Stamp Carving and a Crawfish boil

A couple of months ago, my friend Carrie approached me about her upcoming crawfish boil. She really wanted to make the invitations and she needed help finding a stamp. I looked online and searched around but I had the same luck as her....none....So I offered to carve a stamp for her. I sent her some simple images to pick from and this is the one she selected...(I don't know where she found this....it wasn't one of my choices)......but she and her husband really wanted an authentic crawfish.

I started out by transferring the image, using transfer paper, onto linoleum. I could've used rubber or easycut, but the linoleum allowed me to keep quite a bit of detail. I actually transferred it twice, I didn't realize it until the end, but its claw was half off...so I had to re-do it....but I used this one for my photo because I forgot to take a picture of the second one.

After transferring the image, I carved away the outlines.

Then I cut off all the extra linoleum around the crawfish.

And then I glued it onto a wood block...I thought the rustic wood was quite fitting. I used wood glue and put a stack of books on it overnight so that it would be very secure. Just like a wood mounted rubber stamp.

I did a few practice stamps and made a few changes to make sure it looked right.

Here is the invitation Carrie came up with--so cute!! She used dark red paint instead of ink and used twine around the crawfish to make it look as if it had crawled out of the pan inside the card. Awesome idea!!

Saturday night was the crawfish boil...so much fun....I helped eat some of the 100 pounds of crawfish...it was so yummy along with the shrimp, potatoes, jambalaya, corn on the cob, and sausage--

"Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler'... "Let the good times roll!"