Guest Post No. 15 Sass & Peril

Hello Paper Pastries readers, this is Shannon from sass&peril. I'm honored to be a guest blogger while Margaret is getting hitched! Today I have a fun Holiday Stamp DIY for you! With just a few supplies from your local arts & crafts store you can make some darling tree and star stamps that you can use to personalize your gifts and packaging this Holiday season.

First you'll need to gather a few supplies. You'll need:
- A rubber block to carve your stamp from, I used Speedy-Cut‚Ñ¢ by Speedball.
- Cutting tools, I used my linoleum carver set by Speedball.
- Block Printing ink, an ink pad might also work just fine.
- A brayer, if you are using block printing ink.
- A pencil to draw your design onto the rubber block
- Lastly, paper and packaging products to stamp your designs on. I used folded cardstock, a kraft paper bag, and homemade blank gift tags in this tutorial.

Next you'll want to draw your designs onto the rubber block. I cut my block into smaller pieces so that I could get more stamps out of it. If it helps, you can fill in the areas that you will be leaving solid so that you know to cut around them and not into them. 

Then you'll want to start carving away! My carving set comes with a few sizes of tips that come in handy when you need to get into those tight corners. Then there are larger tips for carving away bigger chunks. Don't worry if your lines aren't straight or there are little chunks in the designs, that's part of the allure of the block-printed look! Oh, and please cut away from your hand. Those little blades are sharp!

When you're done carving away the rubber around your designs go ahead and prepare your ink. If you're using block printing ink, grab your brayer and a piece of glass or some sort of non-porous flat surface and roll your ink out nice and evenly. 

Now you're ready to roll your ink into your blocks and get to stamping! If you choose to use an ink pad just make sure you firmly press each block into the pad to ensure good contact with the ink. You may want to test a few stamps before you apply them to the actual materials you plan on using.

Here are some products that I stamped. I made some Holiday cards, gift tags, and gift bags, but the possibilites are endless. You can even use water-based fabric ink to create some lovely textiles like tea towels and cushion covers.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that you'll be able to come up with some beautiful stamps for yourself this Holiday season! I'd love to see your creations so leave a link to your images in the comments below, tweet them to me, or tag me on Instagram!