How to Make Creative, Easy Vegetable Stamps

Do you remember making vegetable stamps as a kid? I remember doing it once or twice with potatoes, and I thought my kids would have a good time with them, too. They’re surprisingly easy to make…and the kids loved investigating all the vegetables we used.

Any sturdy root vegetable will do — potatoes or beets or turnips are all great ones. We even stamped with the beets for a while using just their natural veggie juices. They make this lovely red color, although they do stain. My hands were pink for a few days after – I’d definitely wear play clothes (kids and adults…I always think I’m going to do better than my kids at getting stuff everywhere and I’m always shocked at how messy I get!)

The simplest way to explain how to make vegetable stamps is probably to show you. So I made a video:

So fun and simple. If you have young kids, you’ll obviously need to do the cutting part yourself. But you can have the kids pick out the veggies and shapes, and help put the cookie cutter in the potato. And of course, they can stamp with them when you’re finished!

Instructions for Vegetable Stamps

What you’ll need:

• sturdy vegetables like potatoes, beets, or turnips
• small cookie cutters (metal are probably best — they need to hold up when pushed into a raw potato!)
• a sharp kitchen knife (for parents to use!)
• tempera paints and paper

Instructions:

Cut your vegetable in half. Press the cookie cutter into the middle of the vegetable. Using the kitchen knife, cut around the cookie cutter.

Slide the ring you have sliced off. Dip the vegetable into tempera paint and stamp away!

You could change up cookie cutters and make stamps for different holidays. You could get some butcher paper and have the kids make their own wrapping paper. They could make cards for people. Or they could just have a good time stamping all over a piece of paper and laughing hysterically (that’s what mine did. I can’t explain them sometimes.)

This post was written by me and originally published on the BabyCenter blog. It is republished here with permission.