Sunday, June 28, 2015

40 "Found" Objects to Use for Printing and Stamping


Purchased stamps and rubber printing blocks are readily available in stores, but dozens of items that can be used for stamping and printing are lurking right in your own home. Many of these make very interesting patterns and designs, and they're free! Look in your junk drawer, bathroom, kitchen, garage, craft stash, tool shed and back yard for:

1- Bottle caps
2 - Jar lids
3 - Wine corks (both synthetic and real)
4 - Feathers
5 - Potato mashers
6 - Lace
7 - Trim from a fabric store (flat profile cotton trims that can be glued to matboard)
8 - Paper doilies (use as stencil, then incorporate the doily itself into your collage)
9 - Household sponges
10 - Foam packaging materials
11 - Styrofoam packaging materials
12 - Buttons with a flat profile (glue onto the end of a wine cork to use)
13 - String
14 - Rope
15 - Cording
16 - Dental floss containers with flat bottoms
17 - Tennis shoes and flip flops with patterns on the soles
18 - Wallpaper with flocked or embossed designs (not plastic coated)
19 - Caps from cosmetic products (often have unusual or interesting shapes)
20 - Open weave fabrics such as burlap
21 - Heavy weight upholstery fabric with raised designs (Glue to matboard scrap to use as a stamp)
22 - Foam hair curlers
23 - Insulated pipe wrap from home improvement stores (can be incised with patterns or left plain)
24 - Drywall tape
25 - Cardboard scraps (peel off outer layer(s) to get an interesting stamp)
26 - Matboard scraps (use the edges to stamp straight lines)
27 - Pencil erasers
28 - Leaves from plants such as ferns
29 - Keys
30 - Foam meat trays (Cut into desired shapes, incise details with a ballpoint pen)
31 - Foam garden kneelers (Cut into pieces, use woodburning tool to make surface designs)
32 - Bubble wrap
33 - Carpet liner
34 - Rubber shelf liner
35 - Plastic or rubber placemats with raised or openwork designs
36 - Window screening
37 - Mesh
38 - Foam paint rollers
39 - Corn and callus pads (Affix to matboard scraps and stamp circles and ovals with them)
40 - Cookie cutters and biscuit cutters

Do you use any found objects for stamping or printing that are not listed here? Please share them with us. Let's see how many items we can add to this list!

©2015 Lynn Edwards

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