How to make your own rubber stamp?
I used my feather stamp with silver ink to make little gift tags
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Every child loves rubber stamping. Pressing a shape into an ink pad and watching it come to life on paper is one of children’s little pleasures…Rubber stamps are not cheap and I find it really hard to find the design that I want.
This cool little tutorial is fun to make with your kids. You can carve the rubber with the sharp tools and let the kids draw the design and experiment with stamping it on colored paper and cards. You can use the finished rubber stamp to decorate letters, notebooks, wrapping paper, greeting cards, or make your own gift tags…
You will need:
1. Paper and pencil
2. Eraser (pencil rubber)
3. Cutting set
4. Craft knife
5. Ink pad
6. A design of your choice
I usually use a rubber printing block to make my own stamps, but in this tutorial I used a regular eraser that I found in my daughter’s pencil case.
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Step 1
Place your eraser on the paper and mark its outline, this is to make sure that your finished stamp fits on the eraser you are using. Draw your design with a pencil on a piece of paper and cut it out. I chose a feather (although it looks more like a leaf 
step 2
Transfer the design onto the eraser by pressing the image you just drew face down onto the rubber. Press quite hard.
Step 3
With the U shaped gouge cutter (the one with the blade in a U shape), gently carve around the outline of your design. You don’t really have to press hard, if your tools are razor sharp, they will cut through the rubber like a knife through butter.
Remember, your stamp is like a positive / negative image: the areas that you carve out will not be inked and the areas that are left sticking will make the final design which, when inked, stamps the final shape onto the paper.
Step 4
With the V shaped gouge cutter (the one with the blade in a V shape), carve out the finer lines of your design: for my feather, I used this to cut the centre stem and the fine lines around the stem.
Step 5
With a craft knife, “peel off” all excess rubber around the edges of your design to make sure that the stamp is “clean”. You can press the rubber on the ink pad then onto a paper to see if any excess gum needs to be trimmed to give a cleaner finish.
Step 6
Once all the cutting done and the excess rubber cleared, you are ready to stamp. Hurray! your stamp is finished!
Bring the stamp to the ink pad (or the ink pad to the stamp) and press onto paper or card.
