Meet Chantal Vincent Art

Chantal creates custom rubber stamps and has competition on her blog to win a print or stamp of your choice.

We got in touch with her to create a custom name 'Noah' stamp to put on wooden cutlery for a birthday and on cards in the future.

1. How did Chantal Vincent Art come about?
I have always loved to draw and paint. However when it was time to choose a University course after High School I decided on a Business Degree. I kept dabbling in art on the side but Chantal Vincent Art only kicked off after I signed up for an online artist bootcamp with www.Pikaland.com. I met many inspirational artists and illustrators there who had blogs and were selling work online.  I discovered that maintaining a blog for me was way to commit to making art on a daily basis.  I started carving linocuts because I could complete the whole design, cutting and printing process on my kitchen table whilst keeping one eye on my two preschool kids. When I went to the art store to buy more lino I found the ezy carve blocks and immediately thought of 10 or so different stamps I wanted to hand carve.

2. How does it all work? Can anything be carvable? Talk us through the process?
Wood, lino, vinyl and rubber blocks can all be carved. You can even use a normal eraser to cut into to make your own simple stamp. Rubber is physically much easier to carve in comparison to the other materials. It’s disadvantage is that if you slip with your cutting tool it’s quite easy to gouge out part of the design.  I use a visual diary in which I sketch out my ideas. I then create a final drawing and using tracing paper, transfer my design onto the vinyl, lino or rubber. The tracing paper is important as I need to reverse the design to be carved into the material (particularly if I’m including words) as the print is effectively a reflection of the carving. I also need to concentrate when determining the areas to be cut away so that they don’t take the ink to print. This can be challenging at 10pm when you’re tired and trying to get a new design carved whilst the house is quiet.

3. What are some hot themes for rubber stamps? Whats your favourite?
Christmas is definitely a popular time for rubber stamps, so anything along those lines at the moment. I’m currently running a competition where I will carve a Christmas stamp for the winner based on the winners suggested theme – interestingly there are lots of starfish and Australian flora requests.
My favourite stamps to date are my Deer and Willy Wagtail designs. 

4. Whats been the most unique use/application of the stamp?
Someone wanted to make Christmas bunting with a combination of stamps printed onto thick scrapbooking paper. I’d like to try the same using fabric bunting.

5. Whats next for Chantal Vincent Art?
In the short term I’m doing as much as I possibly can this month in preparation for Christmas with more linocut cards and festive stamps. Once my kids are on school holidays I know my creative time will be greatly reduced. In the New Year I’d like to start making prints from wood blocks and so also spend some time researching Japanese art work. That will be my next big challenge.

Shop online at Etsy and visit Chantal's Blog to keep updated.