DIY Rubber Stamp

I can't believe that I never blogged about this...It's my moose stamp that I made myself months and months and months ago...Last Christmas (2010) I fell in love with this moose paper punch that I can no longer find on the Paper Source website. I hope they didn't discontinue my sweetie...Anyway, two examples of Moosie are down there. I made a lovely lady walking her moose and kraft gift tags for that year.

The only bummer about the moose punch was that it was so tiny...I needed a bigger one.  Paper Source at the time was holding a lovely "make your own rubber stamp" class. I think I was in the middle of IVF treatments and I needed an escape, so onto the class I went.

In order to make your own rubber stamp, this is a great kit. You can get all of the components at Michael's by themselves, but for the DIY Rubber Stamp virgins, this is great. 

Decide what you'd like to make. Remember that whatever image you use, it will be opposite once you stamp with it...so if you're using text (for example) make a mirror image of it in Word or Photoshop. The kit includes tracing paper, trace your design onto it...

Then put the tracing paper onto the rubber and rub the design onto the rubber. The lead from your pencil (oh yeah, you need to use one of those) will rub off.

Use the scrapers to cut away the negative space. There are two different sized scrapers in the kit, a smaller one for more detailed work and a bigger one that acts like a shovel for the larger spots.  

Test out the stamp to see where you need to get rid of more negative space. You can see on here that I had lots to go on this test shot. Oops!

Voila! It's a moose!!!!!