Create Your Own Stamps

The button press kit wasn’t the only recently acquired crafting toolkit in our house, but it was the biggest one—except for the Stuffaloon thing to create your own balloons (yeah, I know…). I just don’t know how my wife finds these things. The problem is that I tend to steal her tools to use for my own journaling purposes. “You always make fun of my crafting stuff but end up using them yourself!” That reproach is only partially correct, but I digress. Here’s a humble but punchy (ha!) punch machine that allows you to create your own stamps.

But to what purpose, I hear you think? Ah, but to what purpose have we been born into this increasingly dangerous world, I hear myself think? Wait, we’re digressing again. Punch thing. Right. We have many of these little tools that look like small versions of classic perforatoring contraptions, only this time they don’t eat up two small round pieces at a paper edge of choice: they punch out a custom form, such as a dog, a cactus, or in this case, a rectangular stamp—sawtoothed edges included.

The trick to a “good punch” lies in the careful consideration of the viewport: which side of what thing are you trying to stampify? What angle of which picture do I want to cut out? I’m making up a lot of English words as I go here which is good as it should intensify the homegrown craftiness of this post.

I find rummaging through discarded (cardboard) paper especially rewarding with this stamp punch in hand. It turns wrapping film into a tiny piece of art that I can arrange and stick onto a journal page, instantly upping the enjoyment factor of said page. I tried to capture what I’m trying to get across with these weird words here in a photo. Doesn’t the view of all these little homemade stamps make you happy? Some of them are portions of blown up pasta. Some of them are weird angles of flowers or parts of fruit. Others contain a logo of an Italian milling company. Oh, and a yellow Loco Roco harvested from a Retro Magazine that now is permanently crippled. But that’s alright: it was only the PSP page.

In case anyone wonders, Hoogstraten is our local strawberry wholesaler. That laughing kid is playing with rubber ducks my son likes to chew on in bath. The red TONY ones come from a bar of Tony Chocoloney, but the two pieces of blown up dark chocolate I cut out together with the logo (not pictured) are from the best Belgian chocolate brand Jacques. And then there are cut-outs from a local bakery logo, a cereal brand, cookies, asparagus, a tea bag, and other stuff I can’t remember. A lot of fun, right?

That fun does end somewhere though: the puncher is only satisfied with thick enough paper, edging to true cardboard. Cheap newspaper from local advertisements won’t make the cut—literally. I found cardboard boxes/wrappings from supermarket purchases work best.

I have no idea what to do with all these small pieces of paper but my daughter loves showing them off (and destroying them). Most of these will end up in my journal just to spice up the odd boring page or two. Perhaps I should try to send a few letters with them as well and see what happens.

Not every part of everything we do should have a purpose and be measurable. Sometimes it’s also fun to just goof around and try to do things without having a specific goal in mind. And in an hour or two, that means you’re bored and willing to move on, that’s fine as well. I have a colleague who’s impressed by the amount of journals I’ve filled, proclaiming “wow that must have been a lot of work!” Sure, but the emphasis on “work” and the time-based aspect doesn’t apply here. It also heals my soul. It also provides raw material for me to publish. And sometimes, more often than not, it yields nothing at all.

Maybe we should store everything into a box and in a few months sort our collection by colour and try to lay them out in a particular pattern to create an interesting cut-out poster effect. I just made that up, but the more I think about it, the cooler this idea sounds. Into a box they go!

braindump   crafting