Make a Custom Stamp - for gift tags, journaling or letterboxing!

1. Miniature Stampmaking Introduction: Everyone has the ability to take something simple, like an eraser and turn it into something special, a miniature work of art that can brighten someone's day. I love creating things that make people happy, from hand decorated pottery to children's illustration. For this class, I'm combining two of my favorite things, watercolor and printmaking to help you develop your creative side. Hi, I'm Sander Jessup. I'm an artist from Phoenix, Arizona. I have a degree in studio art and had been a professional artist for many years. I've had various jobs in the art world including decorating pottery, custom framing, picture book, illustration, and fine art watercolors. I will show you how to carve your own design into a pink eraser, creating a stamp that you can use on many different things. It's a small project to begin learning this skill and you can gain confidence quickly and then later apply it to other projects such as Linux cut or woodblock prints. This is a class for beginners. Miniature stamped making is an activity I lead at a homeschool fun shop. Both kids and adults had fun. And eraser is small so you can get some practiced in a short amount of time and right away make another one. I love learning new things and have you do two, you're in the right place. Let's get started. 2. 2 Class Project: Make a Stamp and Print it : The project for this class is miniature printmaking. Make a stamp and show us the print. I really hope you'll also share if you added color, how you used it. Did you frame it, mail it to a friend, decorate the walls, carve your design into a pink eraser, creating a stamp that can be used on many things. It's small and right away you'll be thinking of what you want to make. Next, we'll you create a series, maybe a flower of B in the sun, or a key, a lock and a door. At the end you will have a handmade stamp and a print from it. Simple. That's what we want to see in the class project. Handmade stamps can add a special touch to give tags, bookmarks, cards. It can be used for letter, boxing, personal writing, bullet journal, or a fun edition to the family calendar or scrapbooking, a merely part of a scavenger hunt. I'm sure everyone will have unique ideas to share and I am so excited to see them. Miniature printmaking. 3. 3 Materials: I'm so glad you're here. Let's get into the materials that we're going to be using. These are some different erasers that I've used. They're all different styles. It doesn't really matter as long as you can cut into it. This one's a little bit smaller so it makes it harder. So I really like this one. And along with the racers, you'll need your carving tools. These are both made by speed ball. I'm sure there are others out there. This one has extra nibs inside and this is all that's really necessary. You may wonder if you can use an exact dough. This, it's really not recommended. You can have one on hand for carving, just some of the edge off and that might work for you. You may want to draw an, a sketchbook. I have copy paper on hand. If you're doing watercolor, some brushes, there are different. Pays doesn't really matter which kind the watercolor paper that I use. I have a couple of different kinds here. This is Arches, this one is Stonehenge, but they're both hot pressed papers and I like them because they're smooth for taking the stamp afterward and these are just a couple of pieces of that. So yeah. All right. Now we're ready. 4. 4 Inspiration: Simplify Your Design: You've gathered your materials and you're ready to work. Maybe you're thinking, how do I carve something so small? How do I get my idea onto that? Eraser? Simplify your design? I'm going to walk through the steps that I used to get the big idea onto a little stamp. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I try to fit everything in because I'm excited by every little piece, but that doesn't always make it better. Working small is a great way to narrow down your ideas into manageable bits. So here's my first example. I love watching all the fish and my fish tank, but they will not all fit onto an eraser. I can't include everything I see. On this occasion, I focused on the pearl girl. Mommy did a quick drawing in my sketchbook and added a little color just quickly to get the shape and colors. And this is how I discovered my favorite part of something. So when you work fast, start with what you like. Kinda like summarizing a story you just read or movies you just saw and you're telling it to your friend. This miniature fish stamp turned into a bookmark. Here's another example. While walking my dogs, I noticed some mushrooms growing in a fairy ring. I live in a desert, so that is actually very exciting for me. Silly, but true. I took a photo and I went home and wrote bunch of drawings of mushrooms. I painted some of course, because I love the color. And then I pick just one, noting the curved shape and the stem and decided to leave out any grass because, why complicate things? A stamped all over the place at its color, experimented with gouache and watercolor, even a white gel pen because printing with the white paint did not work the way I wanted it to. So I'm going to do another fish and I'm going to simplify it further and leave off most of the fins that I did before. I really enjoyed doing the circles. So I'm going to make sure include a bunch of those. The basic shape of my fish is sort of just rounded like a goldfish cracker. I'm drawing this summary, the essence of the fish. The final step is to trace a rectangle from the eraser that you're using. So you have the exact size and you'll know how small you need to make your design. Now it's also a good time to think about dark versus light. If you want to print black lines or white lines. Or if you want to leave an edge. Drawing with a white gel pen or chalk on dark paper can actually help you visualize how white lines with book. The size of those lines will depend on the size of your carving tool. Right? Now your design is at the right size. It's time to transfer to the eraser. See you in the next lesson. 5. 5 Transfer Your Design: Now you've got a great design on paper. Now it's time to get it on the eraser. There are three ways you can do this. The first way to transfer is to simply draw again on the eraser. Now if you're good at this, then this is a way for you. And if you choose this way to be confident because oddly, it's hard to erase an eraser. Another way to transfer the design is to take that right size drawing, flip it over and scribble over the back. What you're doing is making a kind of carbon paper from your own pencil and paper. Then you flip it back over, set it right on top, and make sure it lines up, and then go back in and trace over your whole design. The other way is to draw darkly over the edges of your design with a pencil. So that makes sure that everything is nice and colored in. And then when you've done that, to flip it and make sure it's lined up, just right. Fold them together, watching the corners, and then just rub it on. Can use your fingers. You can use the side of a pen. I can use another eraser. Just keep rubbing every part until you think the whole design has transferred. Let's give it one more look. I can see this side and there it is. Then I'll come back in with the pencil and draw over those parts that I want to carve up. When you use this method, the image will be reversed on the eraser. But once it's flipped back over, it will look the way that you drew it. And this is the way that's recommended if you're going to be carving any letters, that's really important to remember that what's on the eraser will be reversed. So keep your drawing nearby when you begin to carve. And you can use this as a reference and take the time to fill in all the parts that you want to print dark. We cut in to reveal the light and leave the dark alone. Here's another trick. If something doesn't transfer on the way you had hoped, rather than trying to line it up again, you can always hold it up to a light and see exactly where those circles or 6. 6 Carve It Demo: Okay, So I've decided that I want this to be a black fish with white spots. So here's a reminder of what pieces that I'm carving. There are extra spots on this, but that's okay. I can add them later if I want to. So when I'm carving, I'm going to start at an angle and just kinda scoop it up. So I'll just get started. I'm gonna do on this 1 first and lift. I only shake that out so I can see where I'm going in next with it. They scoop down and carve it back. This is hard to see, but these rules are slightly different ones a little bit more of a V and one's a little bit more U-shaped. And I used this one before for the circles, so I'm just switching to that one. Now for the circles, they're really fun. I just kinda push it in and then spin the eraser around and pop it out. And I've got a perfect little circle there. Guess I want to try and make this one just a little bit smaller so I won't push quite as hard. Same thing here. That one looks a little bit more like a heart. I'm going to have to go back and fix that. This is the part I need to fix. Sliding it around. So much fun. Now I'd like to point out too, that when you're carving, you want to make sure that you're not carving into your hand. I mean, it's kind of hard with an eraser and they're really small, so hold onto it the best you can. If you were working much larger, you don't want to go across that way. It's all so you don't risk slicing into your hand. You'll notice that I'm turning the eraser and not the tool at this point. Now it's also a good idea not to carve into your design, but if you have an edge to carve away from it so you don't accidentally cut into it and leave a white line where you don't want one. I can show you an example. So here are the place where I might just pick this up and use the exact dough right along the edge like that. And I can also do that back here. And then it's just like wiggling would know if you're getting into a place and you've stuck down too hard and doesn't really see me moving. You can also wiggle it a little bit, is better than pushing harder. Gonna go around the eye. And again, I'm just going to push in a little and then just guided along. I think I may be getting too much here. No, I got it. That so now, if I had had accidentally taken out the eyeball, you can always draw it in later with a micron or a pencil or something. So here's a good reminder of what's on the eraser is going to print backwards. Alright, I am ready to give this a test. Move off some of this stuff down here in there, see how it turns out. That's okay. He's a little flat on the bottom. Not sure if I like that. So I want to cut just a little bit more here. And that'll be this part of the eraser here. I just want to cut into this a little bit more. I'm sliding off from the ink. So now what I've done, I've cut this section off. It's kind of cute. So I cut a little bit more from here, a trimmed a little bit more of there. And I decided to add those extra dots and then we'll see how it compares to the first print. Yeah, this is good. I like this section here so much better. I like how I term that. I do like those extra dots. I want to add a whole bunch more votes. I want to try adding just a couple more of those little spots because I liked them so much. Digging in, spinning around. Like oh, they're so how many is enough? Now that's interesting. You see what happened? All right, let me show you what this is. I have these extra weird little things right here in there. My dots didn't come all the way off erasers stuck in there. So I can actually take this into the sink, wash that all off and start over again. 7. 7 Make A Print (or two or three!): So this is a watercolor and it was just want to play around with it, dipping it in and see what will happen. Um, it's kinda go, have fun. So that's with watercolor. Now we're in this plate. I'm going to try it with a little gosh, dipping it in the wash. Now just to add a little color for the fun of it to see what's going to happen. I'm pretty without dipping it, it just keeps getting lighter and lighter. Now, can I painted? I don't know. What if I want this part to be a different color. Here's my travel watercolors, so I'm going to brush it on and see how this one works. I like blue. 8. 8 Bonus: Watercolor backgrounds: Now just for adding a quick watercolor background, if you're using pan paints, you want to make sure that they've had lots of water. Let it sit there for minutes, soak right in. I'm going to try to have these colors. I'll use this one and that one. And just for comparison how this will work in a sketchbook. If I add water, I'm going to dip into colors at once just to see what happen. It's kinda cool. This is my smooth watercolor paper. It's called Hot Press. I've got it taped down just on two sides. If I were doing a full watercolor painting, I would have it taped down on all the sides just to keep it from buckling or warping in any way. So the first thing I'm going to do is just take some of the water, do a quick run across it this way. And I've found that that works the best on the hot paper. So I'm going to dip into a little bit of my watercolor here and just pull it across. And you can also tilt it. One of my favorite things to do is add a little salt and the tilt the paper and let it run into each other and see what happens. It's always fun to watch. Simple background. Don't be afraid to experiment. 9. 9 Wrap Up/Final thoughts: I hope you enjoy learning my process for creating a miniature stamp with as little stamp, you can make a lot of the same thing, but by customizing the background or adding embellishments, you can have a bunch of unique handmade pieces. Thanks so much for being part of this class. Please remember to share your creations in the class project. I can't wait to see all the ideas that you come up with.