Go Make Something » Rubber Stamping

The Bandana Effect

Lisa Vollrath — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:17:11 +0000

As I was surfing blogs and web sites this week, I saw several references to the bandana technique. Each artist had her own approach to it, but the results were the same: a printed surface that looked like a bandana.

I decided to give it a try, using some materials that are a little more accessible, and making the black and white print effect a bit bolder.

I started with some brightly colored, solid backgrounds (those of you who have been shopping for school supplies this week will recognize them as paper report binders). Bandanas come in all sorts of colors, so I chose yellow and orange.

I also chose some rubber stamps that were ideal for creating backgrounds. I’ve had a paisley stamp set sitting around unused for quite a while, so I started with that. I also pulled out some chunky foam stamps, which I like to use for backgrounds. In looking at a group of real bandanas at my local craft store, I decided that any basic shape or design would work—this is one technique that benefits from using stamps that aren’t very detailed.

Start by stamping large images in black pigment ink. Spread them out, to leave room for smaller stamps in between.

Apply black embossing powder to the designs, and give them a blast with a heat gun. This makes the black designs quite pronounced and dark.

Repeat the stamping and embossing with smaller stamps. I used three different stamps on each of the samples.

Anything can be a stamp—even a pencil eraser. This is my favorite way to create small perfect circles: just use a new pencil eraser as a stamp, pressing it onto the inkpad, then straight down onto the background. These were also embossed with black powder.

Now, the magic: add white accents to the design with a white correction pen. I found my Bic Wite-Out correction pen at Staples, but these things are sold in the office supply section of most stores. The white it produces is thick and matte, and quite bright. I liked this particular pen because it was designed to be squeezed, so I could apply a very fine dot, or a nice-sized puddle of white with ease.

Use the designs on your stamps as a guide to applying the white accents. For example, I colored in flower centers, or applied dots around the outer edges. I also added random white dots scattered around the stamped designs.

I was surprised at how effective this was. The design looked sort of boring when it was just stamped, but the addition of the white elements really made it all pull together. I also discovered that it didn’t matter whether I applied my white with machinelike precision, or was somewhat sloppy.

How’s that for an end of summer idea?

Styrofoam Block Printing

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:38:44 +0000

I recently signed up for a printmaking swap at ATCsForAll, with the intent of carving some stamps. I found myself dreading this as the deadline grew closer, and kept putting it off. In my world, that’s a sign that I should abandon my original idea in favor of something that sounds like fun—so, here we are, with finished cards made by creating patterns in styrofoam plates. This was infinitely faster and less stressful than carving stamps, and a great deal of fun.

Here’s how I made the cards:

I started with an ATC sized base, cut in cardstock. I placed the base on a small styrofoam plate, and traced around it with a pencil. I always have these plates laying around my work room, because I use them as pain palettes—I buy them in gigantic stacks at my local dollar store.

Next, I cut a heart shape from a scrap of paper, and centered it on my ATC tracing. This technique really lends itself to tracing around shapes, so if you have some fun paper punches around, punch out a few pieces on scrap paper, and see where that leads you.

And important thing to know at this point is that wherever you press down with your pencil will not be inked in the finished stamp, and wherever you don’t press will be. So, if I’ve traced around my card and heart, all I’m going to get is white outlines of those shapes. Not exactly the most interesting design! I decided to cross-hatch the heart, using the pencil to make lines across it diagonally in on direction, then diagonally in the other. I also broke up the background around the heart by adding different sized dots.

Once I had a design I thought I’d like, I was ready to get down to printing. First, I cut the design away from the plate, to create a flat piece.

I used some waterbased printing ink for this project. It’s sort of like acrylic paint that’s the thickness of cake frosting. I’m sure you could do this with acrylic paint, too. The key is to use just a little bit of paint or ink, and spread it thinly.

Here’s where the spreading part comes in: I used a hard acrylic brayer to spread the ink in one direction, then the other. Then I loaded the brayer with ink, making sure it did one complete revolution across the surface.

To ink up the styrofoam, I rolled the loaded brayer across the surface several times, making sure all the raised areas got a little ink on them. Now I can finally see what my design will look like.

I had some pieces of white cardstock, cut just a bit larger than finished ATCs. I place a piece of the cardstock onto the inked design, and pressed down, making sure I touched all parts of the design.

I slowly peeled the cardstock and styro apart, and set the wet print aside to dry.

For each print, I inked up the design again, to get a nice, dark impression.

I wanted to have a little fun with my cards once I’d mastered my technique. I drew another heart shape, and filled it with swirls. I printed this design on some rose colored cardstock.

When all the prints were dry, I trimmed them to size. The cards were trimmed using an ATC blank, which I then glued on the back of the card to make it more solid. The hearts were trimmed close to the edge of the design, and applied to the finished cards with foam dots. I added a few dots of silver glitter glue here and there.

Embossing with Stamps

Lisa Vollrath — Wed, 15 Apr 1987 15:04:21 +0000

First, you need the right ink. For many new stampers, plain old pigment ink will do, since it’s probably already in your stash of supplies. My pigment ink of choice is Brilliance, but other suitable pads include Crafters, PetalPoints and VersaColor. Pigment inks are pigment mixed with a binder, which helps the emobssing powder stick to the surface. They also have a longer drying time than solvent or dye inks, which is important. Another choice is an embossing inkpad, which usually contains a binder, or a binder mixed with a tiny bit of pigment to create a pale tint. These pads are great for folks who do a lot of embossing, and I’ll address them towards the end of this article.

The next supply you’ll need is embossing powder. This is a thermographic powder made with a very fine resin that fuses when heated. There are dozens of brands and qualities out there, and each stamper has her favorite. If you’re new to embossing, just get a small container of very fine black powder to start. Eventually, you’ll grow your collection of colors and finishes the same way you grow your inkpad collection.

Last, but not least, you’ll need a heat tool. Most rubber stamp and paper craft oriented stores will carry one for around twenty dollars. Trust me when I say you cannot emboss without one—your blow dryer won’t work, because it doesn’t get nearly hot enough to melt the resin.

Let’s start with this simple card. I used black cardstock, red cardstock, and a piece of asian text paper. My embossing is black characters on the red cardstock, and a red character on the text paper.

First, position the red cardstock on a larger piece of scrap paper, then ink up the background stamp with black pigment ink.

Stamp the background on the cardstock, then quickly set aside the stamp and open the black embossing powder. There is a very short working time for applying powder.

Pour the black powder over the stamped image. This is not a time to be neat! Just get the powder onto the surface quickly, making sure you cover all the inked areas. Better too much powder than not enough, because too much can be knocked off in the next step, but not enough cannot be remedied.

Now it’s time to remove the excess powder, which is done by simply turning the cardstock on its side, and tapping it on the scrap paper. Any powder that has fallen on a non-inked area will simply slide off the cardstock, leaving powder behind only where it has been stamped.

Set the scrap paper and excess powder aside, well out of the way, and heat the cardstock with a heat tool. It will take a few seconds for the tool to heat up, but you’ll be able to see the powder melt when it’s hot enough. Keep the gun moving back and forth slowly, watching the powder to be sure that all of it melts. I usually go back and forth across the surface, then up and down. Set the hot piece aside for a moment to let the resin set up and solidify. Do not stick your fingers into the embossed area right now, or you’ll burn your fingers!

Fold the scrap paper towards the center, and gently pour the excess powder back into its container for use on your next project. Even though I usually dump most of the container onto each project, the majority of the powder is tapped off. One container of powder lasts quite a long time.

I should probably say a few words about stamps before we move on. Embossing is best done with stamps that have larger solid areas and broad features. Photorealistic stamps with lots of detail aren’t really the best stamps for embossing, because when the resin melts, some of the detail is lost. This is best illustrated by trying it yourself—just ink up your favorite detailed stamp, stamp it on a piece of scrap paper, and emboss it. Very often, the result will be disappointing.

OK, let’s talk about embossing pads. Most embossing “inks” aren’t really ink at all—they’re simply binder. Several brands use glycerin as their binder, and when the pads dry out, they can be refreshed with a mixture of glycerin and water. I had a hard time finding glycerin at my drug store, so I simply purchased a bottle of Corn Husker’s Lotion, which is mostly glycerin and water, with some fragrance mixed in. A little dollop on my dried up pad, a few spritzes of water, and a little rubbing into the foam refreshed my dried up pad nicely.

This card was made using the same cardstock and text pages with a glittery gold embossing powder. I don’t usually enjoy working with glittered powders, because the little glitter flecks get everywhere, no matter how neat I am, so most of my powders are matte solids. I’ll have to use some embossing ink for this project, because I don’t have any gold pigment ink. Although it’s not required that inks and powders match, there’s sometimes a little bleed through of ink color when the resin melts, and there are also sometimes areas that dry too quickly to catch any powder, leaving the ink bare. For this card, I’d prefer not to see any black pigment ink.

Stamping with a clear embossing pad is exactly like stamping with ink. Just tap it onto the stamp’s surface, wetting the stamp evenly.

Once stamped with embossing ink, the image is barely visible as wet spots on the surface. Powder up quickly!

With glittery powders, there is often some excess that refuses to shake loose due to static cling. While there are products you can rub on the surface prior to stamping to prevent this static, I prefer to simply flick the excess powder away with a soft paintbrush.

Heating images stamped with embossing powder is the same as with inks—just heat the surface evenly, making sure all the powder dissolves.

My Castaway Adventure

Lisa Vollrath — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:00:41 +0000

Let me start this article by saying I’m not much of a rubber stamper. I’m sort of clumsy with stamps—my images aren’t always clear, and I often end up with that little extra ink halo around them. Nine times out of ten, I stamp with a plain black inkpad. I don’t run right out and buy the latest and greatest new stamping stuff that comes to market.

Having said that, when I read the promo material for Jacquard’s Castaway pad, I did run right out and buy one—well, OK, I ran to my computer and ordered one. According to Jacquard:

Castaway is a truly unique stamp pad that alters the color of the paper instead of adding color to the surface. The result is a marbled or dappled antique look that is similar to batik fabric. Every paper is different.

This sounded like fun to me—maybe this pad was a cleaner, neater, less stinky version of stamping with bleach? I had to give it a try.

Another big disclaimer here: I find it difficult to follow someone else’s directions. Silly, for someone who spends the better part of every week writing instructions, but there you have it. I learn better if you show me than if you write it out for me.

On the back of the Castaway packaging, there are these directions:

Stamp image onto colored paper. Let image absorb into paper for about 5 minutes. Use dry iron at cotton setting to heat the image. The ironing will activate the color altering process. Works on most papers but not on coated stock, or pigment colored paper such as laminated board.

Armed with these instructions, I chose a fairly large, detailed stamp, and some green Bazill cardstock. For those of you not familiar with this brand of paper, it has a sort of woven texture stamped into the surface. I got my stamp good and wet with the Castaway medium, and stamped around the edges of my paper. My goal was sort of a nest of fern fronds with a bare spot to hold an image.

The medium is clear, which is tough if you’re looking to do more than one image. Holding my paper at an angle to catch the light, I could just barely see where my first image was, so it was a challenge to judge placement of my remaining images.

I stamped several pieces of paper with various images, and also did the ATC backs below, then walked away for a few minutes. Waiting five minutes is an eternity when you’re not the Princess of Patience…

While I was waiting, my iron was heating. I decided to cover the image with a lightweight piece of paper, because I didn’t really relish the idea of putting my iron onto mystery medium. The instructions don’t say to do this. Maybe this was one of my problems.

I ironed. I peeked. Nothing much was happening. I ironed a little more, then peeked. Pale changes, but nothing spectacular. I ditched the cover sheet and ironed more. A lot more. Here’s the result:

I have to admit, in the scan it doesn’t look so horrible. In person, it’s a bit of a disappointment. The color was removed a bit, but not nearly as much as I was expecting. See the brown patch at left center? That’s where the medium actually started to burn. This stuff is a little picky—not enough heat, and nothing much happens. Too much heat, and it burns.

I stamped sunflowers on yellow Astrobright paper. Nothing good happened. The paper wrinkled from the medium, and the sunflowers really didn’t show up well. Ditto the stuff I stamped on patterned scrapbook paper—but the instructions say that this medium is not for pigment colored paper, so I sort of knew that anything that had been printed with ink would not work well.

So far, I was sad I’d wasted eight bucks on this stuff.

I always have ATC blanks at hand. I usually cut up any excess cardstock pieces and toss them on the pile, so when I feel the urge to make ATCs, I have backgrounds ready to decorate. I grabbed an assortment of colors, and stamped them with my favorite script background stamp.

I ironed some cards, using the cover sheet as I did above. I also gave a couple a blast with a heat gun, just to see what would happen. Here are my results:

This was closer to what I expected, although as you can see, the results varied. The two browns worked really well—they were cheap cardstock. So was the burgundy piece at top center, and it wasn’t so great. The yellow worked well, but the pink piece was sort of a bust. The pink was one of the pieces I hit with a heat gun, and there are burns along the left edge where the medium scorched. The top right brown card was also heat gunned, and it didn’t burn at all.

All in all, I wasn’t too impressed with this pad, although I was encouraged by some of the results I achieved on the ATC backgrounds. If I have time for trial and error, I might use it again. It will probably be something I use more for ATCs than large projects, though—and definitely not something I’ll use when I’m in a hurry.

One more thing I should mention: I ordered this pad from an online retailer. The medium on the pad is rather thin, and a good amount of it leaked out of the pad onto the packaging during transit. I’m not sure whether this had any effect on the usability of the pad, but I feel it certainly must have shortened its lifespan.

Stamping on Wood

Lisa Vollrath — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:52:47 +0000

I use a lot of words, captions and quotations in my work, so I’m always on the hunt for a clever way to present them. I own an endless assortment of alphabet stamps, but seriously, after a while, stamping directly on paper gets boring. One day, I grabbed some Forster’s Woodsies—little wood bits in various shapes—and gave them a whirl. I liked the result so much that I started looking for other wood items to stamp on.

This week, I used square Woodsies and popsicle sticks in an altered book layout. I colored both with Colorbox Chalk inkpads—I cannot live without these, in an assortment of colors. I use them to age and tint all sorts of stuff. Once the chalk inks dried, I stamped letters on both the wood squares and the sticks with black dye ink, gave them a little blast with my heat gun—not because they needed it, but because I was in a hurry for them to dry. The Woodsies glue on with white glue or E6000. I usually drill my popsicle sticks on either end with a small drill bit, and shoot a brad through them to hold them in place. They can also be sewn in place with a single hole in each end, or just glued down if you can’t be bothered with all that fuss.

At left, the cover of an altered book from earlier this year. I really wanted the look of old game pieces, but real Scrabble tiles didn’t do it for me. I used small square Woodsies stamped with black dye ink. They were thin enough that I could use them in niche cut into the cover of the book without any protective covering.

At right, the cover of a tag deco. I used a wood tag—they’re made by Lara’s, I think, and sold at most Michaels stores. I stained the tag with a little walnut ink, and then stamped grasses, butterfly and text all in black ink. In person, it’s hard to tell if this is stamped or woodburned until you run your fingers over it.

OK, there’s no stamping here—but there could have been. I aged some cheap bristle brushes from Home Depot with walnut ink and chalk inks, and then glued them to the cover of my book. There’s plenty of room for stamping, don’t you think? How cool would it be to use a paintbrush as the stick for one of these books, and then stamp a caption on it?

One more idea, with no picture yet: I have a huge box of oak veneer leftover from a home improvement project gone wrong. Every once in a while, I tear off a piece of it, age it with ink, and toss it under the table with my rolls of paper, thinking eventually, I’ll use it for something. This week, I thought they might make some cool ATCs—oak veneer ATCs!

OK, one more: this weekend, I bought a big package of colored popsicle sticks at Dollar Tree. All sorts of really bright colors, ready to drill and stamp. Go get some and see what you come up with.

My Unmounted Stamp Solution

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 14:57:10 +0000

I have a huge collection of rubber stamps, most of them unmounted. I buy unmounted stamps because they usually cost less, and definitely take up less storage space.

There are dozens of ways to deal with unmounted stamps. Here’s my method:

I mount my rubber stamps on plain old fun foam from the kiddie section of my local craft store. Most stores now carry foam that’s already sticky on one side. If they have sticky foam, I buy that. If not, I buy the plain stuff and run it through my Xyron machine.

These are quarter sheets of stamps from Paper Artsy. Leandra positions her stamps pretty close together, so I can just slap the whole quarter sheet on the sticky side of the foam and be done with it. Other companies may space their stamps out a bit more, so I’d trim around each stamp, and position it on the foam to limit waste. Either way, the goal is to get the rubber backed with foam.

Next, I trim around the individual sheets, to make them easier to handle. I work with one sheet at a time, because I want to keep all the stamps that belong to each sheet together. For me, that’s important. I do a lot of work that will be published, and I have to easily identify the stamps, both by manufacturer and sheet. Keeping them together is a must.

I trim as close as I can around the individual stamps. The less excess around the outside, the better. Some people use heavy duty scissors for this. Some swear by Kai scissors. I have a pair of crappy scissors that I use to cut gluey things. They do the job, and for rubber that’s not ridiculously thick, they’re just fine.

Again, I’m keeping all the stamps that belong to a single sheet together, because they’re going to be stored together.

Now let’s talk about indexing. For me, an image of the stamp is crucial. Fortunately, Leandra’s stamps come with a nice index sheet in the package. About half the companies I buy from right now do this, and I love it, because it cuts down on the amount of work I have to do to go from packaged rubber to stamped image on a finished piece. For those stamps that come packaged minus the index sheet, I ink up each stamp and stamp it on a sheet of white bond paper, then proceed using that as my faux index sheet. It’s not as satisfying, but it works.

Now I scan my index sheet, and rearrange the images to fit a 4.75 inch square—the size of a standard CD jewel case. If I’m starting with a pre-printed index sheet, I simply print out one copy of my 4.75 inch square. If I’ve inked the stamps to create an index, I print out two copies—and throw the inked sheet away.

I’m going to store each quarter sheet in its own jewel case, with a complete index of the stamps on the bottom of the case, and an image on the top of each piece of rubber. My 4.75 inch square of images gets taped to the bottom of the jewel case. I do this because it helps me to quickly see if the stamp I want is out on the table somewhere—if the image is in the bottom of the case, but there’s no rubber on top of it, clearly it’s in use, and I can stop hunting through my clean stamps and start looking through my dirty pile.

The original index sheet (or the second print, if I had to create one by inking the stamps) is run through my Xyron machine, and adhered to a sheet of clear vinyl. I use upholstery vinyl from the fabric store—the thickest stuff I can find. This creates a clear seal over my stamp, and also is one half of my adhesive system.

Here’s one of my quarter sheets, arranged on the back side of an index sheet, ready for trimming. I usually hold the sheet up to the light, and line up my stamps with their image as closely as possible. I usually end up just a little off, but that’s OK. As long as I can tell what stamp it is, and whether it’s right side up, I’m fine.

My trimmed stamps, loaded in the CD case. Each stamp is stored on top of its image. Since these sheets are small, there’s some extra space in the case. For full sized sheets, I generally end up using every inch of 2 or 3 CD cases, with no room to spare.

CD cases are stored in CD racks mounted to my workroom wall. Here, all my Ink & the Dog stamps are racked together for easy access. I generally store stamps either by company or by theme. For example, I have ten tons of face stamps from various companies—most of those are racked in the same section. Certain companies are racked together, because I use them for published work. This is kind of a weird Lisa Vollrath orgainzing system—I know where the stamps I want are stored, even though it makes absolutely no sense to anyone else.

I know by now you’re probably wondering how the heck I use these stamps. Here’s the secret weapon: a big pile of acrylic blocks with vinyl glued to one side. I’ve aquired these from random places: stamp shows, eBay, and the acrylic frame section of my local craft store. Just about anything that’s made of clear acrylic, and heavy enough so that it won’t crack when you push down on it is fair game for a mounting block. Each one of these pieces has had a piece of clear vinyl glued to one side—I just ran the vinyl through my Xyron machine, and stuck it on the acrylic.

How the stamps work in action: the vinyl on top of the stamp meets the vinyl on the bottom of my acrylic block, and static happens. Enough static to keep the stamp stuck—if it doesn’t stick, I simply rub both pieces against my shirt for a minute, and the static builds up. Seriously, this works—well enough that some days, I can’t get the stamp back off the mounting block without a good tug.

My favorite thing about this system: I can see straight through the mounting block to the edge of my stamp, so lining things up just so becomes a matter of course instead of a big hassle. I can see my paper under there, so if I’m trying to stamp around a particular motif, or aligning the stamp with a pattern on the paper, there’s no guesswork invovled.

Stamped Domino Pins

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 14:50:26 +0000

I’m sure at some point, you’ve seen stamped dominos. These have been around for quite a while, and been discussed endlessly on email lists and in magazines. I think every artist who plays with dominos has developed her own favorite technique for making them cooperate, because although they are lovely when finished, they do tend to have minds of their own. This is the technique that seems to work for me.

Materials:

Dominos – These can be found in white at Wal-Mart, and in ivory at Target, packaged in tins in the games section of the toy department
Colorbox Cat’s Eye Chalk Inks
Heat tool
Rubber stamps
Black ink for stamping
Black embossing powder
Diamond Glaze
Paintbrush
Pin backs
E6000
Masking tape

I’m not going to spend too much time on drilling holes, since this happens to be my own weird variation—but since I’m showing drilled pins above, I thought I’d show you how I get there. First, I draw holes on the side of one domino, making sure the spacing is even. Then, I use that domino as a guide, and draw marks on both sides of all the other dominos that will be drilled.

I drill using a narrow bit in my Dremel, which is set up with the drill press attachment. Yes, I know—that’s a lot of tools for one little domino pin. I happen to have all of them, so that’s what I use. I will say that if you want to drill through dominos, you’ll have to have some sort of drill press to keep your holes straight. Also, since small bits don’t come long enough to go all thw way through, you’ll have to drill from one side, flip the domino over, and then drill from the other side, praying that the two holes meet. Periodically, mine don’t, and there’s not much that can be done to salvage one that isn’t lined up properly.

Once I’m done drilling, I do a little sanding. I sand the surfaces that will be inked with ultra-fine sandpaper in a circular motion. I think this particular sandpaper is 400 grit diamond paper from Home Depot—it’s just barely gritty at all, so there’s not a lot of abrasion on the surface. Some people bleach their dominos, but I usually can’t wait that long to prep them—when I’m ready to work, I’m ready to work right now. Once the dominos have been sanded, I wipe them with a paper towel to remove any dust left behind.

Now for the fun part: color! I’ve used several different ink pads on doms, and at the moment, my favorites are Colorbox Cat’s Eye Chalks. They’re small enough to work easily on the dominos, and the pads have a slight bit of texture to them if you work them lightly. To obliterate the texture, I just tap the wet ink with my finger—not the tip, because it leaves fingerprints behind. I usually ink the sides of each dom heavily, and go a little lighter as I move to the top.

Remember this when you’re working with dominos: each time you apply color, you must immediately apply heat to set it. So, once the background is colored to your satisfaction, apply some heat. I usually try to do 30 second blasts to each top, and then do the sides. It’s kind of time consuming, but it takes a bit of time for the ink to set. The trick here is getting the surface warm enough to set the ink, but not so hot that you blister the surface of the domino. Don’t try to hurry this step along, because if your ink isn’t completely set, you’ll end up removing your background when you try to stamp on it, instead of applying a lovely design.

If you’re wondering how the heck you get color on the sides of the domino without smudging, or how you heat the sides without scorching your fingers, here’s the answer: make a little handle on the back side of each dom with a piece of masking tape. I usually tear off a piece, fold it in half to create the handle, and just stick two little edges to the domino.

Stamping on dominos is best done by laying the stamp on its back, and pushing the dom down on the inked design. I use Brilliance inks if I want to emboss, because they’re nice and thick. If I’m going without embossing, I use Memories ink. Push straight down on your domino, and then pull up using your handle to get a crisp design. Don’t feel like you have to run out and buy small rubber stamps for this—very often, a section of a larger stamp creates a lovely design that’s more pleasing than a smaller stamp.

What comes after color? Heat! If you’re embossing, sprinkle your design with powder, smack the side of the domino firmly on your table to shake loose all the excess, and heat. You’ll find it takes longer to get the powder to resolve than it does when embossing on paper. Don’t worry—just keep at it. If you’re not embossing, just heat set your ink. Remember it will take a little longer to heat set—better to heat it longer than smudge it.

I seal my dominos with Diamond Glaze, which is quite shiny. I load up the glaze on a large, soft brush, and do one swipe across the face of the domino, and a quick brush around the edge. Don’t wipe back and forth with your brush, just in case you haven’t quite heated enough—the color will lift. Be sure to swipe your brush on a piece of white paper when you change colors of dominos—I caught just a bit of fuschia ink at one point, and I would have been disappointed if my next swipe had deposited it on my yellow domino.

The Lowdown on Water Soluable Inks

Lisa Vollrath — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 14:46:55 +0000

Confused by all the ink pads at your local rubber stamp store? Here’s a quick rundown of the characteristics and key brand names currently available in water soluble inks:

Dye Inks

Similar to office supply type inks

Usually come in rich, bright colors

Extremely versatile

Can stamp on matte or glossy papers

Dry quickly, which makes them unsuitable for embossing

Give sharp, detailed images, so well suited to finely detailed stamps

Clean with water, although darker colors will often stain rubber

Look for the words “dye ink” on label

Brand Names: Frescos, Memories, Ancient Page, ColorBox Fluid Chalk, Adirondack, Excelsior

Pigment Inks

Thicker than dye inks

Well suited for embossing

Slower drying time

Stamp on matte paper and cardstock

Must be embossed on glossy papers

Brand Names: ColorBox, ColorBox Cat’s Eye, ColorBox Petal Points, Antiquities, Brilliance, VersaColor, Imprintz

Embossing Ink

Designed solely for use with embossing powders

Brand Names: Top Boss

Washable or Children’s Inks

Specially formulated to wash out of clothing

Some colors are more washable than others

Not suitable for stamping projects that require colorfastness

Stamping With Photo Realistic Stamps

Lisa Vollrath — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 14:44:55 +0000

Many rubber stamp companies offer beautiful photo-realistic stamps made from vintage photos. Stamping with these is easy, if you make the right paper and ink choices, and do a little prep work.

Very often, the first impression from a stamp will not be satisfactory due to the traces of releasing agent still left on the die from manufacturing. Clean your stamp first, then ink it and stamp it several times on scrap paper. Gently rub any areas on the stamp that are not showing up in your stamped image, or places on the design where the ink is puddling. Once the stamp is completly clean, it should be free of islands and puddles.

Choosing Your Ink

For the clearest image, choose a dye ink that’s not too wet. I like Memories or Frescos for photo-realistic stamping, and I avoid my very wet Ancient Page pads if I want a crisp image. Pigment inks are usually too thick for this type of stamp, and will muddy the details. It’s not generally wise to emboss photo-realistic stamps, since the combination of embossing or pigment inks and embossing powders tend to blur the details of the stamp.

Choosing Your Paper

To get the sharpest detail from your stamp, choose a paper that’s not too absorbant. Photo-realistic stamps look great on glossy paper, or paper with a matte coating. Some cardstocks will work well, but it’s best to test first to see if the ink is absorbed into the paper rather than sitting on the surface. Avoid papers with texture, since this will blur details. Also avoid plain copy or printer papers, since these tend to be designed to absorb inks.

One word about glossy papers: if your stamp has a large area of solid color, your ink may puddle. There’s not really a cure for this, since glossy paper does not absorb the ink evenly. Try a matte coat paper or cardstock instead.

Stamping Your Image

To get an even coating of ink, place your stamp on its back on your work table, and pat the ink pad onto the rubber. Be sure every surface of the rubber gets an even coating of ink. I hold my stamp up to the light and make sure all the raised surfaces look shiny before I make my impression.

To stamp your image, keep the stamp perpendicular to your paper, so that all the rubber surfaces touch the paper at the same time. Press your stamp down onto your paper firmly, without tilting or grinding. A good, firm push will give you a clean image. Lift your stamp straight up, holding your paper down with one hand. You should have a nice, clear image.