Stamping 101

How to Mount your Rubber Stamps

If you purchase rubber stamps from Stampin' Up!© they may look like this.

Or they may be die cut which means they are ready to mount with out cutting out of the rubber.
*But I still trim my die cut stamps :0)*

Next I lay out my blocks and spray them with a wood sealer like Krylon Spray sealer. You can purchase sealers from Micheals, (don't forget your coupon!) Wal-Mart, Home Depot just to name a few. Give them a few coats. This helps to protect your wood from getting stained from the ink.

Take the rubber and pull it apart, they are perforated.

Use good scissors to cut out the image of your stamp. Keep close to the image. Cut in small, straight snips. Don't turn your scissors for the curves, if you do the the foam underneath will be cut on an angle and you won't get a nice image when you stamp especially with word stamps.

Next take your sticker sheet and trim the sticker down a bit so they fit onto your blocks. This way you can line the sticker image up with the bottom of the block, and the rubber onto the bottom on the opposite side. Each sticker sheet comes with a stamp set label, this has the stamp set name, how many stamps are in the set and the catalogue number.

Here's the stamp set all cut out! And ready for ink! Yay!!

If you have purchased a stamp set that is solid images (the one shown here is an outline image set) you will need to prep the stamps for the ink. They tend to have a coating on them and don't stamp an even image. Just take some sandpaper or a sanding block, make sure to use a fine grain sanding paper, the higher the number on the paper the finer it is. I use between 200 and 300. Just take your mounted stamp and scuff up the rubber, then do a test stamp in some dark ink. Repeat this until you get the bold image that you like.

Thanks for looking and Happy Stamping!!!