For the next few hours I struggled with cutting straight lines into the sponges. I would start out with a straight cut down, only to realize that one end bent and I had two parts that curved. In the end, I gave up and my stamps are a bit wonky because of it.

Each of the letters were cut carefully and glued to a sponge base that was glued to a piece of cardboard. After shaving off bits of uneven plastic on the cartridges, I glued the cardboard to the base. Voila! Stamps!

But then I realized I forgot to buy an ink pad. I scoured the rest of my ink cartridge cache until I found some that still had ink. This was where things got messy, really messy.

Using the razor that I had, I gouged the soft rubber parts of the ink cartridge and pulled them out, draining the ink into a shallow plastic container. If you are following in my footsteps, be sure to have set up newspaper or a work cloth underneath the drain pan and ink cartridge so that your table doesn’t get stained.

I did not think of that beforehand…my work desk and keyboard are now blue – just don’t tell my boss.