Basic Skills - Stamping

Choosing a stamp: Good quality stamps have a slightly sticky feel to the touch. Stamps with a wooden block give good grip. If there is excess rubber around the shape of the stamp, then try to remove this with a sharp craft knife. Clear stamps which stick to an acrylic block make positioning you image much easier, but can be expensive to start out with as you will need to buy the block. Some stores sell magnetic stamps which have smaller stamps which can be mixed and match to get a more personal look. These usually come with the block.

If you are not going to emboss the image then you will need a quick drying ink or you can get ink pens which enable you to colour different sections of the image in different colours.

You need to start with a flat surface. Until you get used to stamping it is better to stamp onto a small piece of card or paper and then mount this onto your card.

You should take to ink pad to the stamp not the other way round. This insures that the ink is even and you can see if you have missed any parts. Once loaded, place gently on the card and lightly walk your fingers across the top of the stamp. Do not rock or put too much pressure as this can smudge the image.

Stamped images can be coloured in or they can have things added to them, like in my Santa Christmas card in the Ideas Library, where I added a white felt beard to the Santa stamped image. I have also coloured some of my stamped images with metalic pencils or glitter gels pens to give another dimension.

I have tried stamping two colours for one stamp by inking one half of the stamp in green and one in red, which gave a lovely look to my rose.

Versa Mark ink pads create an unusal effect. It does not have a colour itself the ink changes the colour of the paper it is stamped onto and makes it a slightly darker shade. This can then be used as a good background paper as you can stamp the image repeatedly onto a sheet and get varying shades in the same colour and then stamp and emboss the image onto a separate piece and mount it onto the background paper. Click here for an example of using Versa Mark ink.

Ink pads do not have to be used with stamps. You can use them to highlight edges. Click here for an example.