I was recently inspired by Pete McKinnon’s video video on how he uses his Field Notes pocket notebooks to cure his phone addiction. He decorated the index page at the beginning of his notebook with these cool letter stamps and alternating background colors using a Tombow brush marker. I thought it was just so cool!

Now, I’m not sure if YouTube served me a video on block printing (also known as linocut) before or after I saw Pete’s video, but using it to make stamps by hand, especially since I don’t have a laser, really appealed to me. I ordered a basic linocut kit from Amazon and had to try this out and see if I could make something passible that would work in my notebooks. I wanted to recreate Pete’s index stamps but combine them into one stamp. I thought this would be a good first attempt trial run of this technique.

I designed what I wanted in Illustrator and printed it out on paper. I then traced it onto tracing paper and stuck it onto the linoleum I received in the kit. I rubbed it with a pencil eraser to transfer the graphite from the paper onto the linoleum as a guide. Then I used the cutting tools to remove everything that didn’t have graphite.

It wasn’t easy trying to get the detail in the font serifs or the smooth, straight lines. Getting into the tight corners was especially hard. It is no doubt far from perfect, but it absolutely didn’t matter! The defects just add to the texture of this thing. It turned out so cool! I love it and couldn’t be happier. Now I just need to 3D print a backing to stick the stamp onto and I’ll be in business!

The VersaFine Clair ink I used bleed through the paper a little more than I liked, but it wasn’t bad. I need to figure out which inks work best with common Field Notes paper types.

Thank you Pete for the inspiration! I’ve been loving these notebook videos.