A post and a stamp tutorial too....blimey!

I have finally sat down and done the necessary to get my camera to download onto my laptop. Feel free to shake your head and tut...I am a sad, tragic technarcoleptic. Any mention of anything that needs to be mastered and my eyes start to glaze and I get frantically interested in anything else at all...classic displacement activity.

Anyhoo, this is something I've been wanting to try for ages but I fell into the trap of thinking it would be much harder than it actually was. I wanted to make some stamps to add embellishment to letters, wrapping paper, scrapbooks etc. but I didn't want to spend money on a whole lino cutting kit - nice though they undoubtedly are - so I improvised...

Bits and Bobs you'll need.

Some rubbers - or erasers if your t'other side of the Atlantic I believe - I got mine for about 30p each at Tesco.

Something to cut the rubber with - a scalpel or razor blade - I bought a whole pack of different sized bladed implements for a £1 at a pound shop (strange that). I don't think they'll stand up to much heavy duty use but they're perfect for this.

A pencil

Something to cut on

Bits of wood to stick your stamp on - makes it easier to hold and use the stamps.

Glue gun - to stick stamp to wood

An ink pad

Decide what image you want on your stamp - remember it will come through back to front, I doodled around until I found something I fancied.

Cut out a piece of rubber bigger than the image you want.

Draw the image you want to reproduce onto the rubber - now comes the interesting bit, you now have to decide how you want the stamp to look and whether you want it in negative or not. It's important to decide which bits you want to carry the ink and which bits will come out as blank space.

With the leaf I cut out the shape I wanted then sliced out a sliver to give the central line as a blank

Once you've cut out and isolated your image glue the stamp onto a bit of wood to give you something to hold on to.

Stamp on!

For bunting draw a line, as curved or looped as you like and stamp along it - the triangles are so easy and quick to do it's worth doing enough for every colour ink you've got.

Once you get started there is no limit to what you can do...A bunting triangle to bedeck a note or envelope, a leaf - just add a green squiggly line and you have a vine twining it's way up the side of a letter, an old style skull to add that little touch of terror to a halloween invitation and lastly far-off seagulls flying in the corner of the page (I made the mistake here of cutting them out as I wanted them to look so the stamp itself became the mirror image - Beware!)

In the olden days they used to used blobs of sealing wax to securely close envelopes and ensure that the contents came from that particular person - make your own signature stamp and use it on all your correspondence...

Hope you enjoy it!