Mini Tutorial: Mounting Stamps / Recycling!

I've been looking at some those floppy stamps that you are supposed to mount on special acrylic blocks. I got them for free with a scrapbooking magazine, which was exciting. Who else loves free stuff?!? I know I do.

I am not a big stamper, but very occasionally use them in scrapbooking, so it has not been a huge priority for me to buy any of the blocks. It's still been bugging me to have them sitting around useless, so I've been thinking about mounting them a different way. I thought about asking Mr Tempest to cut some timber to size. That would work. Then I was shuffling some things around in a drawer and found the perfect solution.

Who else has some of these babies in a junk drawer?

 These have outdated addresses on them so I can't use them any more. They also have plenty of ink left, which could make crafty stamping relatively mess free. They're easy to use and give pretty much perfect coverage every time. They seemed like they must be useful for something in the future! And now they are.

A couple of my freebie stamps were just a little bigger than the stamp plate allowed for. For these, I put the stamp in the 'locked' position, so that it stays stamp side down and doesn't re ink itself. I then removed the old address stamp with some tweezers. They came off relatively easily, just a bit of wriggling and pulling with the tweezers.

I then mounted the stamps on the now bare stamp plate, with double sided foam tape. One plate wasn't quite level with the base of the stamp, so I used 3 strips of foam tape, stacked on top of each other. For stamps narrow enough to fit entirely on the stamp plate and be re inked, I simply used foam tape to attach them. Any double sided tape or adhesive runner should work, I would think. This way, if I want to change the stamp in the future, I can just peel it off.

I noticed that with one of these, the stamp pad had obviously been marked by the previous stamp, which meant there was letters showing through my stamped images.

 I think it looks kind of cool, but if you don't like it, just change the stamp pad in the stamp (if you can), or use like a normal stamp on a separate stamp pad. This is also how I use the ones in the 'locked' position that are too big to be re inked by the address stamp.

Word of warning: if you use the stamp in the locked position, and stamp it on a conventional stamp pad, you'll get a border around the stamp (picture above left), unless you wipe it off before stamping. You can also partially wipe for a 'distressed' look.

I kind of like this versatility - two or three looks in one!

Now I am just waiting for the right project to use my stamps on! I hope this helps someone else.

As a bonus, I also mounted one stamp on a glass coffee lid, which works wonderfully. Something to do if you have kept any empty coffee jars.

Craft Fair Haul

I attended a craft fair today, which is always fun when you have the crafting bug. As usual, I enjoyed wandering the aisles and checking out what everyone was selling and demonstrating.

I even managed to make a few *cough* purchases, which were mostly things I've had my eye on for awhile.

As I'm back into scrapbooking my photos, the purchases were mainly in this crafty area. My pics have gotten totally out of hand over the past few years, and I love making them more organised and creatively presented. It makes boring others with your holiday snaps a little more interesting. I've stocked up on a whole heap of new tools and products, and have been having fun playing with them. More on this in a later post.

One purchase I thought seemed pretty ingenious for scrappers was the metal cutting plate (Cheery Lynn Designs), "to be used as a cutting base for intricate cutting dies". I saw it demonstrated and thought it was pretty great. They have some demo videos on their site. Mine is the deceptively named, "Cuttlehug", which is made to suit the Sizzix Big Shot, not the Cuttlebug as you may imagine.