Creating a traditional Chinese chop. A chop or Seal is a stamp used usually by East Asian artists as a signature of authenticity for their work. I will show you the steps to making your own traditional Chinese seal.

1. What you’ll need – Chops can be made from a multitude of materials, normally from stone, wood, or ivory. What I have here is a small wooden Buddha statue, you can find one of these for $1-2 and a tin of rogue (red ink for the stamp

2. I took my statue and outlined the bottom of it – I have what I want my seal to say above that.

3. I divide the base of the statue’s outline and divide it for each of the characters I want on my seal.

4. The seal should be engraved backwards so that it will appear right when stamped. So what I did was flip the paper around, take some tape and traced the now backwards design onto the tape.

5. I took the tape and placed it onto the bottom of the statue, I will use this as the guide for my design and engraving.

6. This is just a view of a couple tools I’ll be using to engrave the statue. All you will need is a Dremel tool or a Wood carving set.

7. This is the design after it has been drilled by the Dremel and further refined by wood knives. Next to the seal is a file, you will want to file down the base of the seal so that it will have a flat and even surface, which is important for stamping.

8. With my seal filed down and even, I can now apply rogue to the base and stamp