Carving a Custom Stamp to Match Paper Designs by Lydell Quin

Hope you had a great weekend! We have an awesome tutorial to share today from My Creative Scrapbook design team member Lydell Quin featuring our September Main kit.

Here's Lydell:

Carving a custom stamp to match Paper designs.

(*WARNING….Photo heavy post…..you might want to grab a cup of Tea and relax!!!)

I Love carving my own stamps.  I thought I would share how I carved a stamp to match the flower Print on one of the papers in this month’s Main Kit in The Chalkboard Collection from We R Memory Keepers.

Here is the original flower cut out and layered, creating an embellishment.  This is what I would like to replicate.

To start with, select the image you would like to replicate in a stamp.  Choose a nice wide open Image, which is not too complex and will be easy to trace and cut out.  Flip the page over and with a soft lead pencil (2B or higher) colour in the reverse side covering the back of the image well.

Now using an eraser or a carving block (found in most good Art stores-  Speedball makes some great blocks)  I found a large eraser from a specialty Stationary store and I sanded off the image a little with sandpaper (just so I can see my image better)  and placed the coloured-in side of the paper down on the eraser and started tracing the image.

You might want to go over the transferred image again with the pencil so its drawn clear on the block.  Do the same for all the components of the image.  Mine had several parts as I wanted my stamped image to be layered.

Using Carving tools (also available from good art stores, -Linoleum Carving tools-) and using the finest one, begin carving the outline of the pencil lines.  Carve on the outside edge of the line, leaving the pencil line still showing on the block.   Once you have carved out the fine lines, move up to a larger carving tool (I used the curved one) and carve off the rest of the eraser outside of the fine detail carving you just did.  Cut off the excess eraser with a blade or scissors.

Once you have done that, using black ink (making it clear to see imperfections) ink up your stamp and stamp it on scrap paper.  Look for problem areas in your stamped image and re-carve off areas that need removing.  Continue until you are happy with your stamped image.

Move on to the other images and do the process again.  Cutting them apart first if necessary.

Remember to stamp them to check if they need extra fine detailing

You will have a nice little mess to clean up!

Now stamp your images on good quality Cardstock, using coloured ink.

Then fussy cut them out and layer them together.

And here is the final result.

Now try to stop with just one…..  The sky is the limit.  Arrows, chevrons, hearts, stars…..

Have fun.

Lydell Quin

My Creative Scrapbook Design Team Member

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Here's our September Main kit:

(Click here to purchase our Main kit)

and here are Lydell's beautiful Main kit layouts:

Be sure to visit Lydell's blog for even more inspiration!

We invite you to join us and experience the possibilities that our coordinated monthly kits offer. To purchase a kit, please visit our website, here.