There are fun ways to carve your very own Santa rubber stamps, but before you start make sure that you have the Santa image, blank rubber, ink pad, cutting surface, carving tools and scrap paper for testing the design. There are numerous stores that you can get your arts and crafts materials very easily.
One of the best tools to use is the Speedball carving tools and will make your work much easier than using a carving knife. You will find that the “V” shape of the Speedball tool will lift all the excess rubber from your work while you cut. When shopping for your Speedball kit choose the set with the plastic handle, this is much easier when you have to change the carving tips. However, if you are new to creating Santa rubber stamps carving it is best if you get the set with the wooden handle.
The first thing you do when creating your Santa rubber stamps is to transfer the image to the rubber to make it easier to carve. You can use one of two methods to do this, if you have created your own Santa rubber stamps artwork simple trace the image using a pencil or you could place a sheet of paper on the rubber with image facing down and rub with an iron that is set on low.
Next, you would use the straight blade that is included in the Speedball kit; this blade shapes just like your regular craft knife. Use the straight blade to cut the Santa image from the rest of the block by cutting through the rubber straight down.
Select the caving tip that would be best suitable for cutting the Santa rubber stamp image that you have as the tip used would be based on the image detail. To carve out the Santa image, remove the section that does not include the image that was transferred. It is advisable to choose a larger carving tip for a simple image and a small carving tip for an image that has more details. An important point to note here, always cut from your body, keep your hand that is holding the rubber stuck between you, if you slip you will not hurt yourself.
The final step in creating your Santa rubber stamps would be to apply the ink. This is where your creativity will come to the fore as you mix the required colors that you will need to make your Santa rubber stamps look very authentic and distinctively yours. After you have created the desired colors that would be needed, test on blank paper first to see if any changes need to be made; this can be done until you are satisfied with the results.
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