Rubber stamps are, as a rule, foul. They’re twee and sentimental, a low-fi clipart. But you can make your own rubber stamps, an easy way to reproduce your own designs. I made a simple design to show you how.

First cut an ordinary eraser to size.
The firmer, white ones seem to work best and the pink, crumbly ones are terrible!
Draw your image directly onto the eraser, or trace it and scribble on the back to transfer the pencil to the eraser. Remember that the image will be reversed!

Then start carving around your image. I’m using a V shaped gouge in the picture shown- it’s a wood carving tool really, but it does the job. You can also use a scalpel, but remember- don’t cut directly downwards, if you cut on a slope the stamp will be much more stable.

Carve away, and then ink it up and test it. Mine were pretty messy at this stage, but it’s useful to do as it highlights on the rubber where the peaks are.
For ink, you can use a regular stamp pad, which come in billions of colours, or you can simply use a bottle of ink and a brush, or for the really low-fi, a waterbased marker pen will do the job.

When I had the stamp how I liked it I cut all around the edges, to make sure I’d gotten rid of the bumpy bit. This is of course optional.

The stamps can be a little fiddly to hold, so I cut a piece of thick card to mount it on, and pressed the stamp onto the back for reference.

The finished stamp.
PVA glue seems to hold it in place fairly well.

I used my stamp to create a pattern, which I scanned in and edited in Photoshop to make a repeating patter with a handmade feel.

You can use these for all sorts of things though; stamp them on packing labels to make stickers, business cards, wrapping paper, make an entire zine with them, create your own movable type set, or use them as a stepping stone for linocutting.

I first had a go at this medium a year ago to spread the word about buy nothing day, but pretty much forgot until a week ago when I found the beautiful stamps of craftpudding, an etsy seller who constructs amazing stamps using her own designs, and very faithfully rendered fonts.

craftpudding flickr.
craftpudding etsy.