skip to Main Content

Analog Friends 01: Petra Brcic on Journaling, Carving Stamps, and The Art of Asking

Hello, Analog Friends! In January, I got a chance to get to know Petra Brcic, one of Cafe Analog’s friend, stamp carver/designer, and all-around awesome person in general 🙂

In this new series of Cafe Analog’s blog called ANALOG FRIENDS, I invite you to enjoy long-form reading at a slower pace (preferably with a cup of coffee, tea, or chocolate!)—while getting to know the people behind Cafe Analog’s products you love.

Enjoy!

_________

Hanny(H): Hi, Petra! The Cafe Analog community knows you as an artist/stamp carver/designer. However, we’d like to know better the person behind the gorgeous stamps we all love! Can you tell us more about yourself and your background?

Petra(P): Hi! Firstly, thank you so much for this amazing opportunity, and I’m looking forward to getting to know each other better! 🙂 This question is always so much harder for me than it looks (introvert here :D), but I’ll do my best! 🙂

I’m almost 40 years old, from Croatia, and I have a small family I share my life with – a 5-year-old boy and husband. 🙂

I do not consider myself an artist, but I see myself as a curious and creative explorer, trying to find ways to express myself and find meaning. 

Petra Brcic

My creative side and all that revolves around it is not my job—and most probably never will be 🙂 I have a digital career/full-time job that I’m also quite fond of, and it fills the other more structured and analytical side of me, so I’m constantly trying to balance that duality in myself. I have learned that I find the most satisfaction in my life if both sides can come out and play 🙂

H: How did you start with stamp designing and carving? When did it start becoming a business?

P: I carved my first stamps, one simple circle and some squares—sometime in 2017, I guess. I did it out of curiosity as I was on a hunt to find another creative hobby and craft to play with 🙂

It was all probably a big coincidence and not something I had planned to do. I was inspired by some hand-carved stamps made by a friend, got curious, made a wish to try it out, and when I realized how much fun it is, I never stopped 🙂

After a lot of practice and figuring stuff out, I opened an Etsy, and some orders started coming in here and there. As the years went by, and as I practiced more and more, my collection of designs grew, and I’m so grateful to enjoy this journey and continue being a work in progress, always learning something new and improving my carving skills. 

Petra Brcic

H: You have designed some of the most iconic stamps, like the Hydrangea and the Birds that appeared almost on every journal on Instagram and Youtube! 😀 What inspired you to create these stamps, and from a designer’s/artist’s standpoint, what makes them so popular and distinctive?

P: I still vividly remember the day I sketched the initial design for the Hydrangea set!

I had just put my then 1-year-old son down for a nap, but that afternoon I felt restless and needed some time. I wanted to do something creative, and as I was lying beside him, a thought regarding pressed hydrangeas I kept popped into my mind for some reason. I knew I wanted to draw them out because they always looked so pretty to me, and then it dawned on me—they could be carved into such fun stamps! 🙂

I snuck out of bed, ran to my desk, and started drawing. Later, I grabbed my Pfeil carving tool, and the first prototype was done.

At that moment, I had no idea that so many people would enjoy the little hydrangeas, but I had a feeling they were special, and they were very meaningful to me 🙂

A fantastic opportunity to machine produce the Hydrangea sets in larger quantities and sell them through Cafe Analog was offered to me by Desiree (the previous owner of Cafe Analog turns Fairy Godmother) sometime later on. All of that still makes my heart very grateful, especially for having a friend and a supporter in Desiree in so many collaborations! But the Hydrangea set was our first one and will always hold a special place in my heart. 🙂

H: I tried making stamps before, but as a stamp, the image I have in mind doesn’t look as good 😀 It was like the vision I had in my mind, the image I designed, and the stamped result don’t match :)) Do you think there’s a special skills/considerations that we need to know when making stamps? How do you think it’s different from designing an image for postcards or stickers, let’s say? 

P: If there is one piece of advice I can offer to someone regarding carving stamps by hand (or any other design work for a product!), it would be to always keep in mind the characteristics of the material you are working with. 🙂

Rubber for stamp carving is soft(ish). It can’t handle tons of details, and you can’t carve it too thin. There is no erasing a mistake in this material– what if carved off is lost forever, and if mishandled, it will break off. So working with this material requires a steady hand, a good plan, a soft touch, and lots of patience 🙂

Petra Brcic

Hand-carved rubber stamp designs have their “limitations” (I prefer to call them guidelines) because of the material they are made of 🙂

If you keep in mind the material qualities and requirements while creating a design, you’re off to a good start! 🙂

Take advantage of the quality that it can handle just limited details: simplify, take away everything you can except the essence of what you are trying to capture in the final design. This is, at the same time, difficult but so rewarding! 🙂

Consider making the 2D property of the stamp your ally: add dimension or texture using expressive line variation. Play with direction, width, depth, length, etc. 

Play with the softness of the material: using different pressure on your carving tool can give you different results! It’s something worth exploring as the rewards can be unique, expressive marks and details you can add to your designs and make them even more special 🙂

Petra Brcic

Petra Brcic

H: Apart from designing and carving stamps, what else do you enjoy doing during your analog moments of the day? 

P: I enjoy journaling, making collages, sketching and painting with watercolor or gouache, playing with wax seal stamps, washi tapes, rubber stamps, colored pencils, fountain pens… this list could go on 😀

Basically, if you take a peek at my desk, whatever you see on it, it brings joy and is used and loved. 🙂

Petra Brcic

Petra Brcic

H: How did you start journaling? What do you like the most about it? How do you journal? Is it for memory-keeping, planning, art journaling? Do you have a specific journaling style?

P: I have kept a planner /journal since high school. My style and needs shifted drastically over the years, some being very minimal and some very maximalist. 

At the beginning of my high school years, the focus was on functional planning with a bit of memory keeping in my then ring-bound pocket planner (and loads and loads of Blue Bear and Bubu stickers, ha ha!).

Petra Brcic

During college, I mostly used a Moleskine pocket daily planner that kept some notes and deadlines or schedules. Pure function, minimal decoration. I still have no idea how that actually worked for me because when I look at those booklets today, it seems like another person’s planner 😀

Then there were some black-out years, as I like to call them, as I shifted to digital planning entirely as the rise of smartphones began (but I still love to use my Google calendar and keep notes on the phone!).

But after a while, I have missed having an analog system so much that I spent hours and hours on YouTube and the internet trying to figure out my setup for 2017. 

Petra Brcic

That’s when I discovered Traveler’s Notebooks and the analog community and fell absolutely in love with the overwhelming and stimulating well of inspiration that was available.

Now and in my current system(s), I feel like I combine functional planning, notes, lists with—again—some memory-keeping, but at the same time, keep notebooks for creative journaling and long-form personal writing.

Petra Brcic

Regarding style, I don’t know exactly how to define it. I honestly don’t even think about it that much. I just know I love a lot of colors, smashing a bunch of fun things on a page, using different pens or fountain pens, washi, stamps, printables—basically if it’s floating around my desk and it’s something I love, it goes in my journal 🙂

And the remaining white on the page gets filled with words. Well, sometimes it’s the other way around, ha ha!

See, even I don’t know! The main thing is just to have fun 🙂

Petra Brcic

H: If you were asked to create a mini capsule of only seven things to have on your creative desk, what would they be? And why? 

P: 7?! No way! 😮 My maximalist heart is dying!

Well, let me try…

  1. A thick B6 Tomoe River paper grid notebook 
  2. A fine nib fountain pen (preferably something very fancy, like a glittery cap, limited edition Sailor gold nib pen, as I’m allowed only one :p)
  3. A watercolor palette
  4. A water brush
  5. A bottle of black, waterproof ink
  6. My favorite Tarot deck
  7. Can I cheat on the last one? 😀

Petra Brcic

Because I really want to write down my Delfonics pouch; that is like a magical pouch that has no end, so I could stuff all my carving and other tools in there, plus other creative journaling supplies 🙂

H: What can we learn from designing/carving stamps that will apply to living life in general?

P: Oooh, that’s a hard one, let me get my thinking cap on. Let’s try to put it this way:

It can be difficult but also very rewarding to remove the non-essential.

Simplify as much as you can, take away everything except the essence of what you are trying to capture. 

H: What would you advise beginner stamp artists/designers who wish to sell their stamps to stationery shops or a bigger audience?

P: I find it difficult to answer this one because I was very lucky and blessed with kind people being there along the way and supporting me in my projects.

Also, I often battle with imposter syndrome and question myself and my work, so advising on business topics has me feeling like a fish out of water, but I can try to say at least one thing I am absolutely sure of. 

The one thing I can stand by is this: never be afraid to ask. 

Ask for help, ask for collaboration, ask for support. Propose ideas, reach out to lots of different people, pitch your ideas and just go for it. 🙂

Getting a ton of NOs is better than not asking at all. 

As I said before, I was very lucky and blessed to receive a lot of YES answers. But if I hadn’t asked, we wouldn’t be talking here :)***

Back To Top