Geekfoolery

I once tried to do make a rubber stamp of my own likeness, and after an hour and a half cutting up a school eraser with a razor blade, I was actually kind of surprised that the finished product was actually identifiable as me

I showed off my handiwork to friends, and people asked me to do one for them, but attempts to reproduce this feat, either with my own likeness or for other people, never quite met with the same success. Like a whale’s tail, it was just a fluke.

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Until I figured out how to make this one…

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Actually, I didn’t make it, I found Stampics.com and they made it for me. The nice folks there will make a rubber stamp for you out of pretty much any JPG you want to send them, and you can add some text along with the stamp if you like. This is the image I sent in to make mine:

You get a choice of size and colors, along with a compact self-inking stamp and bottle of ink. I was able to create my stamp and place my order entirely online without having to deal with any pesky humans, a plus for me (they do have a phone number and email address on the website, if you need it). Service from the folks at Stampics was great, and they turned the job around in about a week and half.

The amazing thing that Stampics does is to create a “photorealistic” rubber stamp. Rubber stamps that I have seen in the past, even custom-made ones, have typically tended to black-and-white graphics, simply because either the rubber hits the inkpad and paper, or it doesn’t. Stampics has a process that allows them to use grayscale and fine detail in their rubber stamps, which their FAQ says is the same quality as a laser printer. I wouldn’t go that far, but granted, Stampics makes it clear that the better the photo you send in, the better the stamp, and in my case, they were dealing with a photo of me, clearly not the best starting point.

Even though I didn’t have a particular use for this stamp in mind when I got it, but I have found it to be very handy to seal envelopes when sending cards to friends, or to stamp the inside cover of books as a gentle reminder of who the owner is when I lend my books out. One of the more effective uses I found was in dealing with kids who were forever forgetting to turn out lights. I stamped my mug on a Post-It® along with a stern note from me to turn the lights out, and left them on light switches all over the house.

Worked for about a week, which was well worth the cost of the stamp!

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