DIY custom rubber stamp: CHECK!

I've been itching to try carving my own custom stamp for over a month now. I stumbled across this awesome tutorial 2 days ago and decided that now was finally the time to get off my butt and finally tackle this new DIY project.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked to my local art supply shop, Hawaiian Graphics, and picked up a block of Speedball Speedy-Cut and a basic linoleum cutter set (with 5 different blades).

This morning, I set to work and ended up with these:

Can you tell which stamp was my first attempt? Maybe this will help......

Yeah....it's pretty obvious that my first attempt was a pretty epic FAIL. I overcut some of the curves and wasn't able to get clean corners and points. I understood how the cutting tool worked a little better on my second attempt and was able to do tons better.

This was a small and relatively simple design so it didn't take very long. It was actually a lot of fun and I want to spend the rest of the afternoon making other different stamps!