Fiona Gough wrote:
Hello All,

I was hoping someone could help or guide me in how I go about making my own
art rubber stamps.

Are there any good online resources or FAQ's which give me an indication of
where I might buy the appropriate materials to do this.

If you're talking about real rubber (as opposed to clear polymer-type
stamps), the process is difficult and expensive enough to be prohibitive
for the home crafter unless you're planning to go into the stamp business.

There are inexpensive options, though. You can hand-carve your own
stamps from vinyl erasers or specialized carving material; if you're
handy that way, the results can be pretty impressive, although it's
difficult to get fine detail. See http://www.negia.net/~unity/ for The
Carving Consortium, an international group of eraser-carving artists -
the site has lots of tips for beginners.

Or you can take advantage of the terrific custom-stamp service provided
by Ready Stamps, a project of the United Cerebral Palsy Association.
Send them your images - as many as you can cram into a 9" by 7" space -
on paper in black and white, and they'll send them back as a sheet of
red rubber, ready to be cut apart and mounted. Not only that, but you
can get the acrylic plate and polymer matrix used to cast the rubber;
they're useful for all sorts of things, such as impressing on polymer
clay. It's a very cool, and reasonably priced service, and the proceeds
go to a worthy cause.

You can read about it in detail he

http://www.polyclay.com/ready.htm

--
Pat Kight