A long time ago… (well, say twenty years…ish). I walked into my first rubber stamp store. I had a few rubber stamps I had collected when I was away at college so I could decorate stationary, but this place was magic. I had no idea what I was getting into but I had a feeling that I was going to love it.
Rubber stamps have been around forever, the most utilitarian types being used in offices, for example, date, time, and fragile. Art stamps are a whole world onto their own. It is truly is mind-blowing to see how many products and techniques are out there from ink to embossing powders.
What can you do with rubber stamps? Scrapbooking, card making, journals, paper arts, and well just about any art or craft you can think of. I used to make stationary and then moved onto card making. I use them as embellishments in college and travel journals. If you are new to rubber stamps, let’s talk about getting started.
There are several kinds of stamps, mounted or unmounted. Art stamps are mounted onto wood blocks or unmounted without the block. More recently acrylic stamps have taken center stage. They come on clear sheets and are unmounted. For these stamps, you need to get a clear acrylic block to mount the stamp. The clear stamps are useful because you can see exactly where you are placing the image on your project. They also have clear blocks with grids on them for more accuracy.
Ink, Dye-based, or Pigment? Archival or Water resistant/proof? This is a topic for discussion because you need to choose your ink based on the project you are working on. For instance, you use a dye-based ink and you want to color the image with marker, the ink will smear and your markers are toast. The same method using pigment ink will not have this result. One way to overcome this dilemma is to use embossing powder and a heat gun.
Aside from ink and paper, you can also use dye-based ink like in the Tombow dual brush pens to create images. There are rainbow ink pads with an assist from a brayer give wonderful multi-color images. Furthermore, with the addition of embossing powders, flocking, and glitter, rubber stamping has moved to a whole new level.
On this example, stamping an image on acetate cards, you can glitter till your heart’s content. What you are left with is an image with a whole lot of awesome!
If there are any questions on product information please shoot me an email or a comment below. There are a lot of products in these photos to list them all. Thanks again for you support and as always, “Creativity happens in all mediums.”
Artfully yours,
Andi
Artful-Living 
good share
LikeLike