Recently Keby was making her own tea, from herbs she grew in her garden, and she asked me what she should use for the tags on the tea bag strings. I thought since she was making her own special tea, she should have her own special tags!
Lately I've really wanted to start making more stamps and prints. So I decided that's how I would do it! With a stamp you can make lots of copies of something easily but they look a lot nicer and more handmade than printing something from a computer. I thought about making a clay stamp like when I made a chinese chop, and I thought that maybe I'd try a foam tray print because it's easier, but then I saw one of Ryan's white rubber erasers he uses while drawing and I knew it would be perfect!
For this craft you'll need a white plastic eraser (they're called plastic but they feel like rubber), a pencil or permanent marker, a carving tool or craft knife, a stamp pad, and some paper.
I started by cutting the eraser in half lengthwise. This will give you more eraser to make stamps with. Or to actually erase with!
1. I drew out some ideas for tea label on a piece of paper. When I came up with one that I liked I drew it on to the surface of the eraser with permanent marker. You can use pencil if you want to be able to erase the eraser. Everywhere that is black will be carved out. Those big areas with lots of black lines will be carved out to leave room on the tags for Keby to write what kind of tea she made. REMEMBER: What you carve into the stamp will print backwards, so keep that in mind when you draw your design!
With this next step you have to have an adult's help.The eraser is very small and when carving is is VERY easy to slip and cut your fingers.
2. After your image is drawn on the eraser get an adult to carve out the black areas for you. If you have a carving tool this is a little easier, but it can also be done with a craft knife as long as your stamp is not too detailed. You don't have to carve very deep into the eraser to make your stamp work. The good thing about thes erases is they are very easy to cut.
4. For the tea tags you just cut them out and fold them in half. You can see how the final tea bags turned out over at Keby's Blog.
Have fun making stamps of whatever you want! And as usual send me pictures when you do!
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