Rubber Stamp Carving

Making your own rubber stamps is a big part of Letterboxing. I've always liked rubber stamping and use it a lot for scrapbooking, but I didn't realize it was so simple to make your own.

Here's my first handmade stamp. (Bad Cats is our letterboxing trail name, chosen by my kids.) The name is a little hard to read, but I think you can tell it's a cat.

Here's the original image. I found some clip art that I liked and then added the name below in a word processing program. I used the tissue paper to trace it off with No. 2 pencil, then I taped the tissue facedown onto the carving block and rubbed it with my thumbnail to make the transfer. The nice thing about this is that it mirror-images it for you correctly. I lost a lot of detail though.

That's what the carved stamp looks like. This tutorial has lots of info. I followed their recommendations and found the Speedy Stamp Kit at Hobby Lobby in the printmaking section. The kit has carving block, a carving tool (called a gouger) with two nibs (although I bought another package of nibs with a size 1 in it for detail work), and a booklet with some instructions and sample art.

Here's the mess. It really was fun. Now I have to decide whether to mount it on a block of wood. I might leave it as is, because it's small and light without the mounting.

In knitting news, I cast on for the Modern Quilt Wrap.

I'm not feeling the love yet, but I keep being interrupted and I hate all the color changing. I can't carry it with me either (too many color changes), so it will be a home-only project. I really need to start a pair of socks to carry around. . .