I found Nepali stamps!

Hello again!  I am trying to live up to my word and post more here.  Anyways last month on the Martin Luther King Jr. American holiday, I took a trip to Durbar Square in the Patan neighborhood of Kathmandu.  This Durbar Square (there are three of them in the Kathmandu Valley which I learned when I went to the wrong one and missed my tour group) was in the Patan area.  Patan is one of the nicer, more affluent neighborhoods in Kathmandu and it also contains the Patan Museum.  My new friends and I actually discovered the museum by accident when I found the gift shop first.  

One of the first things that caught my eye in the shop were these beautiful hand carved wooden stamps.

It's been awhile since I've blogged about it but I really love to use rubber stamps to make cards so I was thrilled to find these beautiful Nepali stamps!  The top one is a lotus flower, the second row are mandala designs, then there is the eyes of Buddha (who was born in Nepal and "Buddha was born in Nepal" is a very popular bumper sticker on busses here in town), a mandala with Nepali characters, a temple image, and the number 30 with the sunburst which also represents Buddha.  

I decided to try them out the other day but unfortunately these hand carved wooden stamps don't work quite as well as rubber or plastic stamps with a stamp pad and paper...

But I am still happy I found them here and they've made their way into my stamp collection.  I may try using a paint brush to add paint to them and seeing if that will give me a better detailed image next time.  Does anyone out there have any other techniques or suggestions?  Thanks for sharing my crafting journey with me :)