More eraser stamps!

It's been a few months since I posted here... But I did make a few eraser stamps. Also ventured out to make some stuff with my 3D pen but that's for another post...

Gudetama and Charmander

Squirtle and Chip n Dale tsum tsum.

Pikachu eraser stamp carving hyperlaspe video and tako stamp

I carved another Pikachu! Why so many Pikachus? Because Pikachu is cute! That's why! And I like Pikachu! I've printed out squirtle and charmander too... But maybe next time... :P Gonna carve some simple designs first... 

I did a little count of my box of eraser stamps... I've carved over 40 stamps already! Woow! My box of carved erasers is getting fullll!

Anyhow, here's the video.

I tidied up Pikachu a little after that...

And the tako eraser stamp! Got the idea from pinterest... Gonna be taking loads of ideas from there :P

What can you do with all these eraser stamps? Decorate your notebook... Or make a card. That's what!

Loads and loads of stamping... :P

Pikachu eraser stamp carving hyperlaspe video

I did say I was going to carve more pokemon right? Here's pikachu! Gosh. This one got me soooo frustrated. I bought carbon paper and tried to use that to transfer the image onto the eraser, since well. I can't draw. But nope. Didn't work. I tried coloring the back of the paper with pencil, then pen for a self made version of carbon paper. Nope. Didn't work. In the end I had to cut out the abused and outlined numerous time piece of pikachu and use that to trace the outline on the eraser. I still have to edit the outline because when you trace things, it ends up bigger than the original drawing... But at least the proportions and stuff are there. Then I just had to draw in the other details. At least I *think* I pieced together the rest of pikachu properly so yeah... You can see I started off with a really BLUE piece of eraser in the video. Good thing though, is that it makes it really easy to see which parts have been cut out and which parts aren't don't yet.

It's been a while since I carved something so... Complicated. This one took me quite a while, so I've speeded up the video 6X.

After the video recording I tidied the stamp up a little more (the eyes especially!) and ended up with this. Looks pretty nice by my standards! 

Pokeball Eraser carving hyperlapse!

I'm back with another hyperlapse video! This time at 4x speed for a pokeball! Since Pokemon Go just got released in Singapore last week... Thought I'll do some Pokemon stamps! Enjoy!

Bought some carbon paper... BUT they don't work on eraser arghssss! How can I get transfer my print designs to eraser then? T.T

Eraser stamp carving hyperlapse video!

Hi all! Been a while since I posted here huh? Decided to try something new today! I managed to hook up my phone onto my table lamp in a most crude and haphazard way... But hey, I got the phone in the right position...! So I managed to take a video of me doing an eraser carving, and speed it up like 12x using Hyperlapse.

I am so used to carving with my face like 5 cm away from the eraser... I had to squint to do this one so that my head won't block the camera... :P

Enjoy!

Making a washi tape box

So... In the past few months of so, I've been having a weird fascination of washi and deco tape. I've ended up accumulating a whole box full of tapes, both expensive and cheap... But not really had a chance to use them. For one, I don't do scrap booking. And two, when I write notes and stuff... My handwriting is always so messy, it feels like a total waste to use such pretty tape on them. I don't use paper calendars either... So I have no idea what to use the deco tape (and all the pretty stickers that I got too) for.

Well... You can decorate stuff with it. Like your notebooks, stationary, and other belongings... But my notebooks don't quite feel worth the decorating. And my other belongings? I kind of prefer them erm... Tape free. Pasting washi tape all over your desk may look really pretty, but I think it'll give headaches when cleaning the desk... Or if the tape starts coming off? o.o The tapes tend to be not too sticky so removal shouldn't be a problem... But you'll never know what months or years in the Singaporean heat will do to things... Plus, if the tape starts getting peeled off I'd be pretty darn irritated with it...

So well, as I was trying to find *something* to do with all my deco tape... I remembered the duct tape bags that's supposedly in the rage. Saw it a few months ago during Ohno's DIY corner on Shiyagare, and I still remember a little of it so I decided to try.

Ok. So a bit of introduction. What is washi tape? Isn't it the same as deco tape?

Well, not really. Washi tape is well, tape made from washi. Washi (和紙) is basically Japanese paper. Which is paper commonly made from "fibers from the bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub (Edgeworthia chrysantha), or the paper mulberry, but also can be made using bamboo, hemp, rice, and wheat." Read more in wikipedia here. Washi tape is really thin, but strong. I heard that it might even be as strong as duct tape sometimes! Wow.

So washi tape is like paper tape made from fibers. And deco tape? Well, deco tape is just decorative tape. And it can be made of any material. From plastic to the PVC-ish type... And of course, washi tapes.

There's a lot of different washi tapes designs around. From plain colors to stripes and patterns to cartoon designs like this and this.... No wonder pinterest is exploding with things to do with washi tape.

Decorating boxes and items with tape, including huge pieces of furniture like a table, dresser, or cupboard, or even using it as wall paper seems like a major theme there... But since I don't have anything on hand at the moment that I'd really like to decorate... I thought, 'why not make a mini bag/box with washi tape instead?' And so that's what I did.

I started off with a mini bag as a goal, but... What use is a miniature bag, besides being a pretty decoration? Might as well make is a little bigger so that I could... Actually dump some stuff in there. And so I did. (I still think a mini washi tape bag would be really cute though!)

The washi tape rolls that I chose to use were roughly 2 cm thick. All I knew about making duct tape bags were what little information I recalled from watching the show about 2 months back... In other words, not much. They used a weaving method in the show. And so I did just that.

First up, you have to cut the washi tape, and fold them in half to make washi tape strips.

I randomly went with a length, since I had no idea how much big my final product should be. They ended up being a bit too long and I had to trim of quite a bit at the end... But hey, longer is better than if it's too short!

About 5 stripes in, I searched online to try and see how many stripes I would need... And saw that many of the duct tape bag making methods involved the 'easy way out' of sticking pieces of duct tape together into a square/rectangle/whatever shape. Few people weaved. Dammit! Folding those washi tape stripes into half was hard! By hard, I mean, folding it nicely, without creases, and evenly, without a sticky edge left over on one side. In the end though, it didn't matter that much because I trimmed off a lot of the 'bad' parts, and quite a lot of the final product is well, covered in more washi tape, as you'll see in a bit.

I started weaving the base of the box/bag when I had 6 stripes.

And from there I just added more stripes till I was satisfied with the size of the base. You can see the creases in the stripes from my lousy folding techniques.

Once the base was weaved, it needed to be secured. And what else would you secure it with, but washi tape?

Next came the sides. I would have liked to use one single long stripe to weave all four sides together... But it was a little more difficult for the inexperienced weaver like myself... I settled for weaving each of the sides separately and then washi taping them all into shape. 

Three sides done!

That's it! All the weaving completed! As with all the washi tape folding... Well. Almost.

That's the same thing, with my fingers as a size comparison. Yes, that this is SMALL. Well, the grids on my favourite cutting mat are 1 x 1 cm large, so you get the idea. 

That's the other side of the weaved product, that I intended to use as the 'outside' of the box. All pink and a little boring huh? But well, that's the only patterned tape I have that's 2cm wide... (and well actually it's 2 rolls of tapes, of *slightly* different color...)

The next step is easy. Trimming the edge so that you can tape the box together.

Well, before I started taping the corners together though, I taped down the sides so that they won't split open. For added robustness you know?

Then the side pieces get taped together. With the same shiny tape. I also taped the seems from the inside of the box, again, to make it more robust.

All taped  up!

Almost there now! All you need to do is... Trim the top, and then tape the top edge up!

That's the completed box! With the sliver 'trimming', the outside of the box certainly doesn't look boring anymore!

The inside is more colorful still, with the washi tape securing the weaved stripes.

And that's it! The completed washi tape box. It's approximately 5 x 4 cm large, with a height of about 4 cm. Not too big, but more than large enough to hold my eraser stamps. 

That's it! So instead of decorating a box with washi tape... I *made* a box with washi tape and literally nothing else. I have no idea how I ended up making this instead of doing more *useful* stuff like studying for my JLPT but yeah... Stuff happens. *shrugs* Was really fun though, and with all the cartoon washi/deco tape that I have... I'd definitely love to make more washi tape mini boxes/bags in the future. With a different method maybe, one that would showcase the pretty cartoon patterns. That or instead of folding the tape into half lengthwise, I can do it by the width, or you know, just stick two pieces of washi tape together. We'll see! 

Eraser Stamp Numbers 25 and 26

Ok. I actually carved out these guys months ago. Literally. Like way back in February. And I actually drew them in Dec last year. Hence the Xmas themed bells.

But well... Life and procrastination got in the way of posting the designs... Oh wells.

That's no. 25. The muti-layered heart. 

And the Xmas bells.

Posting this just in time for mother's day huh? Lol.