(Like I need one?)

What did I buy myself for Christmas? Wait. First: do you buy yourself something? Like, a reward for surviving the holiday madness. A treat just for you for being so darn awesome? I do. I knew exactly what I wanted. I made the wishlist in November. I didn’t show anyone because I knew I wanted to get it for myself. Mid-December came and I realized I had yet to buy the stuff, so I did. A box from dickblick.com showed up on my doorstep the 23rd! What did I get? Amongst a few other things (it’s Blick, afterall! I wanted everything):

-This Speedball lino-cutter set
-Some Blick linoleum blocks
-A hard rubber brayer
-An inking plate and some ink

Basically, I made myself a little kit to get started with block printing! Around the time when I was ordering this stuff, someone on Twitter mentioned this book: Print Workshop. I checked it out quickly and ordered it right up. I didn’t even notice it hadn’t even been released until I was getting ready to check out. Oh well. It looked really nice and promising. It arrived on my doorstep a day ahead of schedule and that night I dove right in to reading.

Talk about inspiration! The book is chock-full of beautiful photos and ideas for hand-printing. I didn’t want to jump right in without KNOWING what I getting myself into, you know? I’m extremely glad I had this book to sort of ease me into the big wide world of hand-printing, specifically linoleum block printing.

That brings us to today. After a few weeks of tossing around ideas for my first stamp, I finally got the courage to put it on a block.

I took this photo in the afternoon. I’m proud to announce that I finished the block after my rather chilly walk to pick up my son from school. Nothing like coming home to a toasty home and a speedball cutter. My wrist is kind of sore, but nothing like the first time I experienced knitter’s elbow (HOLY MOLY). I’ll let you know when the courage works back up in my bones and I ink it up and actually start printing.