The other day I was looking through my office supplies for an envelope. I couldn’t find one, but I did come across several large erasers. Unless you make a lot of mistakes, there’s no reason most people need that many erasers. I had seen stamps carved from erasers before, but finding my eraser stash, combined with seeing eraser-carving projects in Print Workshop, reminded me that I wanted to give it a try. I sketched out a simple and seasonal tree design and cut it out while sitting at my (messy) computer desk.

Since I didn’t have a green stamp pad on hand, I used the instructions in Print Workshop to create a makeshift stamp pad. Basically, you take a piece of felt and saturate it with paint or ink to create to stamp surface.

Then I stamped some subtly-striped Ikea wrapping paper. I practiced a little bit on scrap paper to get the hang of things.

My trees aren’t perfect, but I think that lends the wrapping paper a certain rustic charm.

It makes a nice wrapping for a present, don’t you think?

A couple of days ago I found a green stamp pad, so I think I’m going to try that next to see whether I get more consistent little trees. But I’m excited to do more eraser stamp carving.