Monday, March 21, 2011

Return address stamp out of eraser

This sounds kind of dumb, but I've always been embarrassed by my totally utilitarian return address stamp. It's one of those self-inking kinds with an Ariel typeface. A rubber stamp is essentially a print. How can I send my stamp out in the world looking ordinary? Well today is a new day. Instead of cleaning the house with this hour window I have, I carved an eraser and am now blogging about it--we're having company for dinner and we still have camping gear all over the place. Oh well. At least I have a stamp. :)

I used a Staedtler eraser that for some reason comes with embossed sides now. Here's a before picture. I did my best erasing them off so I could have a sharp surface, but I only did so-so.

 

The actual carving was maybe 10 mins tops. The eraser is a super transferrable surface. Just outline the eraser on a piece of paper, write or draw what you want in pencil, and then use your fingernail to transfer the graphite to the eraser. It'll reverse it for you in the process. Carve. Voila!

2 comments:

C.Kimball said...

Love it! I need to make one of these!

Cathy Savage said...

I've been wanting to do one of these for years. It was so simple it was ridiculous. I can't believe I've been putting it off for a convenient time when the entire procedure was less than 15 mins. And that includes taking pictures and uploading them to the blog! :) I bet those erasers exist without the emboss marks. I'll have to stock up on them next time I'm at Jerry's. They are so easy to do that it just makes perfect sense to have at least 3 or 4 potential stamps at one's disposal.