Making your own rubber stamps and loving it!

When I am stressed, I find working with my hands to be very therapeutic and relaxing. It takes my mind off my stress and I just concentrate on getting my piece of craft done. I get a sense of happiness and achievement when my craft piece is done. My latest craft / hobby is making my own rubber stamps. 

I started off with craving on soft rubber blocks or erasers with a regular pen knife but that did not turn out well. I can only do straight lines and that is quite limiting. So, I ordered the Speedball Linoleum Cutter from Amazon and now I am really enjoying the craving! =)

My first home-made rubber stamp!

There are numerous blogs and youtube videos online that can show you how to make your own rubber stamps. And I am going to add to it by sharing my easy steps:

1. Have an idea of what you want to make. I am starting off with simple words like 'hello', 'OMG!'and 'xoxo'. I have also made a checklist stamp to stamp on every page of my notebook and that would be my checklist of things to do / buy, summary points of my meeting, etc.
2. Draw your idea out onto a piece of tracing paper with a 4B pencil.
3. Stain your rubber block with an ink pad. This will make carving much easier because you can see that areas that you have craved out. Allow time for the ink to dry or you can stamp the stained rubber block on a piece of paper a few times to fast track the drying.
4. Transfer your image from the tracing paper to the rubber block. You do this by laying the tracing paper faced down onto the rubber block and rub the back of the paper with your finger tip.
5. When you have the whole image traced onto the rubber block, start craving with the linoleum cutter. Start with the #1 cutter (the thinnest cutter) first to carve out the lines of your image. Follow with the thicker cutters to complete the rest of the carving / stamp.
6. Ink your completed rubber stamp and start stamping! =)

My rubber stamping equipment. I bought everything locally in Bangkok except for the linoleum cutter.

I love rubber stamping!

I have my very own checklist stamp now! =)

See more of my rubber stamps here!

Till my next blog post, do some stamping! =)