I hope you don’t get tired of seeing what I’m doing in my sketchbook. I decided to make some new stamps from sticky foam. This is a product that is mainly used by children’s crafts in the US and can be found at discount stores.

This is the label of the pack that I bought and I have made quite a few stamps from these and still have tons of the sheets left over. You only need small amounts of the foam to make fun designs. I didn’t spend a lot of time making these and didn’t worry too much about making each design.

I had some left over pieces of foam from another stamp making project. I used some pinking shears and hole punches to add a little interest to some of the pieces. You can also use a pencil or pen to draw into the foam for further detailing.

I use plastic sheet covers to apply the sticky foam on to make the stamp. I am holding a piece of plastic sheet holder in my hand in front of the sticky foam pieces. You could apply them to a piece of wood, cardboard or they do make thick plastic pieces that are meant to be stamp backs. But they are expensive and these don’t take up as much room when you’re storing them. You have to be careful to not move the stamp when you’re applying it but it works fairly well.

 

 

This shows the paper on the back of the sticky foam. You just peel it off and apply the foam to the piece of plastic.

With this first stamp I just peeled the paper off of a pieces and stuck them down on the plastic in a random fashion. I didn’t over think the design which is unusual for the way I usually work.

I then used an ink pad to apply ink to the stamp. I forgot to get any photos of applying the stamp on my sketchbook pages but since it’s a two-handed operation, I’m not sure how good the photo would have been. I just place the stamp face down on the page, hold the plastic backing with one hand and press the for

I covered the sketchbook page which was already painted a light blue color with this stamp in a variety of directions.

Here’s another stamp that I made from the rest of the left over scraps.

And here it is stamped on to a blue-green page.

This is the third stamp I made. I decided to stick with geometric shapes with this one.

I used pink ink to stamp on to a light green page. Not my favorite.

This one I used the pinking shears and made leafy shapes for the stamp.

And here it is stamped on to a previously painted green page. With this one, I did one stamp where I had covered the stamp with ink. The rest are ghost prints done without re-inking.

I plan on working further into these pages by adding more to them. I’ll either use colored pencils or markers and keep working on the designs. They all feel unfinished at this point so the stamping was just the second layer with more layers to come.

You could use this kind of stamp to stamp on fabric or felt using either fabric paint or thickened ink. And you can cut any design that suits your fancy. This is an easy and inexpensive way to make stamps. If you try some, I’d love to see the results. Come on over to the forum and show us what you’ve created recently.