Making Homemade Stamps for Cheap ~ Frog

Here are my first results. Speedball ink seemed to work best. The fluid acrylic, not so much although my stamp was still a bit wet from rinsing.

Here is my stamp, cut and mounted on a scrap piece of gatorboard. The frog is 2 7/8" x 1 3/8".

I went over my drawing on the styrofoam with a sharp pencil. Styrofoam is so soft this easily left an indented outline to follow.

A drawing, if one is needed. I made mine on tracing paper so if I chose to reverse the image(which I did) I didn't need to redraw. Remember, when you use your stamp the image will be reversed so please keep that in mind when transferring your drawing.

Supplies you will need: styrofoam plates, Exacto knife with sharp blade & glue. A self-healing mat is nice for cutting and some foamcore or gatorboard for mounting your finished stamp. Note: You may need to glue two or more plates together to get the desired thickness of styrofoam. For my project I used two plates.

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I saw this idea somewhere but can't for the life of me remember where or I would post a link or at least give credit.


I've done a short pictorial demo of my first attempt at making a homemade stamp from cheap styrofoam plates. Stamps tend to be pricey and you can never find exactly what you're looking for anyway. Proper stamp making supplies also come with a price tag and, with no craft stores near me, shipping costs as well.

Frog on Matboard~No Gesso

I'm out of gesso at the moment but I'm still on my frog 'kick' so I decided to try painting wet into wet directly on matboard. I sketched in the eye and the general shape, then just winged it. There were a few moments when I thought it got away from me but in the end I think it looks like a frog!

Frog Pond~Starting Again

My new comp thumbnail sketch. I will probably change the proportions of the various elements when I enlarge it.

This time I decided to focus on only one frog and take more care with the development of it. I want to include more detail too, so the frog will stand out more. I also came up with a different composition. I'm shooting for a more underwater atmosphere..kind of a frog's eye view of things beneath a pond. Zhen painted something similar and I quite liked it.


The quandary is....how do I get a greater amount of detail on my frog and stay with a gessoed surface? My solution is to only partially coat my paper with the gesso while saving the frog itself under frisket film. It should work but time will tell.