hand stamped jewelry diy

This weekend I decided to start a little Christmas series of tutorials for homemade gifts. My hope is that they would be gifts that you would love to give and receive and don’t scream homemade in a bad way.

My goal is to share at least one gift idea a week, and I’m starting it off with this hand stamped jewelry tutorial.

We have now released two different limited edition necklaces through Once Was Lost in the last few weeks and I thought I would share a little DIY on how to stamp your own jewelry. I checked out a few different tutorials online and this one was the one that I followed closest.

A few notes about the supplies . . .

• I used a wet wipe instead of a polishing pad, I think a polishing pad would probably work better but I do add a little trick that worked for me while using the wet wipe in the tutorial
• You can buy the steel blocks from craft stores (they are pretty expensive) or if you are like me and have an awesome father-in-law that works with metal you can get him to make you one 🙂
• I bought my metal blank online but I have seen many tutorials that just use washers
• The size of my stamp set is 3/32″

Now onto the tutorial:

First, place your metal blank on your steel block. I like to use painters tape so my blank doesn’t move and I often use it as a guide to make sure my letters are straight. For this particular blank I was trying to follow the curve of the heart so the tape was just used to keep my blank secure.

I like to start at the end of the word when stamping. Be sure to hold your stamp as straight up and down as possible so you stamp the whole letter on.

A tip if you are stamping starting with the last letter: write your word or phrase on a piece of paper so you don’t mess up the spelling. It’s a lot harder to spell backwards.

A couple more shots of the letters as they were stamped:

Once the stamping was completed:

Then I used the sharpie to go over the letters I just stamped. Once they were all traced over I used the wet wipe to get rid of most of the black marker, just leaving some in the cracks to help the word show up more.

With the wet wipe I find it works best for me to rub the it with the wet wipe a few times first and then I rub my thumb over it until most of the black is gone.

After I finished wiping:

The difference the black marker makes:

My final product:

If you decide to make your own hand stamped jewelry I would love to see it so feel free to send me a link.

If you are interested in buying a necklace from Once Was Lost remember that 50% of the proceeds go to couples in the process of adopting internationally.

with love,
Chantel