Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Making 'no carve' Stamps with Perspex and Silicone glue (or trying to)

I recently found a blog with what seemed like a totally brilliant idea for how to make your own 'no carve' stamps. It entailed using 3mm perspex as a base and silicone glue (or filler) to draw with.

It seemed simple enough and since I'm demoing (among other things) Lumiere Paints on fabric at the upcoming Melbourne Craft and Quilt fair on from tomorrow, a rather timely find.

Here's what I learned from my attempt:


1. if you have long hair put it up. Don't ask me how I know.

2. Silicone glue is not your friend. Unless you want a line as thick as your thumb, or, after trying to use a thin hole in the end of a nozzle a sore hand and a burst glue container. (Again, hair up could make the clean up of the last a little easier)

3. If you need to cut 3mm perspex don't expect to score and snap it like they do in the blog. Instead, after giving that up for a joke bribe your husband to do it, with a jigsaw and then allow 3 days for filing the resultant miss formed shards. Of course if we had a fine blade or a semblance of how to cut perspex this may have ended differently.

4. Cotton buds are your friends.

5. So are tissues.

6. Thank the powers that be that you can draw well and don't need to use stamps often.

Now admittedly I couldn't find the type of silicon filler they used in the blog post in Australia and my equipment (and muscle strength) may have not been up to par. I'd love to hear if anyone has more success with this - the idea really does sound like a great one!

The tutorial on the blog I found is:

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/07/how-to_make_no-carve_stamps.html