Stamping Cheap & Dirty

After my little evening session of wrapping paper printing I had lots of ideas for making more stamps. As well as using what I already had, I wanted to try making stamps from some materials I’d seen used online.

Rubber Carving Block:

The old-fashioned key I’d made needed companions, so I carved two more:

Bottle Tops

I’d also seen a stamp of two interlocking rings, one with a diamond, and figured I could do that with a bottle top and some scraps of carving block:

Foam Core:

In this tutorial foam core is recommended as a cheap stamp material. You peel off one side and draw or carve into it. I tried drawing first:

Then I carved these lolly stamps:

Meat Tray Polystyrene:

I try very hard to avoid buying polystyrene, because it’s supposed to take a billionty years to break down, but occasionally we end up with a meat tray. So when I saw a tutorial on using it as a printing material I really hoped it worked as well as it appeared to.

To make these gingerbread people stamps I pressed cookie cutters into the surface:

Elastic Bands

I’d seen stamps made by winding yarn or elastic bands around a block of wood. I figured elastic bands would give a cleaner edge, so I rustled up a few and stretched them around a piece of particle board:

Erasers:

The softer rubber stamp carving blocks are similar in texture to erasers, which are often recommended for stamp material. I bought this cheap pack from a $2 shop:

And they carved like a dream! I like them better than the carving block, so I’ll buy these whenever I’m making small stamps. This lot became cup and glasses stamps:

Silicone Stamps:

Venturing closer to the commercial stamp world, I saw these paw print stamps at Lincraft and couldn’t resist buying them. Only when I looked closer later did I discover you have to buy plastic blocks to stick them to. Being impatient, and frugal, I ‘stuck’ them to bottle caps instead:

By ‘stuck’ I mean that they come attached to a sheet of plastic, and the instructions say to peel them off and press onto the block, but they have no glue on them. I suspect they stick like suction cups.

Once I’d made these stamps I moved on to printing wrapping paper. But I’ll save that for another post.

2 thoughts on “Stamping Cheap & Dirty

  1. Love your birds on a wire!! But the cute paw prints are The Labradors’ favourites. I am leery of carving as I am pretty sure the first thing I carved would be a finger. It’s an excellent paper printing technique though.

  2. Finger carving would be more likely if you tried to carve lino tiles. The soft carving blocks and the erasers are so easy to cut into that there’s almost no danger of slipping and hurting yourself.

    The paw prints are cute, but I suspect they don’t look at all like a real paw print. Hmm, that would be an interesting exercise – get a photo of a paw print and carve a more realistic stamp.

Comments are closed.