Made it - DIY stamps

Hello! You may recall my saying that I was going to make some rubber stamps  - in this case, foam rubber - from some odds and ends I'd gotten at the creative reuse place Learning From Scratch. Here is what my simple stamps look like:

I got the plastic holders, which do have handles, at Learning From Scratch as well. I can't take credit for the idea of combining foam rubber pieces and plastic pieces to make rubber stamps; there was a display at Learning From Scratch that showed this. The foam rubber pieces come with an adhesive side, so assembly was just a matter of sticking the shapes on.

I got out my set of acrylic paints, brushed different colors on the stamps and then stamped on various papers. I'll stamp and/or paint on just about anything I can use for a background paper - today I stamped pages from an old cookbook, some library cards, a vintage science textbook page, an outdated atlas, a house model plan from the 1960's, a sheet music page and a scoring pad from an old board game. 

Sounds weird, I know, but I like the funky look of these background papers when I use them in cardmaking (what the recipients think may be another thing entirely!)

While stamping away it occurred to me that I could change the shapes I was stamping by placing paint on only part of the stamp (such brilliance, eh?)rather than painting all of the foam rubber piece. Thus, I could make crosses, hearts, small dots, and so on with a flick or two of a paintbrush. 

I've got some greeting cards in progress so I can't show them until after they've been given to their intended recipients. Some of the background papers I created were used so I will try to get some photos up later so that you can see what I did.