How to Carve Your Own Stamps

I absolutely love collecting stamps but lately I've been feeling like I’d like to try creating my very own one of-a-kind stamps. A few years ago, my sister bought me a stamp carving kit and I've just had it sitting in my closet—so I pulled it out, and used some of my own drawings to carve a few stamps.

Here’s what I used:

-Speedball, Speedy-Carve

-Speedball, carving tool

-Tracing paper

-Pencil

-Ink

-Paper

First, I flipped through my sketch book and found the two drawings I wanted to turn into stamps. Next, I cut out a piece of tracing paper, placed it over my hand drawn image and traced it using a pencil.

Next, I placed that traced image over a piece of rubber, with the penciled image facing down, and rubbed it onto the rubber using the soft tip of the carving tool.

Once the image was transferred I cut it out (so I didn't have to maneuver a huge piece of rubber while carving); and, I began to carve. I started out with the thinner tip—in order to carve the image with precision. Then I used the large carving tip to remove the rest.

Once I had removed the access, I tested it out onto a piece of card stock, and removed any remaining pieces that I didn’t need. When I was happy with the finished results I used my new stamp on a piece of card stock that I folded into a A2 size card, and used my pink (RV11) Copic marker to color in the rest. I’m so happy with how it turned out, and I can’t wait to start stamping in different colors!