Coast Live Oak Leaf and Acorn Stamps

October 3, 2018

I wanted to make an acorn stamp, but I challenged myself to make acorn and leaf stamps of a tree that is native to the Bay Area. My elementary school, formerly known as Washington Elementary, used to have a beautiful coast live oak tree on the playground.

Photos of the tree before it was felled during a storm in 2016

I looked up the average sizes of coast live oak leaves and acorns and tried to make stamps that were roughly that size.

Ink kept getting stuck in the veins I carved and needed to be removed with a toothpick.

The orange is much too…orange. I was trying to go for a bronze color. I should have mixed more brown into it.

The orange is too bright on the white towel. I don’t think I’ll print on these towels again.

The ink colors look a lot better on these little bags that were not white.

My first time trying to embroider something. I don’t think I will attempt this again anytime soon.

Note: Many months later when I was trying to learn how to embroider eyes onto a teddy bear I realized that I was supposed to have separated some strands of embroidery floss rather than making stitches with all of the strands at once.