Crafternoon and a stamp making DIY

Last month I hosted a (long awaited) Crafternoon stamp making session with some friends from life, twitter and the WI. As Sunday was so sunny, I spent far too long in the park with the puppy and not enough time sorting out the house, or making treats (I think the time was well spent) but I don’t think it mattered.




It was a lovely afternoon of crafting and gossiping and hearing about one friends ridiculous injury from a can opener. I did worry about letting her near the craft knives and cutting tools! I will admit to not approaching the first few stamps I made in the most logical manner – I hacked away at them with abandon, until I saw the beautiful, neat stamps Laura had created – after I witnessed what could be done – I changed my tactics.



And I barely took any photo’s from the event, just a couple on my phone – I know. Rubbish right. So to make up for this I thought I’d do a little tutorial on how easy it is to make stamps – well, it is if you follow Laura’s techniques.



I did a lot of googling about the best stamping equipment to buy and the Speedyball Easy Carve came up trumps. Having not used anything else I can’t compare but it did work really well – it was super soft to cut through, and when we stamped with it, it was even, which I guess is a plus when stamping!






What you’ll need;
Speedy carve stamp block (you could use a rubber if you want but this was super soft)
Craft knife/Lino cutter or both.
Tracing paper
Felt tip
Stamp pad ( I bought in bulk from Hobbycraft so everyone had one to take home!)



 The first thing you need to do is figure out what you’ll want your stamp to be of. This was the major flaw with my Crafternoon stamp creating – I didn’t really think too hard about it beforehand and just rushed in.

Draw out your design on the tracing paper in pencil – remember if there are letter or numbers involved you need to do them backwards or they won’t print the right way round.




Once you’re happy with the design, go over it in felt tip. Take your speedy carve block and place the tracing paper on it. Push down the tracing paper to make the felt-tipped outline appear on the block. (As the speedy carve block was loads bigger than any of the stamps we made, we all cut away our stamps to a reasonable size.)




This is where the trial and error started. I went in all gun hoe and started hacking away at the rubber around my design with the lino cutter. But as I have mentioned, Laura took a far more sensible approach and used the craft knife to cut away her block in squares. It produced a much neater result, and is what I have done here.




Cut round your design carefully with the craft knife, and then make incisions into the spare rubber. Only cut about half way into the block, rather than all the way through, or you’ll have nothing to hold on to later! Now take your knife and slice sideways in to the block, removing the rubber around your stamp shape. You can do this ‘digging away’ of the excess stamp with the lino tool if you like but I found it harder to get a neat result. That might just be my cack handed skills though.



Do the same with any space that needs to be removed inside the stamp shape too – here I used a combo of the craft knife and the lino cutter as it was a little fiddly to get it neat. It might take some time but you’ll be thankful when you come to stamping later.



And now you’re ready to tidy up any jaggedy edges, and blow away all the loose rubber.



Once you’re happy with the stamp, grab your ink pad and do a trial run. If you like it yay! You have a stamp. If you think it needs more work, go for it.

Oh, and here are my stamps from the gun-ho, hack away it it stage. Look at the mess around the anchor!




8 comments

  1. I've only been thinking this week that I want to try my hand at making some stamps, great timing! Useful tips too, thanks for sharing

    1. Hi Jo, I've just updated the post with details of where I bought the carving block from – rainbowsilks.co.uk/ProductDetails.cfm?SubCatId=137&Code=SPE4108 – they were super helpful.

  2. That camera print is so cute!

    Loving the look of intense concentration on everybody's face as they stamp 🙂

    mancunianvintage.com

  3. It's cool to be able to make your own designs! Especially impressive if you pick something really easy to cut out. Hint – bunting is easier than cats 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy