This week I thought it would be fun to carve some rubber stamps for the first time! In my printmaking class during the spring semester we used a lot of different materials that we carved into to make our designs, but a lot of the time I felt like they were a bit difficult to cut into. Because of this I went with a material that is a lot easier to cut into, and would save me some hand pain in the long run.

I purchased a pack of “Soft Rubber Stamp Carving Blocks”, as well as a carving tool from Amazon.com to use for this project.

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The rubber blocks were a lot bigger than the size stamp that I wanted, so I cut them smaller with an X-Acto knife. I then planned out the design that I wanted with pencil. I wanted to begin with a design that was simpler, just to test out how the blocks worked.

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I found that the rubber block was super easy to cut into, and that the process was super relaxing! It’s exactly like carving into a drawing eraser. What I liked most about these rubber blocks was that they was multi colored. The middle of the block is a turquoise color, so you can see the area that you are cutting away. The area that hasn’t been cut away stands out in white.

Now for the fun part! Using different colored ink pads I began to print my stamps in different colors, cleaning them each time I used a new color. Because it was my first time carving rubber stamps I was really just experimenting to see what they could do, so I just printed each stamp on a paper a few times. Below is what I came up with.

I really enjoyed carving these little stamps, and have begun to carve even more since finishing these! If you are interested in printmaking, and don’t have a ton of money to spend or don’t really know where to start, I recommend trying out rubber stamp carving like this!