Hand Carved Rubber Stamps

One of my favorite things to do is rubber stamping. I started to carve my own rubber stamps when I found this book at Kinokuniya: 晴れときどきはんこ―雑貨的消しゴムはんこを楽しむ本. It is written by Koma Keiko and now I have all her books. She is such a talented illustrator and artist. She makes the cutest rubber stamps!

Her books will teach you how to carve your own rubber stamps step-by-step. Start with easy drawings and you will find that carving your own stamps can be fun and to me, sometimes theraputic.

Here are the tools I used.

You can use any type of eraser but I feel that the Pental eraser is softer and easier to carve. I buy the biggest piece I can find. In fact, the one shown in the picture is the largest one I can find in Singapore. If you know of any bigger pieces, please tell me! The larger one in the picture was purchased from Tokyo last year. I bought 6 of these and now I have 3 left.

You will need pencil, tracing paper, tissue paper, cutter, ink, paper and a cutting mat.

Last night, I made 2 new stamps, a pig and a cat.