Ancient History Geek Stamp Carving

I'm about to get my ancient history geek on when I show you the latest rubber stamps I carved this past weekend. They are heavily based on drawings and clay seals found at the Çatalhöyük excavation.Çatalhöyük, or Çatal Höyük, is a very old (one of the oldest) Neolithic site in southern Anatolia in Turkey. We're talkin' people lived here about 7500 BCE, OK? Old. I learned of this site while doing prep research for our Turkey trip we took back in October of 2009. And while in Turkey, we visited the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Anakara, Turkey's capital city and got to see all o the amazing articles excavated. In fact, you can visit the excavation and I would LOVE it. Some day. You can check out my pics of our museum visit included in Day 4 of the Turkey trip's blog.

There are more Çatalhöyük stamps to come. And I'm working on a line of Viking-inspired stamps, possibly branching out in Anglo-Saxon, Picts, Celts, etc. Before long I'll probably have several geek series of stamps. History geeks unite and carve!

Stamp Carving

Been carving rubber stamps lately and I really dig it. S gave me a starter Speedball kit for Christmas and I've since bought more gear. Anything goes. Whatever you can draw you can carve. I quickly ran out of tracing paper (used to transfer your drawing to the rubber) so now I just draw directly on the rubber. I know, I know, I can't seem to follow the directions in cooking or crafts. I just like to dive in and do it. I'm just making up stuff and carving it. I'll post more soon.