Special Guest Gretchen Ehrsam

Happy Introductions!

Today here at RubberMoon Arts we would like to do something a little different. We are super excited to have a very special guest here on our blog.

Please welcome Gretchen Ehrsam! Many of you long time RubberMoon fans know Gretchen from the hundreds of wonderful stamp images she has designed for RubberMoon over the past fourteen years!
Gretchen is primarily a print maker (most of her stamp images are carvings) and a calligrapher and she is also a wonderful watercolor painter!
She is so creative and multi-talented. We always love seeing what she will do with the fabulous stamps once she gets her hands on them!
Recently, we sent Gretchen a small RubberMoon Ultimate Red Rubber Palette. We did not tell her anything about it at all. (We just wanted to see what her wonderful imagination would come up with!) She certainly did not disappoint and she sent us this awesome picture tutorial!

Here, Gretchen shows how to use the Red Rubber Palette to make some monoprinted heart cards and tags.

These are the tools and supplies you will use:

punches, card stock cut to size, ink pad, red rubber palette, glue

Trace around the red rubber palette on a piece of card stock, this will show you where to put your design

Punch out some shapes from cardstock (cardstock is best because it needs to have a certain amount of thickness). Glue the punched out pieces randomly but in a nice pattern in the traced red rubber outline.

Next, ink the surface of the Red Rubber Palette

Make sure it is covered well

Next, lay the inked red rubber palette ink side down onto the patterned square, press down had over the entire surface...

Lift up carefully and you now have what you will be printing with! (and that piece of printed card stock is awesome too!)

Lay the Red Rubber Palette inked side down on to a piece of cardstock cut to the size you want (a little bigger than the Red Rubber Palette)

Press it hard going over the entire surface, lift it up carefully and now you have your first monoprint!

Keep making prints, one pattern piece is good for about 10 prints and then the prints start getting less sharp.

When you have printed a batch you can cut them up or punch them into shapes and you can make quite a few  cards and from the little scraps make tags.If you wait until it is really dry, you can also cut up the  patterned piece that you were printing from.

Gretchen says, "The back story is that I said I would do a valentine project with the kindergarten and I needed something that little hands could do easily.

So I used construction paper that they could cut hearts out of  with those crummy scissors-- they could even WRITE on the  hearts and the words would print.

I used  MarsCarve carving material. It doesn't work with, say, a blank stamp because it is too hard/rigid but the Red Rubber palette has enough give that it works perfectly!

When I was planning out the kindergarten project I got so into it, I documented it in a notebook, and that is how I started doing my  idea journals!

Here is a pic of one like the kindergartners  did and then later, when they went on a nature walk, I showed them how to print leaves with the same technique!"

Gretchen and her daughter, Romy, (also a RubberMoon designer!)  Live in West Seattle. Gretchen illustrated a book that has just been published in Canada ("Leaving Mr Humphries"  by author Alison Lohans) .

Romy is a 7th grader at Madison Middle School and is currently showing at Firefly Cafe in West Seattle.

Albert & Shooey are their spoiled lapdogs!

We are honored and privileged that Gretchen is not only a RubberMoon artist, but also a friend! Thank you Gretchen for sharing your beautiful work and creativity with us in so many ways!!

We hope you have enjoyed meeting Gretchen and getting to know her a bit more!

Sending Moonbeams,