Need some pretty paper in a jiffy?
Make Homemade Stamps & Homemade Stationery:
You will need: Bottle Caps (or corks), Foam 3D Stickers, Buttons, a Potato, a Small Knife or Exacto Knife, a Hot Glue Gun, Ink Pads, Plain White Paper, and anything else you think you could make a stamp out of.
1. I had plenty of bottle caps, so I hot glued 3D Foam Stickers to the top of them. You could hot glue them to bottle corks if you prefered, as they would also work well when handling your stamps. I also did a few with buttons, but some of them didn’t leave a good picture behind when I stamped them, so I put those aside. I did keep one though, which seemed to work fairly well. For the Foam Stickers, I had a few stars and a few flowers which stamped beautifully! I did try out a Glitter Foam spider, and a Glitter Foam music note to see how that would work out, but it didn’t stamp overly nice because it had too much glitter on it, which prevented the ink from sticking to the foam. So I put those aside, too.
I also took a small potato and cut it in half. On one half I carved a circle, on the other I carved out a heart. This was pretty simple to do. The only problem was that I used a red potato, which was very moist and watery inside. This sort of ruined my ink pads afterwards, but it still stamped a nice design.
2. Once I tested out each stamp I then took plain, white paper and stamped each one with one of the homemade stamps. I only went up two of the sides on each paper, to leave room for writing in the middle. You could also stamp around the entire edge of the paper if you wanted to, as well. When I stamped the images, I made some darker and some lighter for a nice effect. I made about 3 sheets of stationery for each stamp, except for the potato ones. I made a few more sheets of those since I threw out the potato afterwards and wasn’t keeping them like the other ones. I also made a few envelopes to match. I took one stamp and stamped the image on the edge of the front of an envelope, but only on one side. Then on the back of the envelope I stamped the image across the entire bottom, and then stamped it once on the envelope flap.
Now, I’ve got my own homemade stationery to send to pen-pals all over the globe! Plus, I have a few extra stamps if I need to make more stationery once these are used up, or I can simply create new ones in a pinch for new designs. 🙂
Happy Crafting!
Lemon Zest 