I was ordering something from an online printer the other day and noticed that they offered custom rubber stamps. This got the old brain moving, and I remembered that I (and by extension you) can make a custom stamp of my own.

Step 1: Get Your Stuff Together

The Materials you’ll need:

• A rubber eraser (I have a bunch of pink Paper-Mate erasers, but Weese just did a stamp with a nicer white eraser, and it looked really nice)
• An X-acto knife
• A pen or pencil

Step 2: Tracing

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure to trace your shape backwards. Both Weese and I forgot this recently. I promise you, it’s very frustrating to finish lovingly carving out a miniature work of art, only to find that you’ve made a stamp that says “aideM poP kcilC” or some such nonsense.

The first thing you want to do is trace your shape onto your eraser. Keep in mind that tons of curves and tight negative spaces will drive you nuts.

Step 3: Outline

Once you have your shape traced onto the eraser, take your X-acto knife and carefully outline your shape with the tip of your blade, paying attention to clean curves and whatnot (which I did not pay much attention to here). Once you’ve done that, run the blade back through the outline you made, making a deeper cut.

Step 4: Carving

Next you will take the blade and put it into the side of the eraser at the depth of your outline, and run it around the edge of the eraser. Then you will cut in towards your shape, removing pieces of rubber as you go. For tight spaces, use the tip of your blade to cut at an angle and pry up pieces of rubber.

Step 5: Simplify

You’re almost finished. The last step is cleanup. Run your blade around the edge of your shape to get rid of any barbs and other irregularities. I also like to cut off as much of the blank edges of the eraser as possible, so I don’t get a lot of edge marks when I push down on the stamp.

GodBless:VQ