Making Beautiful Hive Stamps: What You Need To Know

I am so pleased with my new hive stamp. It is 10” long and about 2” tall and, as you can see, works like a charm.

I made it out of 1.5mm craft foam that you can get at WalMart or Amazon. In fact I had purchased some of this foam last Wednesday and had planned to just cut it out with scissors. While this would have worked, it would not have come out as clean and as awesome as this one did.

No, I didn’t cut it out with scissors. Instead when I got to work on Thursday, one of the girls in my office was going on about how she had been playing the companies Cricut Machine. The Cricut machine is a printer/plotter with a razor blade that can cut out vinyl decals… AND FOAM. How serendipitous was that?

So I put my design into the computer (that took about 3 minutes to complete) and then, in no time, I had 7 of the foam stamps cut out.

A Cricut machine cost about $200 for the base model but I could have just cut it out by hand. It would just take an exacto knife and a lot of patients.

If you decide to do this, remember to cut the stamp out so that it appears backwards. I actually thought of this but then rethought it, then rethought again, and again, and again… so much so that I over thought it and then did it wrong. Luckily the foam I used was the same on both sides.

Next I cut a 10” long 2”x3” scarp of wood I had laying around into a curved base. My cut wasn’t perfectly smooth, so I sanded down all the lumpy areas and cleaned off all the sawdust with a damp cloth.

I used Elmer’s spray adhesive. First on the block, then on the back of the stencil and let dry for about 5 minutes (as the instructions suggested). Then I placed the foam and let it dry for another hour.

Using a disposable foam brush (pack of 5 for $2) I lightly brushed the acrylic paint onto the face of the stamp… THEN I WENT NUTS, STAMPING EVERYTHING IN MY SHOP. In fact, I will be hard pressed to find a piece of lumber in my shop without the Deerstalker Apiaries logo on it.

As this year’s queen color markings are red, I plan to stamp all my new white hives with a red Deerstalker Apiaries stamp. This will help me keep up with what year I built them so I can see how long they last. Not to mention how professional my new hives will look.

“I love it when a plan comes together,” Col. Hannibal Smith