Making your own clay stamps is a way to create your own designs that can easily be duplicated.

I used to carve every piece I made until I got smart! Clay stamps work pretty well as they do not get water logged very easily and so the clay doesn’t stick in the stamp and make a mess. Of course this depends on the wetness of the clay. You may need to dry the stamp in the sun or use a blow dryer if making very many pieces in a row with your stamp. You may have to play around with individual stamps to get a proper impression. I find some work better in wetter clay while some are better in dryer clay. Some you may have to use more pushing. Definitely take the time to engrave the original design deep enough. Some I have to rock back and forth. (I am using some of my early stamps still and they are not all done with even thickness and deep engraving and are more problematic.) I suggest your first few stamps be of a simple design so they can be a learning experience before taking a lot of time to make a more detailed stamp. With the clay I have been using, I can only get so much detail because of the grog (particles) in the clay. Very smooth clay will allow for more details.

1.Take your original design and scan it. Change size on the computer to size you require. Or scan an image and change to size you require. I scan in gray scale and use contrast on Adobe Photoshop to darken if needed. Print.

2. Roll out a slab of clay a little more than ½ inch to 1 inch in thickness as even as possible and an inch or two larger than the design you have for the stamp. The larger the design the thicker the slab needs to be because of the pressure needed to push into the wet clay and the larger the stamp the more fragile. In other words, the clay stamp needs to be strong enough not to break as sometimes strong pushing is needed both for small and large stamps.

3.Let clay harden to leather hard stage where it will be easier to carve into.

4.Cut the hardened clay slab into a circle or a square a bit larger than the design.

5.Then I take the hardened but still moist clay piece and either place the print of the design ink side down or the opposite. In a little while the ink will transfer to the clay. In either case I fold the trimmed paper design around the clay firmly. I then trace with a sharp pencil the design. Sometime I remove the paper on the transferred design and just trace the ink left on the clay. Remove paper at this point if not using the transfer method.

6.Slowing keep carving with pencil, sharpening as needed. I also use other tools at times such as a “cleaning tool” for greenware available at crafts and clay supply. It is a pointed curved tool on one end, (the end I use).

7.Keep going over the line of the design. Slowly removing clay with the cleaning tool. If your clay firm enough the shavings will easily come out and not glob up in the forming stamp.

8.If the shape of the clay slab is larger than the design which I usually have, you will need to remove the clay to a deeper level so that when you press it into the clay the shape doesn’t impress unless you want to make it part of the overall design such as a circle with the design inside.

9.When finished, let the stamp dry completely. Usually I weight the stamp with something that covers the stamp entirely and has some weight to insure it doesn’t warp.

10. Fire. I fire to cone 04.

11. It may take some time to create a nice clay stamp but in the long run you will be able to create endless duplicates that save time!

Best of luck and happy stamping!