I decided to make an original card game, featuring chickens, and I wanted the images on the cards to have a consistency in appearance. I realized I could make stamps for the cards, and chose to do it with linoleum cut prints. I’d never made linoleum cut prints before (besides in 5th grade art class), but fortunately I had the tools I needed, a gift to me from a former art teacher.

The process was messy and time-consuming, and the floor of the Arctic Room is littered with bits of linoleum, styrofoam, ink, and glue. I experimented with the cuts (most of them failures), until I finally had 5 stamps that would complete the deck of cards. For color, I used a yellow Sharpie marker, crayons, and colored pencils.


The chicken stamps were particularly difficult to carve, so I settled on making two separate stamps for the chickens, one stamp for the body, and another stamp for the back feathers. (Notice the cork I used for the feathers: It’s from the bottle of Da Vinci wine that D. and I drank together on our last evening in the Arctic Room before he moved to Alabama.)

Here is the finished deck of cards, 42 in all. They include the chickens, a Rooster, and a Fox (among others). Now that the deck is complete, I’ll play some test games with friends to see whether the card game works and is fun. (It’s possible the game will be a disaster, but I figure with some trials and adjustments, I’ll make it work.)
I’m calling it “BOK BOK! The chicken game”.