Lessons
Lesson Info
Materials for Making Your Own Stamps
Carving stamps we're going to be carving for this project and later classes I'll show you some other materials for making stamps and other ways but I'll go ahead and kind of show you faii materials uh I guess let's see, it does concede what's on my desk just yet or no merry go okay, great. Perfect. Um so there are a lot of materials out there for carving stamps if you want to start carving aa lot of people start with linoleum which is really tough printmaking material looks like this this is actually mounted to a woodblock sometimes that's not mounted and it has like a burlap back on dh you carve into it and it's just not very user friendly it's it's a nice material to get a lot of detail with but you kind of you know, ideally would be printing with a printing press and you know, not everybody has that in there their home or wherever they're doing crafts and things like that so I like it but it's not really. You know my favorite kind of go to material but definitely has its place but a...
s far as you know, easy crafts that you want to do to make, you know, gifts for people I think there's some really nice materials out there this if you go into the art store like in the printmaking department you'll see a lot of different materials. This is a really kind of, I guess. Student grade type of rubber this is already carved into, and it's is really flexible. But it's also a little bit crumbly. So, you know there's there's president cons. You know, this is really inexpensive. Do you want to make something really quick and easy on? Just save yourself a little bit much of money? Or do you want tio kind of spring for the good stuff which this isn't the only good stuff? This is just what I like to use. Um, this is my brand called speedball s o this is called. They have different carving rubbers out there. This is called speedy carve. And this is it comes and sheets like this. So you can get pieces that are about, like, three by four on dh. Then I think the largest that they sell is like twelve by twelve inch piece. So sometimes people are like what's, the biggest stamp you can make there, like, you know, can you make, like, a three foot stamping? Not really. You know, I mean, the bigger that you know, obviously it's it's. A flexible material, tio. Teo work with so the bigger it is the more challenging it becomes but we can talk about those challenges later but I like so this is how I like to buy it I like to buy it in these big sheets and then cut it down because you know it's really kind of like, you know, baking a cake you know if you have all the ingredients then you could just take what you want and make what you want so this is called speedy carve um and let's see the next part of the materials that you'll need besides that the rubber is linoleum cutting tool linoleum coming from this material the's go hand in hand but this isn't just for linoleum you can use this for carving rubber for carving this this white carving rubber um and I'll show you the tool and how it works right now on this is by speedball also but it comes in different brands on dh there are ones with a wood handle um this one I've had from really long time you'll hear like a little bit of a rattle so if you buy this as a kit from an art store, what you're going to get is the handle itself which looks like that I'm holding the blade so you could just see what the handle itself would look like and you're going to get six blades on dh those blades if you have a uh a tool like mine the bat comes off and you can hold your blades in the handle right there I don't really do that because I don't like it rattling around as I'm carving but just for the sake of showing you what you can dio um I'll take those out and so right now I've got the number one blade in there so like I said you get six blades typically if you're going to buy a little this as a set and I'll lay them out and show you what the different blades are right now course they're spinning and they won't be they won't behave for me I want to get them in order for you so you can see the difference is ok so oh nice shot I like that I was thinking that you had no idea what I was doing up here okay so one through six and on the back they're numbered there kind of engraved so it's a little one and one is the tiniest tool the tiniest blade that you're going to be able to get its a little v shape um can you see that should hold it like toward the camera oh that's a nice that's a nice shot okay so hard just as you're focusing in so that's the number one that's the smallest finest tool that you will be able to get there's nothing finer than that you know, sometimes I have people in there telling them about this and I'm like well I want I want to get really really fine line and so they they start you know looking for an exacto knife you know I can ease an exacto knife to carve this is all you need and in fact this is actually in my opinion this is more than you need this is my personal preference I'll tell you about the tools you get these six blades I am leaves three of them I used the number one and the number two so this number two you can see it's just like the number one but it's a little bit bigger and I'll show you what that does when I am demel this in a minute so there's that number two then the next one is number three it's a little bit bigger than the two the number four which is a little bit bigger and it also kind of has a flat bottom to it so it's almost kind of like a square like you type of shape can let's yeah maybe let's see may I can hold them together no and the number five is the widest one that's like you're you're scooper so from left to right you've got one two three four and five see how two and three are almost exactly the same and four is really similar to five so a number six is this fancy little blade here that cuts the rubber so I'll tell you what I use and don't use six and don't use for I don't use three I use one two and five and that's why you use for everything um it's really your personal preference if you find you really like the way that the four cuts use it that's fine, you know it's kind of like if you're doing a painting you could paint you know, a four foot by four foot painting with a tiny brush or you could use a bigger brush that's going to come down to kind of your aesthetic um I just kind of like keeping it simple I carved so much that I actually have purchased three handles so that I can just, you know, switch back and forth you know, these aren't that expensive, so if you find that you really like doing this you know, go ahead, invest in a couple of handle so that you can, you know, change them out without having to change the blade switch I'll show you how to do that right now so you've got this kind of like, little screw top right here you don't want to screw all the way off, but really what what it is is a little outer screw part listens up your blade comes out and it's a perfect so there's like a little ball and then a top kind of half moon sandwich piece in there oh, perfect case it and all jingle it so you can kind of hear it rattling see how it's moving in there so the best way that I have found to get your blade in there there's two kind of tilted up on look at it up, right? Because if you're doing it like this, you're just going to kind of jam all the metal together and it's not going the blades not going to go in there very easily, so just lifted up kind of, you know, move that around so you can kind of see the opening between the two pieces and then just slide it in. It takes a little bit of practice. Um mary goes and once it's in it, it needs to be all the way and you don't want it hanging out like that or crooked or anything like that. I'm just gonna jiggle it a little bit and then you tighten it. A lot of people ask, how long do these blades last? Um if you're carving a really hard material like linoleum because there is almost like a grit inside of this material and it's very, very dense, it will wear down your blades fairly quickly. The rubber is really smooth and the blades just glide through it almost like, um, like you were be carving like cold butter, so I don't really change my blades that often, actually, I mean, I can go a couple of months and I'm carving like, every day. Um, another thing is, I don't really like to change my plates because it's like you put on a new blade and it just changes everything, it feels different it's kind of like, I don't know if anybody plays guitar, but it's like, if you change the strings on your guitar, it just kind of sounds like too perfect or something, you know? You kind of want to I don't know where it down a little bit. So anyway, a couple months you come by the blades individually and two packs um or larger quantities, if you do happen to unwind it all the way off and it comes apart so there are these air rusty is these have been around a while? Um, just pick up the pieces it's going to be, uh, flat on one bottom are one side and rounded on the other. So the round side you pick up the screw piece and it's tapered at one end, you drop the round side into the tapered end and then screw it on, and before it gets all the way on, you'll go ahead and put your blade back in just like that
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Erica Engdahl
I found this nugget of a course a really inspiring boost for me in my own stamp carving. Good information delivered in a calm and clear way by an engaging instructor. Worth the time and money!
Karen Ard
Super short class but had the info I needed to start! Thank you
Christina Althouse
Thank you Meaghan for the overview and demonstration for how to carve stamps. I am completely new to learning how to carve so this class was very helpful!