I needed about 100 heart cards to make a display for Valentines Day.

But I didn’t want to paint 100 hearts, …I am so impatient.

So I thought the fastest way was to make a stamp-

So I had a rotting potato, got a knife and started carving a heart stamp.

The red blob is craft acrylic paint (more fluid than the kind you would use for painting a picture), no blood was split during this process.

Yes, it was as messy as it looked, but I worked too hard to just let it go–and I was dying to see how it would print.

I really liked the way the raw potato took on the acrylic paint and how it transferred to the paper, and I also noticed by changing the pressure and how much paint was on or off the potato changed the look of the heart when I stamped it on the paper. By the way–the paper I used was the cheapest, heaviest (140lb) watercolor paper; pads are the most economical way to buy them.

After stamping a few–I started to feel real good about them. And it was too easy to do-which made me love doing it even more.

Every single one of these hearts were stamped on by the single raw potato heart. As irregular as the surface was, the potato kept it’s shape throughout the stamping.

When I started the project, my initial problem was how to start, but at the end, the problem became where to place all these cards to dry.

So I had way too much fun making these cards, and the process was way faster than projected. As I was waiting for them to dry, I decided to decorate the other side of each of the cards.

Next post – I guess,  we’ll see how that’s going.