Hand carved stamps with the kids

 I am still teaching classes on Saturday with kids at the art gallery. I have a new class called "Art Studio Follow Your Interests". It is fantastic fun, the kids are full of great of ideas. I teach the kids how to use a different materials and different technique each week the subject matter and what they do with it is up to them. I completed a series of printing techniques with this class. They first made Styrofoam prints where you use a pencil and press into pieces of foam similar to a Styrofoam tray. The lids of Styrofoam egg cartons also work good for this.

They also drew me a picture onto a small piece of garden kneeling foam. I took the garden kneeling foam pieces home and burned into them with a  wood burning pen to create reusable stamps.

The important thing to remember when making any print of stamp is that the image will print in reverse. I try to encourage kids not to do words unless they are sure they can reverse them. I have also had them hold up to the window what they wrote with text facing the window and trace it in the back to see it in reverse.


The last stamp we made was a carved plastic eraser stamp. The kids drew a design with a Sharpie and I carved it with a gauge tool like the type you would use for speedy cut of linoleum. I bought a packages of multiple plastic erasers for under a dollar and we carved those.

I can do all this with this class because it only has six students right now. I am unsure if a would try this with classes of twenty or more without an assistant to help carve/burn all those stamps.

I told the students that they could bring in T-shirts and using acrylic paint we could use the eraser stamps to print on a t-shirt with acrylic. Here is how one turned out.