Disposable Palettes

Remember that stack of styrofoam plates I bought to make stamps? Well, I switched to recycled styrofoam meat trays for my stamp making needs because they're thicker. So what to do with all those plates. I found out they make the best disposable palettes! Even better, when leftover paint dries on the plates I can stack them (dried paint and all) out of the way. Whenever I need a color, I can browse through the stack and usually find it. Why didn't I think of this sooner?

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.