stamp carving books and tutorials

Hello everybody! I am sorry I have been away for so long, I am totally swamped with work at my etsy shop and there is just not enough time for blogging more often. Tonight I had to take a break and stop by to say hi to all the wonderful visitors of my blog. I am very thankful for all the nice comments I receive from all of you, that is what keeps me going.

I also have been getting a lot of questions concerning my hand carved stamps. I wish I could answer every e-mail I receive, many of them asking about techniques, material, design and all the process involved in this fun craft. But because I get almost the same questions dozens of times it would be really hard for me to answer each one of them individually, besides there is just not time (sigh). I think I promised (way) long time ago to create and post a stamp carving tutorial for all of those interested in making their own rubber stamps, but after searching the Internet I found so many good ones that I decided to post the links for everybody right here.

I thought too that it would be useful to show you some of the books that I use for inspiration and techniques as well, but the truth is that all what it takes is practice and imagination. After that, you will come up with your own techniques and find the materials and tools that you feel work better for you.

OK, I will start with the books...

This is my small collection of books and you can purchase them at www.yesasia.com which I prefer over all the sites that sell Japanese crafting books (they give you free shipping if you buy more than 25.oo usd in some items)


From left to right and top to bottom: ISBN 9784479920014; ISBN 9784309280400; ISBN 9784529043397
NOTE: just type the ISBN in the search window at yesasia.com to find each book.


A couple more books and from left to right: ISBN 9784834727098; ISBN 9784277430654

The last two from my collection: ISBN 4834723542; ISBN 4391129914 (this last one was a gift from my flickr friend Yvonne)

And a couple shots of the inside pages...



Now some interesting and REALLY good tutorials...

Alma Stoller has a really nice and very original tutorial here at her blog-> LINK

I found this one at Kucachoo Crafts where they use the tools that I started with to carve my first wee stamps.-> LINK

Super talented Holly McGuire from two cheese please has a very good tutorial right here, she uses different tools and materials-> LINK

FranOnTheEdge has a very well illustrated stamp carving tutorial and gives several stamping techniques-> LINK

Junie Moon uses some of the same tools I use right now -> LINK

I love Carolyn Hasenfratz tutorial, this was the tutorial I first found when I just started carving stamps and it was very helpful to me in order to learn how to use the tools. The illustrations, material list, tips and instructions are wonderful -> LINK

RUBBER STAMP CARVING TIPS by Kirbert was one of the first tutorials I used too -> LINK

This Rubber stamp carving tutorial by Vonvonz is super cute and very well illustrated -> LINK

There are many, many more stamp carving tutorials by very talented people. I will keep posting the links and any other nice books. If you have any questions or you find a mistake on this post (ISBN or links) please let me know by adding a comment to this post.