Interchangeable Stamps

I came up with this idea when I was writing a letter to my grand-mother. I wanted to decorate the paper but I didn't have an apropriate stamp. So I started to think how I could make a stamp she would like and the idea of an interchangeable set of stamps came to my mind. I ran to the bin to take out the material I needed... (I'm some kind of scavenger) and... ta da!

I'm very proud of this idea because it's made with recycled material and you can have plenty of stamps without cramming your drawers with them! So let's start!

MATERIALS:

- Empty dairy bottles (from products such as Danacol, Actimel, Benecol, etc).

- The bottle caps of the dairy bottles (this is the most important)

- Eva foam

- Glue

TOOLS:

- A pen

- Scissors

- Cutter

- Ink

Take a piece of eva foam and draw a few designs. Due to the elasticity of Eva foam, I suggest you make simple drawings because it will not be easy to cut holes inside of the patterns.

Now cut the drawings. If you have designed symbols with holes (such as a peace symbol), I recommend you to cut first the innermost bits with a cutter and afterwards the external edges. As I said, the elasticity of the eva foam makes things a bit difficult in this step.

Once you have cut all the shapes, glue them onto the caps. I put the glue on the cap and then I placed the eva foam on it. You can also put the glue on the foam first and place it on the cap, but I preferred doing it this way because I made some designs which contained little bits.

Tip: you can remove the expiry dates of the cap (if there are any) with alcohol or acetone.

Now you must prepare the bottle. You only need to remove the label. You can paint it or fold it with washy tape or something similar. I let it as it were because I didn't have anything at hand to fold it and I needed the stamp right away!

Once it's all dried up you can place the cap on the bottle and start stamping things!

The best thing about of this project is that you can have all the designs you want (on the caps, that is) and change them every time you need them. It is not necessary to have plenty of bottles. One can be enough. And you can make new designs every time you want and then add them to your collection.

If you want you can decorate the plastic bottle. Plastic is not easy to paint because paint doesn't stay. So, I decided to use washi tape to cover it. It's not easy to cover this bottle because the surface is irregular. So, you will need to cut small pieces of washi tape to cover some of the parts. I uploaded pictures of all the process because it's difficult to explain.

To be sure the tape doesn't fall I varnished it with Mod Podge.

And here's the complete kit! Now you only need ink and paper! Or you can tattoo somebody! Have fun! :p