Hand Stamped Jewelry as a Hobby
Beginning a hobby with hand-stamped jewelry is easy. Most all of the tools and supplies needed can be found online or at your local jewelry supply store. Pick up a craft book explaining how to create hand-stamped jewelry, or search for a resource online. Tutorials are a great way to learn a new craft and many can be purchased online and be downloaded instantly to your computer, or printed out for further reference.Shopping for your basic tools will be fun. You will need a hammer (if you donò€™t already have one laying around the house), an anvil or stamping block, rubber mallet for reshaping your metal, and of course a set of alphabet and/or number stamps. Metal stamps come in all shapes, sizes and fonts. You can purchases common shapes such as a heart, star, leaf, sunshine, or animals and more unique stamps such as a martini glass, high heel shoe, pair of dice or princess crown. You can even get your own custom stamps made for a nominal fee.
After shopping for your basic tools, you will need to decide if you want to start with sterling silver, gold-filled, copper or a base metal. Copper or base metals are recommended because they are easy to locate and much less expensive than sterling silver or gold-filled. Buy enough material for your testing purposes. After you are comfortable working with your test metal, you can move onto sterling silver or gold-filled. Experiment and see which one you like best.