Do you know what I love to do in my spare time? I like to make stamps. Lots of them. They are so easy and you can have one traced, carved, and printed in under an hour. It’s the perfect hobby! Because it’s fall, and because I love apple cider, I decided to make a stamp to attach to some apple cider treats for the neighbors.

**I apologize for the less-than-wonderful pics. I work all day and by the time I get home to work on these projects, it’s pretty dark. I don’t get the best lighting, but hopefully these look appealing. 🙂

Super easy instructions below:

Supplies: rubber pad, lino handle and lino cutters (my rubber pad and lino cutters are from Speedball), x-acto knife, pencil or marker, ink pads, shipping tags

I decided to use an apple on the tags so I traced a couple on a piece of paper and then chose the best one. Once you choose your apple, go over the pencil with a marker. 

Lay the paper over the rubber pad and trace the marker making sure you really coat the paper so the ink bleeds through onto the rubber. That was a long sentence. Did it make sense? 🙂

Now that you have traced an outline of the apple onto the rubber pad, you can start carving. I took my lino cutter and traced around the outline of the apple. 

Carve away all the negative space that will not touch the ink. Make sure you really think this through before you start carving because it can be confusing. The lino cutters are great because they have different sizes to cut away large and small amounts. I use the x-acto knife to flatten most of my edges so that they don’t get inked.

Once everything is carved away, coat your lil’ apple with some lovely ink.

And practice a few prints onto some paper.

If you are happy with the practice prints, move on to the shipping tags! Print as many as you want! I attached mine to some jars filled with apple cider and then wrote the recipe on the back. So fun. So easy. So affordable. Those are the three ingredients to a happy hobby. 🙂

Spiced Apple Cider Recipe

8 c apple cider

3 c fresh squeezed orange juice

1 orange peel

5 cinnamon sticks

1 apple (sliced into thin wedges)

dash of brown sugar

Combine all of the ingredients into a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for at least one hour. The longer it simmers, the stronger the flavor!

Enjoy!