Potato printing – how to make your own handmade stamps

You will need:

• Several small dishes
• Paper towels
• Ink tempera paint or food coloring
• Potato
• Knife
• Paper

1. First you will need to make the ink pads for your stamp. Line the bottoms of several small dishes with a few layers of paper towels, trimming the parts of the towels that hang over the edge
2. Soak the towels with ink, tempera pain t, or food coloring, using a different dish for each color you want to use.
3. To make your stamps, cut a potato in half and carve a design into the flat end of the potato. You will need to cut away the parts you don’t want to print, and you will need to carve letters backwards.
4. Press your design into one of the colored inks and stamp the potato onto gift wrap, stationary, book jackets, greeting cards, shelf paper, or anything that you think deserves your special stamp.

How to make a boomerang

You will need:

• Tracing paper or thin white paper
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Stiff cardboard
• 2 books

1. Carefully copy the boomerang shape shown here onto tracing paper and cut it out. Transfer the shape onto the cardboard by tracing around this thin paper pattern. Cut out your boomerang from the cardboard.
2. 
3. To launch your boomerang, put it on the back of your hand with the long end hanging over the edge. Snap it sharply with your index finger, and it should curve away from you and then return.
4. If you have trouble with this method, create a launching pad with two books. Put your boomerang on one end of the books with the long end hanging over the edge. Lift up the end of the book opposite to the boomerang and put the second book underneath this end. The book on top should form a ramp that slopes gently toward the boomerang. Snap the boomerang off the book by flicking its tip with the eraser end of a pencil.