Art with Mrs. Tucker

Potato Print Tutorial

Remember way, way back when we were little and we made our very own stamps out of potatoes? Recently I’ve wanted to give the technique a try to make some gift tags. This is so easy and there are a million possibilities to how you could use this… think t-shirts, stationery… think about using apples instead of potatoes. Oh, I’m getting excited!
Here are the basic materials. I’d love to hear if you give this a try and what you decide to make.
  • Paint
  • Paper
  • Potato
  • Exacto knife
  • Knife
  • Paper Plate
  • Sponge brush
  • Towel
  • Felt-tip pen
I checked out Print&Pattern to get some ideas for a design that I wanted to use. Here are some of my rough sketches.

I chose to do an elephant. First I cut my potato in half, dried off the potato with a towel then roughly sketched the elephant shape with a felt-tip pen.
Then I cut out the background so that the elephant shape was raised.
 
Using a sponge brush I wiped a thin layer of paint over my new stamp and stamped away.
Then I made a second stamp for the ear and added those after the body of the elephant dried. After I finished I realized I could have just used my thumb for this step. Oh well.
Here’s my little fleet of elephant gift tags! Wouldn’t these be adorable bookmarks, or thank you cards, or a stamped table cloth, or a onesie…. you see what I mean? The possibilities with this technique are endless!

7 thoughts on “Potato Print Tutorial”

  1. You're elephants are adorable!
    I used this for gifts on onesies. Everyone loved them and they were so cute and simple on the precious little ones.
    The only problem is that you have to make sure to stamp it maybe more than once or use a lot of paint because they faded really quickly in the wash. I've attached some pictures of some if you wanted to see. 🙂
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/l_58c0d68976fd258c347e5f9d5207309d.jpg
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/m_25d7fa496182b9ab17a331861865520b.jpg
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/m_65e3d6dac3bd9561862f818e999e268b.jpg
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/m_e0435c31cf4599f5ebb4dee89680bd17.jpg
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/m_af39714f6779a272032b8bcee2b5f270.jpg
    http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa229/MrsKebodeaux/l_dd616a27292a92f17183d16aadfcef3f.jpg

  2. Thanks for the idea Sarah! It is so cute!!! I am definitely going to try this with the girls and in my classroom next year! I hope you and your family are doing well!

  3. I love this idea. I want to use the elephant for Christmas cards. Was thinking of adding a little sprig of holly around his neck to make it festive. Thanks!

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