This Chinese set of "chops" was given to me by my daughter many years ago. I have always adored the concept of having one. The little boxes are adorable. In China many artist sign their name with their chop. They are made of stone and feel smooth and cool in your hand. (one for my husband too). Tiny lions carved on top.
If you do a little research and google "Chinese chops" you will find lots of interesting info and even website helping you find how your name might look in Chinese so you can make your own. There are instructions also if you have drawing apps like Illustrator so you can design a chop on line.
Apparently trying to find characters for a chop in Chinese is fairly random. Sometimes they will try to pronounce your name in Chinese and find something that sort of sounds like it.
For instance when shop keepers tried to write Coca Cola for signs in their Chinese shops the actual words they wrote translated to "bite the wax tadpole". Hard to imagine this sold much of the drink! Finally Coca Cola did research and came up with a better symbol which actually translated "to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice."
Okay now that sounds better.
Chops are traditionally done in red using a kind of wax paste. My set came with a small pot of the gummy stuff. But I use red ink stamp pads.
So below is my Chinese Chop to the left actually carved in China, a hand made larger chop I carved myself after looking it up on line and then below a tiny "chop" just drawn by hand made up of my initials "V and S" for use on my Zentangle tiles. Maria and Rick both have tiny "chops" of their initials and they encourage folks to do the same. I always do mine (see two versions) in black when putting on a tile so it blends in.
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