Homemade Two-Step Stamps: Using a Stencil or Drawing

In my last post about making two-step stamps, I showed you how I made stamps from simple shapes for accents and borders. This tutorial takes that idea a little further showing how you can make two, or even three, step stamps using stencils (HOORAY!) or by drawing free-hand. I'll also show you a few options for inking your stamps with Staz-On or paint. The homemade stamps shown below are the banner and the flowers.

The idea to make simple foam stamps with matching acrylic style doodle outlines came to me while I was drooling over Claudine Hellmuth’s Creative Layers stamps ( gorgeous!) and shortly afterwards I saw a great tutorial on the Craftzine blog for ‘no carve acrylic style stamps’ .

I combined the two ideas and came up with my own DIY Two-Step Stamps.

What you’ll need is plexiglass, silicone caulking, basic craft tools and a stencil (optional)

Take your plexiglass, decide on the size of base you want to cut and then score it several times with an craft blade. Next, hold the scored-line against the edge of your table and WHACK IT really hard. For my second batch I bought thinner plexiglass then suggested and it snapped with ease while still being rigid enough to stamp with.

You'll need two plexiglass bases for each layered stamp set; one for the foam stamp, one for the silicone.

To Make a Stamp Set Using a Stencil:

Choose a stencil with an image that fits your base. I got this set at the Dollar Store as it has great stamp-style images

Trace the stencil onto your sticky back foam and cut out. Trim as close to the image as you like, I prefer to leave a little space around the edges.

Attach foam to base. If using sticky-backed foam, peel the paper backing off and stick it on the plexiglass. If you’re using the thicker foam, glue it to the plexiglass with Aleene’s Tacky Glue and let it dry overnight.

For the silicone step, trace your stenciled image onto scrap paper and place the matching-size base over top. Trace the pattern in silicone. Let dry over night. The type of silicone I use says, “shower ready in three hours” but I let it dry longer.

Tip: If you’ve tested your foam stamp on paper, don't lay your plexiglass over your stamped image for the silicone step as it'll come out backwards because your outlining the mirror image. I did... not good.

Now have fun stamping. Brush paint on the foam stamps and then once it's dry use paint or ink on the outline stamp. I love using Staz-On ink with the silicone stamps.

To Make a Stamp Set Using Your Own Hand Drawn Image:

The method for hand-drawn layered stamps is basically the same but instead of copying the stencil you draw your own image and transfer it to the paper side of your sticky-backed foam.

And here is how it all comes together in my ‘Out of the Journal’ finished piece:

Tips and Trouble Shooting:

* Ink goes on to the silicone better if you rub fine sand paper over it very gently.

* Wash these carefully - they aren’t as durable as manufactured stamps.

* I’ve had a few silicone pieces come loose when rinsing. It seems to occur where my line of silicone was too narrow. But, when I’ve let them air dry they reattached.

* Repairs or additions to your image can be made at any time, just add more silicone.

* To make three-step stamps create your foam background layer and silicone outline. Then make a third layer of designs to fill the outline. For example, with the banner I could make a layer to add stripes or polka dots to each pennant.

* Choose versatile shapes and make multiple silicone toppers. A rectangle could have a matching high rise layer but also serve as a text block (remember to mirror your writing so it’ll be oriented correctly when stamped), bricks, a border design, presents etc.

Other projects using these stamps:

Pretty Little Girl with a Red Dress

Our cash envelope system... we're Dave Ramsey people :-)

Thanks so much for visiting today.

This tutorial was originally published on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog, Balzer Designs

Package It Pretty

Earlier I shared what arrived in my Brown Paper Packaging Kit and today I wanted to show you a few of the things I've made with it so far. Let me just start by saying that using a kit the day I get it is pretty unheard of. But I was making some food for some neighbors in a very sad, scary, tough situation and I wanted my concern to come through loud and clear.

To start, I printed all the info related to the gifts on tags. To do this, print your text on regular printer paper, affix tags to paper over the printing and run it through again. The only hard part is remembering what side of the paper to feed into your printer. To help with this, I put a little x in the top left corner.

Then I decorated the tags with the torn fabric and flowers. Run a line of dry adhesive (like your ATG) across where you want your fabric to go and ruffle the strip as you place it down. Then sew over top for contrast and to tack it down.

For this one, I did two strips of ruffles and tucked the rose in the top.

Need the cinnamon syrup recipe? Here you go.

For the bread, fold waxed paper into thirds (long-wise) and wrap around your bread like a belly band, top with paper lace and tape together on the back side.. Add fabric of baker's twine.

Add your tag:

Nah... too cluttered. So I untied the tag and stapled it to the bag I slipped the bread into.

Repeat:

And keep repeating:

Until your gift is ready to be given:

(you can see the tag stapled to the brown bag in this pic)

I hope this post inspires you to take a few extra minutes next time you give a gift. 

It sends a message of loving care.

P.S. If you're interested, Bonita Rose posted about how I used her kit. Check it out and say hello from me.

Linked Up With:

Whipperberry

Brown Paper Packages: Bonita Rose

My mom-in-law and Dad-in-law sent Chris and I birthday-birthday-anniversary money and I decided to use a portion of it to buy things from artists I admire and am inspired by.

One of those artists is Bonita Rose, she makes the most gorgeous stuff. She recently started a monthly club called Brown Paper Packages. Look:

Cool, eh?

I had no idea what to expect when my package arrived. First I opened up this:

And then I discovered ALL of this. WOW. What a deal.

This is totally up my alley. Here's a few gifts I wrapped at Christmas - do you see how the kit contents (which are very similar to what I had in December) can be used so easily and so well?

Glassine bag, tag, ribbon 

Doily stencil (sit stencil on lunch bag, spray with mist), bag and large accent 

Glassine bag, trim, tag

Here's some art by Bonita Rose, be sure to stop by and let her know how beautiful her work is:

She has a creative newsletter too.

P.S. I bought this kit with my own money and no prompting from anyone. I just wanted to share a great thing I found online in case you've missed it.

Photo Challenge Favorites

I've been participating in a photo challenge since December and I wanted to share a few of my favorite shots from the past few weeks.

Industrial park N. Salt Lake on a drizzly January morning.

Terrible Nutella filled crescent rolls. So bland and uninspired... but gorgeous! What a waste of all that homemade nutella!

We've been getting lots of snow. It makes our bushes so pretty.

I took oodles of pictures of our breakfasts all month and they were all boring. Oh look! A macro shot of oatmeal! I wanted something that told a story a bit more. This one is from today. I was baking muffins at 6:00 AM, coffee was brewing. I hope this photo captures the mood and industry.

This was the sunrise over our mountains. We were taking the boys to a swim meet very early in the morning and we had to pull over and attempt to capture the glory above us.

I've been making this Honey Whole Wheat Multi-grain Bread every day. Our freezer is finally full again and I love feeding my family all that 10 grain cereal and fresh ground wheat.

When I pulled out the bulk Valentine mix from Winco each of my boys, when they saw it, exclaimed, "That's my favorite!" We look forward to this the way most people look forward to Girl Scout Cookies or Starbucks Peppermint Mochas. It's so good.

This is about a two minute walk from our front porch. While I can't for the life of me capture how incredible it is to live in the mountains, I think this picture will give you an idea of what it's like.

It all starts with proofing the yeast...

Yeah... went a little nuts on the photo editing but it's pretty cool, right? Our house is the one at about ten o'clock.

There was a huge snow storm this weekend. We were very fortunate to follow a plow up the mountain. It made driving so much safer and less scary.

~~~

Thank you for the good wishes regarding my TOSH appointment. It was interesting. (Skip to the next paragraph if you're squeamish.) I had standing x-rays done and the two doctors we consulted both saw a serious structural, anatomical problem with my foot. My options are to have PT to repair the torn muscles and ligaments but to keep getting injured frequently and to not run or I can have my left foot restructured by cutting a wedge of bone out of my arch to lower it and then cutting my heel apart and putting it back in a slightly different position. After the recovery, I should be better than new and able to run again.

Scary!

So I'm going to do Bikram Yoga (my new obsession) and PT and see what sort of progress I can make on my own and take a good long time making my decision. This does explain why I've been 'falling off my feet' for as long as I can remember and why I wear out the sides of my shoes, not the bottoms.

Project Life Pages 1/9 -1/15

This was such a fun week to record. I realized that I branched out a bit with journalling cards and stitching  and I added a bunch of hand cut hearts from some painty tags I've been playing around with.

I also figured out that you don't need to put a 4x6 picture in a 4x6 space. You can put two 4x3 items in the pocket just the same. For some reason, this made the project a lot more fun.

Gotta run, I have an appointment at The Orthopedic Specialist Hospital (TOSH) today. How exciting! Maybe they can fix my eternally broken foot.