Make your own stamps

I’m so excited that our Craft Exchange is right around the corner again. I’m madly trying to squeeze in my craft project with getting ready to move, painting furniture and my little Princess Cupcake’s many extra-curricular activities.

I would LOVE to tell you what I am making (in my head, it’s totally fab…) but since that would ruin the reveal, I’ll have to share with you some of the projects of my fellow craft exchange members.

Here’s one of my favorites — well, they’re all my favorites — but I love that this set of chevron cards was handmade from start.

My friend Dorie who just happens to work at my favorite place ev-ah, (that’d be Martha Stewart if you didn’t know), made these gorgeous cards. But she didn’t just make cards, she made the stamps to use on the cards. I am surprised Martha herself didn’t grow the berries to make the ink that were used on the cards… Humph. I guess Martha’s slacking off.

Here’s what Dorie said about her project:

So fun to take part in this! Here’s the DL on my stamping project. Sorry I didn’t snap more pix! It was really quite easy – I didn’t realize carving stamps would cause such a stir! I was inspired by my time at the Brooklyn Craft Camp (created/run by Brett Bara) – where I did some stamping.

I carved my stamps from Speedball Carving Mats after penciling my design on them (I used my square ink pads as a guide so i was sure to make them the right size for my ink). I just carved them with the regular old tools that come with a basic carving kit and a paring knife to get some of the bigger ridges out.

I carved 5 different chevron type shapes out and found about a MILLION ways they could go together with various layering of colors and interlocking of patterns. It was fun!

 

I purchased all the actual cards from Paper Presentations. The rest of the supplies (other than the carving tool which I had already) came from a tag sale at Martha. I loaded up on the Speedball mats and inks once I knew I’d be in this group.

 

One cool thing I picked up from the Craft Camp was that you don’t have to get all messy with a brayer and ink and ink trays…. Just using any sort of stamping ink pad gives great results! And the cleanup is wayyyy easier.

Totally cool Dorie, and what’s more popular than Chevrons these days? I heart this project!

Read more about Dorie at her website.