This Friday is my son's tenth birthday! (WOW! I can't even think about how old that sounds). Ten is a hard in between age for choosing gifts, finding one he will like for a long time and one that is not commercialized.
I decided to take his signature drawings, the drawings he has been doodling regularly through out this past year, and make a custom carved stamp for him, something that he can use over and over again and is also very personal.
I have never carved a stamp before, but let me tell you, it is really addicting! I found all my supplies online at Dick Blick, they have everything you need and more including great starter kits.
To begin, I found some drawings my son had left around the house on random pieces of paper. Luckily, these images were all about the same size so I did not need to enlarge/decrease with the copier. I then used carbon paper to transfer each design onto the block and then went over them again with a sharpie marker so I had a nice black line to follow.
(*I apologize for the quality of these photos, it was late at night and I had to be sneaky)
After I carved out the stamps, I took a wooden block that I had from our local craft store, painted it all black and sealed it so it wouldn't get wet when he washed the inks off his stamps. The stamps were then glued to the six sides of the wooden block.
I then used the stamp ( I had to make sure it worked well, right?) to stamp each page of a post-it note pad and to decorate the gift box it was going into. I couldn't stop there, so I also used it to stamp the name tags for his party goodie bags and made stamped stickers for his friends.
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