Tu-Tu Tutorial: Make your own stamps

Hi Everyone!

We are excited to announce that starting today, we will be bringing you a new tutorial every single Thursday. We hope to share a wide variety of things to interest everyone.

I have been racking my brain for awhile now trying to come up with something fun to share with all of you for a tutorial. Then, a couple weeks ago, I was cleaning and came across a large pile of fun foam that I have had for years and never used. This fun foam gave me the idea for this week's tutorial....

Make your own stamps!

The fun thing about making your own stamps is you can customize them to your project for pennies. So, let's get started!

For this project, you will need:

Fun Foam (Mine is pretty thin and comes in 11x17 sheets)

Die Cutting Machine (I used my Cuttlebug)

Dies (I used Cuttlebug, Quickutz and Spellbinders)

Embossing folders

Acrylic Blocks

Inkpads

Cardstock

Doublestick Tape

If you use the thinner fun foam, you don't even need to change your sandwich recipes for the various dies and folders. I used the same recipes that I would if I were cutting and embossing cardstock. Basically, run your fun foam through your machine with various dies and folders to create fun textures and stamps. To stamp them, simply put a piece of doublestick tape on your acrylic block and attach foam stamp.

My first project using homemade stamps is an ATC or Artist Trading Card. I used embossing and cutting to create my various stamps. Embossing on fun foam is easy. It takes no special tricks. But, I have found that the embossing fades on fun foam over time, so if you want to use this stamp again, you would just need to re-emboss.

Materials For ATC
PAPER: Colormates-Pretty Pink, Ruche-brown (WorldWin Papers), Fun Foam INK: Palette Hybrid Ink-Belle Rose (Stewart Superior), Versafine-Vintage Sepia (Tsukineko) DIES/FOLDERS: Cuttlebug, D'Vine Swirls embossing folder, Flower die (ProvoCraft), Nestabilities-Labels One (Spellbinders), 4x8 alpha die-Chocolate (Quickutz) OTHER: Pink Pearl (Kaisercraft), Velvet Ribbon (Melissa Frances)

1. Cut piece of fun foam 2.5" x 3.5" and emboss in Cuttlebug with D'Vine Swirls folder.
2. Stamp background with homemade stamp. *Tip: I found that if you rub the inkpad across the stamp rather than tap it, you get ink mainly on the raised embossing and the details show better*
3. Stamp scrap piece of same cardstock again. Die cut a flower out of it. Die cut the same flower in fun foam. Set aside for later.
4. Cut an H and an I in fun foam. Affix to your block.
5. Cut and emboss the label and stamp "HI" in center. Cut the next size of label in fun foam. Layer together.
6. Layer background onto an ATC sized piece of brown cardstock.
7. Add a strip of brown cardstock across the bottom and add velvet ribbon over it.
8. Attach labels to ATC with pop dots.
9. Layer two flowers together with brown foam one on top. Pull the pink petals up between the brown to add interest. Add a pink pearl to the center and attach to ATC.

That was a very quick and easy project! My next one is just as simple....maybe even simpler. It does use some purchased stamps, but I wanted to show you that with a few simple shapes you can easily make a very fun homemade patterned paper.

Materials for Card
PAPER: Colormates-Luscious Lime, Brown, Heritage White (WorldWin Papers), Fun Foam INK: Colorbox Fluid Chalk-Lime Pastel, Turqoise (Clearsnap), Versamark (Tsukineko) STAMPS: Sentiment (Stampa Rosa), Giraffe (Clear Dollar Stamps) DIES: Nestabilities-Circle, Scalloped Circles (Spellbinders), Various circle punches OTHER: Twinkling H2Os (Luminarte, Inc), Perfect Pearls-Iridescent Green (Ranger), Sheer Ribbon

1. Cut out a scalloped circle. Stamp it randomly on lime cardstock with lime chalk ink. Stamp again in open spaces with Versamark ink and dust with Perfect Pearls. Stamp a third time randomly with turqoise ink.
2. Die cut and punch some smaller circles. Lay them in a pleasing pattern on your acrylic block. Stamp randomly with brown and turqoise ink. Stamp sentiment in top corner.
3. Ink edges of panel with brown ink.
4. Tie a polka dotted ribbon across panel and layer onto a brown card.
5. Stamp giraffe stamp on white cardstock and color with Twinkling H2Os.
6. Cut out with Nestabilities circle. Cut a scalloped circle in brown. Layer together.
7. Attach to front of card with pop dots.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and will maybe try making your own stamps. It really is fun to do and so easy! I want to add that all of these things that I have cut out are going into baggies to use later. These are stamps that I will use again and again. I am going to finish cutting the remainder of the alphabet set and keep them together. You can't get a cheaper alphabet set than this one!

Be sure to come back next week for another Tu-Tu Tutorial Thursday!

Robin Willis, TPE design team