We’ve seen a lot of metal stamped silverware trending over the past year on the web. It’s such fun, we had to try it ourselves. Check back Friday for a round-up post. Great news, ImpressArt recently debuted a new line of premium metal stamps with a lifetime guarantee for use with harder metals like stainless steel. We used our regular ImpressArt stamps, but if you plan on making a garden full of these, the premium stamps will withstand the punishment. Over time, regular and especially economy stamps will show signs of wear if used on hard metals like the stainless steel in silverware. We scored our spoons for a quarter at a local thrift shop, which makes this a fun upcycled project. Here’s how you can stamp your own spoons (or forks and knives!)
*You will need:
Thrift shop spoon
ImpressArt Lowercase Stamp Set, 3mm, Bridgette stamps lower case or ImpressArt Newsprint Lowercase Alphabet Metal Stamps- New Case stamps lower case
5 pound sledge hammer
ImpressArt 2 by 2-Inch Steel Block
Basement Floor or other Concrete Slab
ImpressArt Stamp Straight Tape
Folk Art Enamel Acrylic Paint, Licorice
Cotton swab
Paper towel
Step one: It’s much easier to stamp the spoons if they’re flattened. You can use a regular hammer, but they end up looking pretty rustic (meaning lumpy) that way. My hubby used a sledgehammer in our basement, it took a few hits to take the spoon from round to flat, but using a towel to protect it left the surface smooth when finished. Step two: I stamped “bloom where you’re planted” on the spoon, so I started just below the center with the word you’re. (The punctuation marks are both in the Bridgette lower case set.) Tape the spoon down, start stamping in the center of each word and work your way out and then up and down. You’ll need to move the tape for each word. You need a very firm grip on your stamps to prevent them from skipping. Hit each letter 2-3 times in a row (usually we recommend one good hit but stainless is much harder than regular metal blanks.) Step three: Here’s what the spoon should look like when you finish stamping. Step four: Use black enamel paint to help the letters stand out. The impressions won’t be very deep, so the paint won’t pop as much as it does on other blanks. Use cotton swab to dig paint into letters. Let it sit for about 3o seconds. Wipe off the excess paint with a paper towel.
That’s it! Make a garden full of Metal Stamped Silverware! These make wonderful Mother’s Day and Wedding gifts and you can use this same technique to make jewelry. Stay tuned for more ideas with this technique in the future and come back Friday for a big metal stamped silverware round-up!
Cheers,
Margot and Avalon
*(FTC DISCLOSURE: There are affiliate links in this post. If you click on a link and make a purchase, we get a small percentage of the sale.)