Part of the fun of letterboxing is to make your own personalized stamp. It can be as simple as a letter or as elaborate as you want. Everything I've read about it says that a homemade stamp is the best. So, I went to Michael's eons ago and found the Speedball set complete with tools, a guide, tracing paper, and the pad to carve. It sat forever while winter blew on and procrastinator Michelle didn't touch it. Well, I finally got out the supplies last night and made our stamp:
First I decided on a design. I wanted something that had our name or our initials in it. I tried to find a dog bone, but there was not one I liked. So I used the house. After I printed it, I put it face down on the stamp block, about 1/4 of an inch from the side. I held on to it tight and rubbed the fire out of it! When I was done, the ink had transferred to the stamp block.
Then I began to carve. It took me a minute to figure out how I wanted it to look--just like my print, or the opposite. I wanted it to look just like my pattern, but that was way too difficult! I messed one up figuring this part out. Lucky for me the stamp block was a decent size! I started over again and had a good idea exactly how to do it this time. I decided to just carve out the "L" and the initials and let the rest be colored.
From there I tested it out. Not bad for my first go at it! I went back with my tools and did some trimming and detailing to make it look alright. It was surprisingly easy. I thought it would be much harder than it was. Now we have a stamp to use to go letterboxing! I think we are planning to go next week, and I will tell you all about it!
