Printing Techniques - Rubber Stamps

I love printing.  Since leaving uni in May, I haven’t really had much of a chance to screen print though.  I have, however, been trying out a couple new printing techniques instead, and today I’m going to be talking about one of them – Rubber Stamping.  I really got in to this by chance after seeing a really lovely book, “Rubber Stamping: Get creative with stamps, rollers and other printmaking techniques” by Stephen Fowler, and of course buying, and reading it.  I’m not going to discuss much of the techniques and technicalities of rubber stamping as I’m still learning myself, but instead show a couple of the things I’ve created so far, and explain how I started off at the beginning.

One of the best things about rubber stamping is how easy it is to start, no laborious set up or expensive equipment or complicated tutorials.  All you need is an everyday rubber, a cutting knife, an ink pad, and a few simple ideas, and your off.  I found it easiest to sketch a simple line on to the rubber (remembering it will print in reverse) which acts as a guide for cutting, and then it is just cutting small bits out until you have removed all the areas you don’t want to print. 

Of course, it does take a little while to fine tune the technique, but fairly quickly you are able to come up with some interesting shapes…

And these can then build up in to interesting designs… 

I’m still continuing to experiment and work on new ideas, and I am also beginning to work a bit with lino.  Printing can be really fun and this is a great way to try it out… the possibilities are endless.