this post. I think she summed up exactly what I was thinking when I made this couch. She said, "I think this project could fuel some other great applications - that horse stamp could be really cute on curtains, around the sides of a big square ottoman, to punch up a powder room wall, on the bottom of a wood tray ..."
And I would like to add that you do not have to make a horse. You could make a different design using the same applications above.
Have fun! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section.
