Rubberstamping 101: Adhesives...What Glue to use?

What Glue Should I Use?
The easy rule of thumb is use light glue for light items and heavy glue for heavy items.

Glue Stick or Photo Tabs or double sided tape runners

*Paper
*Cardstock
*Diecuts

Liquid adhesive that dries clear (like Crafter's Pick Ultimate glue)

*Dried Flowers
*Paper
*Mica chips
*Ribbons
*Fibers
*Beads
*Charms

Aleene’s Tack It Over and Over Glue

*unmounted rubber stamps

Caulk

*Dimensional elements (holds shape)

Spray Adhesive

*Vellum
*Feathers
*Loose-weave ribbons

Glue Dots/Lines

* Heavy items like dominoes
* Fibers
* Ribbons

Pop Dots

*Creating 3D effects

Good luck!! Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: Stamping Surfaces

There are many different types of surfaces you can stamp on, including:

1. Cardstock, comes in different weights, and many different textures.
2. Paper, could be patterned paper, or plain old white copy paper.
3. Glossy cardstock: Shiny, glossy cardstock. Alcohol inks work great on this cardstock.
4. Watercolor paper: Specially designed paper for producing great watercolor images.
5. Shrink plastic: These come in generally clear, white, or black. Available at most craft stores. Also known as Shrinky Dinks. Use permanent inks to rubberstamp image, you can use chalks to color in image.
6. Acetate/Transparencies: These are available at office supplies stores. They are clear and normally used for overhead projectors, they are a fairly thick clear piece of plastic.
7. Fabric/Ribbon/Twill: you will need to use the appropriate inks or paints in order for this to be permanent.
8. Metal: Comes in various colors, can be dry embossed in coordination with your stamp.
9. and many other surfaces.

That's about it...good luck!
Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: How to Mask

Basic masking allows you to stamp several images over each other without marring the previously stamped images. The process is simple, but the resulting creation will be amazing.

1. Stamp the image you want to appear in the foreground of your piece.

2. Stamp the same image on another piece of scratch paper, cut out the image just inside the outer lines of the image.

3. Place this ‘cut out’ image over the original stamped image on your project. Select your background stamp, then ink and stamp over the masked image.

Remove the cut out image and vola’ a perfect work of art.

That's about it...good luck!
Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: Stamp Storage

Wood mounted rubber stamps
Many folks have found that it is very helpful to organize their stamps into storage containers. Here are some ideas for possible storage:

1. Rubbermaid under the bed containers
2. Sturdy cardboard boxes
3. Clean pizza boxes (join ClubScrap -they mail your monthly kit in a pizza box, or try and sweet talk your favorite pizza place)
4. Plastic storage boxes with drawers
5. I personally use a large ziplock baggie with a cardboard or mat board cut to fit inside the bag, I put my stamps in there by topic and store in boxes and/or drawers.

Some folks have so many rubberstamps that they keep a database of their stamps with company name, value, and category and storage location.

Foam rubberstamps

This one I still don't have a perfect system for, right now I just keep them in pizza boxes, but I saw others use the plastic drawer system. One other idea I saw was spraying on spray adhesive onto a piece of cardboard, let dry and then stick the letters onto it - and stick that whole thing into a very large ziplock bag.

Unmounted Rubberstamps

I store my images in a 3 ring binder. I put a piece of cardstock inside a page protector (to make the page protector stay firm, otherwise when you get a bunch of stamps on it, it may bend). Then I stick my images to that page protector. So in looking at my 3-ring binder on the right hand side I have the rubber pieces, and on the left is an image of the rubber, so I can quickly glance at what I have. Other folks use CD cases (standard size not the ultra thin ones) for storing some of the unmounted rubber, it just sticks to the case itself. Then they store all the CD’s in a CD holder by theme or such.

Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: Maintaining your Stamps

Follow these simple tips and your stamps will last for many years to come. Note: Sunlight is your stamps worst enemy. Sunlight will dry out the rubber and cause your stamps to crack, causing the rubber to no longer absorb ink.

In order to help prolong your stamps life, it is recommended that you clean your stamps after each use. There is small plastic trays with a padding that you can buy, to use in cleaning your stamps, but a simple wet paper towel works well too. You can buy stamp cleaner if you prefer. If you are using Stazon, a permanent ink, you will need Stazon Ink cleaner, which will help you remove the ink from your rubber. Now generally I just use alcohol free baby wipes, they are easy, always wet, and very portable.

Now some folks never clean their stamps, the downside to this, is some of the previous color used will come off on the next image you stamp, to many this is a desired look, so it is entirely up to you.

That's about it...good luck!
Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: Basic Tools & Supplies

Ink Pads. There are various kinds of ink pads.

1. Petal Pads/Stripes. You can purchase petal pads that are multiple mini pads in one container, nice for large stamps or brayer. You can also remove the pads and use them individually. This are made by Colorbox

2. Metallic pads come in gold, silver, and copper.

3. Embossing pads, come in variety of colors or clear. Use with embossing powder and heat gun. If you emboss with clear the color of the paper will show through. You can also stamp an image with embossing ink and let dry until just a little tacky. Rub image with chalk or pigment (Pearl Ex, Liquid Pearls) to give a soft look.

4. Permanent inks, like Stazon or Brillance work on porous surfaces like dominos, tiles, acrylic, etc.

5. Versamark is sort of like the clear embossing ink and used for similar effects.

6. Chalk inks. They go on dark, but when they dry they lighten up and give a dreamy sort of a chalk look without all the mess of chalks

Writing instruments.

1. Embossing Pen. These come with a variety of shapes and sizes of tips, and can be used to draw fine lines or greetings. You can draw along the edge of cards and sprinkle with gold embossing powder for a great look. You can use it in a stencil and then emboss letters or images.

2. Markers. Used for coloring stamps, using on brayer, coloring in images, journaling.

3. Water brush or dove blending brush. Allows you to blend colors together on final project.

4. Colored Pencils. Used for coloring images. You can get watercolor pencils and a waterbrush to pick up the color from the pencils and color in an image for a watercolor design.

Chalk:
Used as backgrounds, or rubbed on embossing ink for a nice look.

Adhesives

1. Glue Stick - I used this almost exclusively at the beginning, but I found that cards I made a while ago are starting to come apart. I'm starting to use the double sided tape for almost everything.

2. Pop Dots - These are great for adding a little dimension to cards.

3. E6000 Glue - I use this craft glue for attaching embellishments such as shrink plastic, fun foam, ribbons, etc., and for attaching papers to embossed cards if necessary.

4. Double Sided Tape - I really like this and it works well but it's more expensive than the glue stick.

5. Photo tabs. Fairly cheap, effective, great for the beginner, but I use them all the time.

Cutting tools

Regular Scissors - Nice to have large regular ones and a set of small detailed ones that are sharp for cutting around images and such.

Decorative scissors - nice for cutting edges and mats.

Non-Stick scissors - great for cutting unmounted rubber stamps.

Paper Cutter - I own 3 of these. One for small pieces, one for large paper up to 12x12, and a rotary one for cutting mat board and multiple sheets of paper at a time. It's great for making sure your edges are straight, or pieces are uniform

Exacto- Knife - nice for cutting out details in an image.

Paper
Card Stock - many of the local craft stores have sales and I stock up on solid color cards. I've also found several inexpensive packages but find that I probably won't use all the colors so it's really better to wait til the colors you want are available

Layering Papers - most stores have "scrapbook" papers which have great patterns and are much thinner weight than the stock.

Specialty Papers like mulberry (can also use dryer sheets), metal, velour, etc

Vellum- comes in a huge number of colors and different weights

Acetate - good for postage templates

Old cards - I found pieces of parchment, and metallic papers that I could reuse.

Origami paper

Embossing Powders
There is a huge assortment of colors. You can also just use clear with a colored embossing powder.

Dry Embossing (with Brass Stencils)
Shell Brass Stencil & embossing tool - the brass stencils are really nice, but can be expensive. You can make your own stencil by drawing an image on heavy acetate, or mat board and cutting with an exacto knife. (Remember that when you stencil, your image will be reversed so be sure to use the right side of your stencil.)

Paper Corrugator
It is so easy to make your own corrugated paper, so I bought a corrugator that would hold an 8 1/2" sheet which works great on any thickness of paper.

Heat Gun
Works great for embossing, drying watercolor projects, and shrink plastic

Other Specialty Items

Fun Foam - used to make texture stamps, embellishments for cards, and pad homemade stamps

Shrink Plastic - used for embellishments, make beads, jewelry.

Ribbons, fibers (also known as yarn but with some zip - like fun fur, etc)

Beads - come in all sorts of sizes, colors and shapes

Jewelry findings - great little additions to layouts or cards

Postage stamps

That's about it...good luck!
Debbie Weller

Rubberstamping 101: Stamping Basics

Stamping - Basics

You can buy rubberstamps either mounted or unmounted. Mounted means that they have the rubber, some foam padding and a wood block. Unmounted means you get just the rubber and nothing else. See the unmounted tutorial for more information on using unmounted stamps.

Rubber Stamps

Supplies:
Rubber stamp
Ink pad
Paper

These are the basic steps for stamping with rubber stamps:

1. Ink up the stamp, do this by lightly taping the ink pad until the image is covered with ink. For large stamps, flip the stamp over, rubber side up, place the ink pad directly onto the rubber and tap until covered.
2. Place the inked stamp down firmly on the paper or cardstock on a smooth flat surface, applying even pressure, do not rock the stamp (the edges my blur or smudge).

3. Lift the stamp straight off the paper surface.

4. Allow the stamped image to dry for a few minutes or do your embossing right away if preferred.

5. Now you can color in your image using colored markers, pencils, chalks, etc.

Another option is using color markers to color your rubberstamp rather than an ink pad. Now these dry a lot faster than the ink pad, so after you are done coloring it in, hold the rubberstamp up to your mouth and breath on it, the moisture from your breath will remoisten the colors, then proceed with stamping.

Foam Stamps
These are the basic steps for stamping with foam stamps:

1. Take foam stamp and use a paint brush to apply acrylic paint to *just* the face of the stamp. Try not to slop it over the side of the stamp, as it will make a messier impression of the stamp.

2. Carefully place your foam stamp down and press to ensure full coverage of paint, but do not rock the stamp.

3. Lift the stamp straight up.

4. Wash your stamps right away under running water, it is a whole lot easier than if you wait and they dry.

You can use foam stamps in ink pads as well - it just gives a more subtle look.

That's it...good luck!!
Debbie Weller