Maidenstone
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Making Rubber stampsAlthough I'm not interested in the commercial rubber stamping craze, I do make a stamp now and again to make my homemade Christmas cards. In the past I have carved rubbery erasers, cut shapes out of those foam kitchen 'wipers' about 1/3 of an inch thick, yellow, with bubbles in, and scored on sheets of polystyrene and balsa wood, and lino. I've just experimented with that thin craft foam for children in bright colours, and it really works.
I've had a bag of IKEA building blocks for ages meaning to make stamps with them some time (although any chunk of wood will do!), and they are all different sizes and smooth and lovely to use.
Draw your design on paper. copy it onto the block BACKWARDS!!! and draw with a fine permanent marker. Then cut out shapes from the craft foam. Long, very thin strips are good for the outline but make sure you use the actual surface of the foam as the surface of the block or you will have different thicknesses on the stamp. Then you just cut out the shapes you need, put them in place on the block to check them, and then glue them on with PVA glue.
I have only tried these stamps out so far with acrylic paints brushed on by hand, but am going to try them with printing ink today. When I use them with paint I then scrub them under the cold tap to clean them, and the stamp survives this!
The stamps are just like the ones that cost a fortune to buy - and they only cost pennies to make.
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