Carving Your Own Stamps From Erasers

There are so many wonderful, gorgeous stamps to buy, but another way of expanding your rubber stamp collection, is by carving your own. You can use most erasers for this, and create simple patterns for background stamping, or detailed motifs of any kind—flowers, symbols, letters or whatever your imagination and patience bids you.

Part of my own hand carved stamp collection

This floral vine is inspired by an indian wood block. 

Right-click the image above to save it to your computer, and print it to fit the size of the eraser you have chosen for this stamp.

Transfer the motif to the eraser (use the old pencil transfer trick drawing on the edges, flipping the paper placing it on the eraser, then drawing on the back side of the paper so the first drawn lines are transfered to the eraser.)

If you are drawing your own image, you can simply draw directly on the eraser, or sketch on a paper until just right, then transfer as described above.

Begin carving carefully around the edges,

then trim off the rest of the eraser surface.

Test to see if you got all of the little bits and pieces carved clean,

and trim the edges using a knife, so you have a better feel of the figure when you turn upside down to stamp.

The wonderful Geninne Zlatkis is in my opinion a master of stamp carving. Visit her at Geninne's Art Blog where she also shares her beautiful watercolors and so much more :-)

She even wrote a book on stamp carving which is brand new–due out in October. 

Another really great "carver", with her own very distinct style is Mimi The Rainbow.

I hope this was helpful, and that you have fun carving you own rubber stamps :-)