Homemade Stamps

What You Need:

• Wine corks, empty thread spools or toy wooden blocks
• Buttons
• Foam stickers or craft foam shapes, available at craft stores
• Hot glue gun
• Stamping ink pads (various colors), paper

What You Do:

1. Help your child collect the materials for this activity. Stamp bases can be made from wood blocks of various sizes, empty plastic or wood sewing thread spools, and/or wine corks.
2. The shapes that will be glued onto the bases can be made from buttons of various shapes, sizes and textures, and also from foam craft pieces. Some foam shapes have sticker backings, but foam shapes that are not stickers can also be used.
3. Your turn: use a glue gun to attach one button to the end of a stamp base.  Repeat for other buttons that she thinks will make good stamps, using a separate stamp base for each button. 
4. If your foam shapes have sticker backings, it is very easy for your child to peel off the sticker backing and attach a shape to one stamp base. If the foam shape is not a sticker, use the hot glue gun to attach a foam shape onto a stamp base. With foam initial letters, she can create stamps for her own initials. It is okay for the foam shape (or button from step #3) to be bigger than the stamp base; just use glue under the part of the shape or button that will attach to the stamp base.
5. After the glue has dried on the newly-created stamps, let your child play around with them and test them out! Give her ink stamp pads in various colors and paper. Let her dip the stamps in ink and stamp away!
6. She may want to give stamps to her friends as gifts to share the fun!
7. Need ink to go along with your new stamps? Try this recipe.