How to make a stamp with your own hands at home. Printing at home

It’s not often that the average person needs information on how to make their own stamp. But there are still cases when advice of this kind will help in creativity or the implementation of creative ideas. We have put together several recommendations, but first we will look at the types of stamps and their purpose.

There are seals for official documentation:

1. Stamp. Verifies the authenticity of documents government agencies.
2. Commercial. Used individual entrepreneurs And legal entities.
3. Stamp. Replaces handwritten text on institutional letterheads.

If everything is clear with the documents, then how to label your books, letters, personal belongings? Masters accustomed to standards are unlikely to make a creative sketch of an image. It's easier to make an impression yourself. Below we will tell you how to make printing at home.

Attention: the instructions contain tips on how to make a seal for personal needs. Illegal production of a stamp for commercial or other purposes is punishable by forced labor or imprisonment for up to two years. In the best case, you will have to pay a fine of up to 80 thousand rubles. (Article 327, paragraph 1).

Types of homemade prints:

• Bookplate. You can use it to mark, for example, books in your home library. The print may contain a beautiful image or your family crest.
• Logo. They are used on handmade products, paper bags, and packaging.
• Blank for wax impressions. Used to seal letters.
• Toy print for games with children.

Metal impact stamp - another type of homemade impressions

Image creation programs

Making a seal begins with creating a design for the print. Graphic programs are used for this:

• Stamp is a popular and free software for creating image layouts. Intuitive, even an inexperienced user can work with it. You can only download the demo version for free.
• "Stamp" is a free program with wide functionality.
• Corel Draw, Illustrator - vector graphic editors for creating detailed images. Requires basic skills.
• Fine Print is a paid program for inserting a print image into a text document.

The process of creating a print layout in Corel Draw

Methods of making seals

Here are 3 main methods: complex, simple, for children.

Complex: photopolymer printing

Photo exposure technology is capable of conveying the smallest details of a drawing. However, it is financially expensive and difficult to implement: you need to master graphics programs, buy film and polymer, find an exposure camera and a suitable laser printer.

Step 1. Need an image layout. To create a professional drawing, use Corel Draw, but other programs are also suitable.

Step 2. To print the layout, use a laser printer with a resolution of 600 dpi. Lomond or Kimoto films are suitable as a base.

Step 3. Straighten the negative and place it face up on the glass. Before doing this, moisten the glass with water so that the negative sticks better. It is advisable to close it protective film. Using smoothing movements from the center to the edges, remove air and remaining water from under the film.

Step 4. Cover the edge of the negative with border tape, leaving the corners free.

Step 5. Evenly, without breaking the stream, fill the negative with photopolymer. If bubbles appear, poke them with a needle or blow them out with a stream of air from a rubber bulb.

Step 6. Carefully place the film on the polymer with the rough side inward and the smooth side outward. Press it lightly in the middle and gradually release the ends. Place another piece of glass on top and use clamps (available at office supply stores) to secure it around the edges.

Step 7 Place the resulting “sandwich” in the exposure chamber. The front side should be on top. Set the exposure duration. When the process is complete, turn the composition over and repeat the procedure. Each polymer has its own exposure duration. For example, VX55 and ROEHM should be kept for one minute. To avoid mistakes, read the technical regulations.

Step 8 Carefully remove the glass and separate the negative from the resin. Leave the clear substrate in place. Using a toothbrush and a non-abrasive detergent Wash off any remaining unhardened polymer from the cliche. It is best to do this under running warm water.

Step 9 Soak the washed cliche in water for 5-10 minutes and re-expose it.

Step 10 Carefully cut out the cliche along the contour without touching the edges. Glue the workpiece onto the equipment. The print is ready!

Beginners often separate the substrate from the polymer after exposure. As a result, it is impossible to glue the stamp blank. Remember: the rough surface of the substrate comes into contact with the polymer, and the smooth surface sticks to the body.

This impression can be used to seal with wax or sealing wax.

Simple: stamp made using foil

Find an old stamp or board of a suitable size, preferably with a handle. Glue the resulting inscription to it, and you can test the quality of the print.

This technology does not require any special artistic talents from you. Materials for making blanks are available in every home. The wear resistance of such a stamp is lower than that of a photopolymer, but with its help you can make several hundred prints.

Step 1. Choose a suitable drawing. Transfer it to tracing paper and then to foil. To do this, you can take a pencil or a non-writing pen and trace the outline with light pressure. Any foil will do: food foil on a roll or from a chocolate bar.

Step 2. Carefully pour strong putty or epoxy glue into the resulting recesses. Set the workpiece aside for two days to dry.

Step 3. At the end of the period, remove the resulting inscription from the foil. The cast should come off easily.

Step 4. Find an old stamp or board of a suitable size, preferably with a handle. Glue the resulting inscription to it and test the quality of the print. Ready!

The basis may be a worn out rubber stamp

Prints for children

Who among us hasn’t drawn on an eraser and then enthusiastically stamped the last page of the notebook? Children love making prints. And you can make a whole collection of curly stamps with them.

Engraving is the real art of replicating an image. Stamps can also be called a kind of engraving in a minimal format. In this master class you will learn how to make a stamp with your own hands and feel like a real master engraver. This stamp is suitable for printing with acrylic, oil and printing ink.

An engraving cliché, which is correctly called a “board,” can be made of wood (woodcut), linoleum (linocut), metal (etching) and stone (lithography). It is best to start with linocut: linoleum is easy to cut and has no fibers, unlike wood.

Tools and materials for creating a stamp with your own hands

• piece of economy class linoleum
• stationery knife
• wooden base (for example, a simple wooden cube)
• PVA glue or any other
• optional: you can use chisels for linoleum (differ from chisels in size)

How to make a stamp with your own hands

You need to take the cheapest linoleum, smooth, without texture (or with minimal texture) and preferably dense. You can buy a piece of special artistic linoleum for linocuts at an art store. I like this one the most for its structure, but when I need to cut something in large quantities, I use the most ordinary one.

You need to apply a pattern to the linoleum. The easiest way is to redraw with a pencil or pen directly on the linoleum, in a mirror image. But when it comes to accurately transferring the design, it is better to print the layout in the required size on a laser printer (an inkjet printer will not work) and transfer the image to the linoleum using an iron.

Attention! When you apply a drawing this way, you don’t need to mirror it!

We ironed it and see what happened.

Now let's cut it. Let's go along the contour of the ampersand with a stationery knife, and over large areas with pencil erasers, which you can do without if the work is small.

Advice: If the linoleum is too soft to cut, you can put it in the freezer for a while. Conversely, if the material is difficult to cut, it is better to heat it on a radiator or in warm water.

We cut out the letter and remove the excess material around the edges. We try to level the surface in large areas.

The stamp is ready!

Now you need to make a test print and trim off any flaws, if any. I also lightly go over the fine-grained sandpaper to even out the surface of the stamp.

Can be printed with regular water-based ink or acrylic. The main thing is that immediately after printing, clean the stamp from any remaining ink in warm water (if oil, then with solvent or turpentine) and leave it to dry naturally (not on a battery!).

With this simple method you can create a completely unique design.

But it’s worth remembering: the larger the board, the harder you need to press so that the material absorbs the paint. Sometimes this can no longer be done by hand. For example, the A3 size print on a T-shirt shown in the photo was already printed using an etching press. Small stamps can be tapped with a wooden hammer to obtain a perfect impression.

In everyday life, many people use stamps, some put stamps on various documents, others use stamps for decoration or other products.

We make personal stamps at home to decorate various elements

1 way. We take an ordinary stationery eraser (eraser), apply the desired design on it, if you are bad at drawing, then print the image on a piece of paper and, using carbon paper, transfer the image of the future stamp onto the eraser. After that, take a sharp knife, maybe a stationery knife, and remove the unnecessary parts of the eraser, cutting them around and inside your drawing. This is quite a painstaking job, so be patient and do everything carefully, in the end you will get a homemade stamp for decoration.

Method 2. Take a round wooden block of the diameter you need, apply a stamp image on one side and use a soldering iron or engraver to make indentations corresponding to your design. Now you can apply hot wax to the place where the stamp should be and press it with the stamp you made. You will get an approximate result:

3 way. Take a thin board or plywood of the size you need, glue a piece of medium-hard rubber to it, then you need to draw the stamp you need on a piece of rubber or transfer it through carbon paper, after that we also very carefully cut out the excess part of the rubber with a stationery knife and we get a stamp with the desired text or picture. Glue any handle to the board for convenience and you can safely use the seal you made with your own hands.

4 way. If you need more professional and high-quality printing, and of course, by chance you have a milling machine, preferably a laser. You can simply prepare the necessary inscription or drawing in the form of a picture and send it to the router so that it can cut it out. You can make a stamp on any material available to you, wood or rubber. And after that, glue the finished cast to the handle of the stamp.

5 way. Well, the last way is, of course, to contact a special service where they make any stamps, both for documents and for decoration. As a rule, in such services you can make an individual entrepreneur seal, an LLC, PJSC, JSC company seal, and even a doctor’s seal.

Once upon a time, only royalty and noble nobles had a personal seal. You can use the author’s advice below and make such an unusually interesting thing for personal use. You will find it useful for sealing hand-made wedding or anniversary invitations, and you can also use it in decoupage and other types of hand-made needlework. For people involved in on a commercial basis it is generally irreplaceable - you don’t need to make name tags for your works, just take jute twine and hang an imprint of your personal seal on the product instead of a tag on the product.

To work, you need to prepare the following materials and tools:
1. A small piece of flat wooden stick. The author advises using a small piece of a shovel handle, which can be bought in construction supermarkets.
2. The tape is not wide.
3. Simple pencil.
4. A picture of the future print printed on a printer.
5. A collet knife or a small, thin, sharp knife.
6. Wood burner.
7. Sandpaper.
8. Soft rags.
9. Napkins.
10. Vegetable oil.
11. Drying oil.
12. Brush for applying drying oil.
13. Matches.
14. Sealing wax or wax candle.

1 step.
To begin with, carefully process the piece of stick using sandpaper. We will especially carefully polish the end side on which we plan to place the seal. Then, using a collet knife, we very carefully cut out the image of the previously printed seal.

Step 2.
Then we apply the cut out design to the end side of the previously prepared stick, secure it with tape and paint over the wooden surface with a pencil through the cut out design on the paper. It is very important not to forget that the template blank must be applied in a mirror image, otherwise you will end up with an incorrectly positioned seal.

Step 3.
Then, using a burning device, we carefully burn the wood according to the drawn template, while trying to burn the wood to the same depth.

Step 4
Now you need to process the blank for printing using drying oil. Then thoroughly dry the workpiece with a rag and leave it to dry for 24 hours.

Page 1 of 3

HOW TO PRINT AT HOME

We continue our humorous-forensic circle “Erase the seal, put a new one and become a millionaire, or how to forge a seal at home”... So, in the previous article we looked at how we can remove works of bureaucratic art that we don’t need from a snow-white sheet (see informative in In this regard, article HOW TO REMOVE UNNEEDED RECORDS OR STAMPS FROM PAPER). Let me remind the respected reader, as well as representatives of law enforcement agencies who have suddenly shown interest in this article, that the author of these lines, like any artist of pen and penknife, is not responsible for the information provided, which is most likely unreliable, and most importantly, is not responsible for it usage. In addition, it is my civic duty to remind my fellow citizens that forgery of seals and stamps falls under Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and is punishable by up to 4 years in prison. Having thus fulfilled our civic duty, we also note that like any goddess, the Goddess of Justice Themis is portrayed as blind for a reason, so forging seals and stamps is not the most interesting activity for her, unless you are going to take a million from a bank using false documents... However, even in this case, Lady Themis will most likely remain blind.

Throwing aside legal aspects, it can be noted that historically, counterfeiting of seals and stamps has existed for as long as their production, i.e. since the times of Ancient Babylon and Egypt. For every bureaucratic poison there is a similar antidote. If we look at our immediate past, stamps were also forged in the Soviet Union. Moreover, these specialists were highly valued, since forging and cutting out a seal on the heel of a shoe or on an elastic band was a real work of art and required not only a lot of time, but also a certain skill. Well, now, thanks to technological progress, it has become much easier to forge a seal: there are many programs and more, thanks to which a mere mortal can become a real pro in forging seals. In this article we will look at various historical options for forging a seal at home, which were used in antiquity: from quite exotic, but effective - such as forging a seal with an egg, to the most realistic and practical. Naturally, these methods are not relevant now and cannot be used.

Thanks to progress on at the moment exists large number computer programs with which you can easily fake a stamp or seal. However, at the dawn of history, when the Sun was just rising, one of the most simple and used computer programs in this regard was Stamp program. Type the phrase “download the Stamp program for free” into a search engine and you will find a bunch of sites where you can download it. However, I’ll warn you right away: the Stamp program is not a panacea for all stamps. The program is quite primitive, frankly speaking, and those who have used it, I think, do not experience excessive enthusiasm when it is mentioned. Well, since the Stamp program does not satisfy us, you can always use Photoshop or Corel. These programs allow you not only to process images and remove unnecessary print elements, but also to create your own. Numerous lessons on how to do this are waiting for you on the vast expanses of the Internet. May Gosha and Yasha be with you... Well, after you have realized your creative potential, all you need to print a seal or stamp is a string ink printer. With it you can print almost any stamp in any color.