make your own rubber stamps
Apr. 17th, 2003 09:58 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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craftgrrlI'm becoming an avid paper arts fanatic lately and I'm trying to amass a respectable collection of tools/techniques/things in order to do all different types of paper arts: eyelets, decorative scissors, different paints, rubber stamps, different kinds of glues, etc, etc, etc. I'm particularly obsessed with getting my own rubber stamp alphabet at some point because my handwriting is less-than-great for the most part.
The problem, though, is that I'm a poor college student, so I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to get ritzy effects without spending top dollar on various tools and embellishments. And the other day I figured that there must be some way to go about making my own rubber stamps. I mean it seems like it'd be easy enough, right?
And so it is!
I went out and bought three 2x1x1 "artgum" erasers from my university bookstore for $0.60 a pop this afternoon. I'm cutting them in half and using one side of the cube for one letter, so when I'm all finished, I'll have 36 different letters/punctuation marks/small designs. The coolest part for me is that I was able to choose my own particular font, instead of one that somebody else likes or think would sell the best. (By the way, I decided to use "Candles" from www.acidfonts.com.)
So far I'm really pleased with the results (I'm only on my 14th letter). It is incredibly time-consuming, yes, but it's getting quicker and easier to do the more I do it and it's a whole heck of a lot more satisfying than exchanging money for a pre-made sheet--in my opinion at least. I think I'll stop by the bookstore again sometime to pick up more of the same erasers so I can have lower case letters as well. I'll probably try different types of erasers at some point just to see which types work best for different types of fonts or images.
I'd definitely say that this has been worth the whole whopping $1.80 I spent this afternoon. (Okay, so if you want to get technical it was $4.65 total because I had to buy an X-acto knife, too. My utility knife was getting too dull. Besides I've always wanted one.)
Of course, now I have to figure out what to do with all of this carved rubber...
The problem, though, is that I'm a poor college student, so I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to get ritzy effects without spending top dollar on various tools and embellishments. And the other day I figured that there must be some way to go about making my own rubber stamps. I mean it seems like it'd be easy enough, right?
And so it is!
I went out and bought three 2x1x1 "artgum" erasers from my university bookstore for $0.60 a pop this afternoon. I'm cutting them in half and using one side of the cube for one letter, so when I'm all finished, I'll have 36 different letters/punctuation marks/small designs. The coolest part for me is that I was able to choose my own particular font, instead of one that somebody else likes or think would sell the best. (By the way, I decided to use "Candles" from www.acidfonts.com.)
So far I'm really pleased with the results (I'm only on my 14th letter). It is incredibly time-consuming, yes, but it's getting quicker and easier to do the more I do it and it's a whole heck of a lot more satisfying than exchanging money for a pre-made sheet--in my opinion at least. I think I'll stop by the bookstore again sometime to pick up more of the same erasers so I can have lower case letters as well. I'll probably try different types of erasers at some point just to see which types work best for different types of fonts or images.
I'd definitely say that this has been worth the whole whopping $1.80 I spent this afternoon. (Okay, so if you want to get technical it was $4.65 total because I had to buy an X-acto knife, too. My utility knife was getting too dull. Besides I've always wanted one.)
Of course, now I have to figure out what to do with all of this carved rubber...
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