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DIY Stamps

DIY Stamps

This month’s Crafting with Kids installment is all about helping your little ones make their mark – literally. Everyone knows how fun rubber stamps are, and here is an inexpensive way to take the creativity one step further by creating your own!

Wooden blocks make the perfect base, and offer the ability to make six stamps in one – one on each side. Provide your child with blank paper to put their creations to work, or grab some blank gift tags, roll paper or bags to stamp up a whole stash of DIY giftwrapping provisions.

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What you need:

  • Adhesive foam (sheets and/or pre-cut shapes, found with the kids’ craft supplies in the craft store)
  • Small wooden blocks (found with the unfinished wood products in craft stores)
  • Toothpicks
  • Scissors
  • Blank paper, cards or tags
  • Stamp pads

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1. Help your child create stamps by adhering foam shapes onto wooden blocks. There are two basic ways of doing this:

  1. Cut shapes from a sheet of adhesive foam, peel away paper backings and stick onto the sides of a wooden block. For added dimension, allow your child to use a toothpick to “draw” pattern indentations in foam.
  2. Adhere pre-cut adhesive foam shapes onto the sides of a wooden block.

Note that younger children will likely have a hard time cutting shapes out of foam, so this step may be better left for older children. Also note that any lettering or numbering must be done in reverse to show up correctly when stamped. That being the case, using pre-cut foam letters or numbers is probably not the best choice; if you want alphanumeric stamps, you’ll need to cut out your own in reverse from a blank sheet.

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2. Let your child go to town with their stamps on papers, blank cards, gift tags, mini notebooks and more! A few helpful notes:

  1. Beware of what type of ink your stamp pad contains. If you’re worried about staining, make sure to find stamp pads with washable ink.
  2. Work over a protective surface so there is no concern if your child stamps off the edges of small surfaces, such as gift tags.
  3. Small children may need help pressing the stamp hard and steadily enough, both into the inkpad and onto their paper.
  4. Ink will transfer from pad to pad unless sufficiently cleaned off in between.

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