stamp care tips

Basic stamp cleaning and care is very important to extend the life and usefulness of your stamps.  I do a basic cleaning with baby wipes ever time I use my stamps. I just keep a fresh damp baby wipe out with a paper towel so when I am done doing the project or when I’m changing colors or stamps the stamp get be clean> Just stamp the dirty stamp on the baby wipe until it does not bleed anymore color off then dry it on paper towel. Now I have several stamps and I am sure you do to that are very small or detailed or worse both. I  try to clean them with the baby wipe technique as best as I can and then I take my stamp cleaner and do a really good clean on them later. Try to remember to only use your stamp cleaner once the ink is dry on the stamp I have not thought about rubbed the bottle tip over it and made a huge mud color mess several times.  I take my stamps out and use the cleaner with the moist towel in a cookie sheet trick once a year unless I have had a busy stamp year. To do this take an old ( I mean never want to see it again towel and cookie sheet and moisten the towel with warm water, clean with cleaner and stamp clean on towel, then let them dry. This takes awhile if you have a large collection. I have been very loved by my mother and mother in law whom have funded my collection as well as shared their collections with me. When using someone else’s stamps it is only stamp etiquette to clean them well before returning them.I was also told by my first stamp educator at Stamp Oasis in Las Vegas NV never rubber you stamps to clean them because over time it will rub stamp chunks off or ruin the condition of the stamp.

Another note to give you is you should store your stamps in a clean, dry storage containers, with the rubber face down. Try to keep your stamps in a climate controlled environment and if at ll possible do not put them in one of those storage facilities outside they never stay well.  We put my stamps into storage a few years back and I was lucky it only messed with 1-2 of my stamps and just the rubber dried up a little. I was very lucky it could be re-stuck to the wood block.

So there you go, I hope it was helpful tid-bite of useless information

Until next time, Stampy.

stained glass window cards

My mother found this set of stamps that look like flower garden images as a stained glass. With this type of stamp you have several ways to do the glass look. I’m still experimenting with techniques but some of the standard vellum’s and materials and alike, I had  trouble with them curling and not functioning well with what I wanted to do at this time. I used glitter glues and paint brushed them on and that may have been some of my trouble.  For the card in the picture, I used everyday household wax paper. I layed down my stamped image on plain white card stock, then colored. I wanted to do these as sets so I picked color groupings to design the sets around. I then used a standard craft knife like you can get at any Walmart. I cut the parts of the window I wanted to replace with the wax paper. I’ve been told you can cut the whole glass picture out, having  only the lines of the frame to work with. (might try this in the future.) I did the outlines in a clear embossing pen and powder to give it the finished edges and the look of glass. When the stamped image was finished I then cut the wax paper to the same shape as the boarder of the window frame. I used a purple colored pencil in this case to outline the open glass spaces so I could go over and paint them with the glitter glue. I went over the glittered spaces  3 times; I would set it off to dry and then go over it again.  I glued the outside edge of stamped image and put it down over the wax paper. When that dried (I left over night) I then attached the whole thing to a large piece of pre-cut double sided sticky foam. Then mounted to a plain white card and used the embellishing gems to accent the card some.  Well I hope this helps someone who might have some of these cool stained glass stamps.

I will have some future techniques and card types to go with this style of stamp.  Keep stamping Bye for now, Stampy.

Fantasy Book Marks

Hello, I do apologize it has been a long time since my last  posted. So I hope everyone had a great holiday season and made some cool cards and stamped stuff. I also hope everyone got a little stamp goodies for Christmas gifts.

I am coming back with a project you can spend the afternoon doing with your kids. I am a Potter fanatic and sci fi- fantasy nuts and I am proudly raising my daughter to enjoy those kinds of books and movies too. My mother got me this little dragon a while back and I  like his image when I can get him to stamp all the detail cleanly. We were sitting around over Christmas break trying to come up with fun time occupiers when my daughter wanted to stamp. So she was doing her own book mark when I remember this stamp and got lucky to stamp him down just right. I looked through my stash and found the watermark bookmarks and they have the acient look to them so I thought the dragon woud be cool. My daughtor loved the way it looked and started to pick colors that where nice and bright to counter the older look of the bookmark material. I  liked the bright orange to inhance the dragons charactor. My little- one likes the embossed  texturing so we did just a bit of it to give him texture, and how could I leave off my signature glitter.  After all the gluey stuff was dry I did a very lite pencil line to stamp the “Once upon a time” accross my bookmark.
As usual I recommend doing all the embossing before your glitter less mess with the powder clean up. I erased my lines cleaned it up and finished off any holes in the glitter; sometimes holes happen in glitter because you don’t use enough glitter,  trying to give a softer look to your project.

Well have a great time reading and using your newly made bookmarks.

seasons greeting card

The holidays are a big deal in my house so I have always treasured that time of year. I am huge on creating home made cards for special occasions and sad to say it saves money. The last few years I have made my own Christmas cards and it has been great, especially when that’s all I have to give. I feel it just adds that feeling of the traditions of the holiday. I also have several nationalities and religious backgrounds in my friend list so I can make those unique to the person. This card is really simple and creative, I am a wreath person, so my mom found this stamp years ago for me. I have several phrase stamps for the holiday season and used this as my generic Christmas card. I took out white card stock with matching envelope. I set the stamp as centered as possible and layed it out. Then I did my coloring, and I used several different greens, to give the impression that the wreath was pieced together. I even changed the reds from card to card. I let them stand for a few days because it was a lot of heavy dark color coloring and like I have said I found it can smear easy. Then out came my GLITTER, and off Iwent.  Since this was my everyone gets it card I had over 30 to make that became the tough part, and it was why I went with the simple non discriminant seasons greeting phrase so not to upset anyone. I have what I call Christmas in August/September time so that I can start making my holiday cards. I create fall or Mabon cards, Halloween, thanksgiving thinking of you type cards and several holiday cards for the December time. It is a good way to do your own cards and not get overwhelmed by the work and last minute crap.

Merry Christmas in September, From stampy.

Spooky Gift Bow

My spooky Bow came to me in a vision brought on by one of my favorite movies, Nightmare Before Christmas. I have no stamps from the movie, I don’t know if I would use them for this project anyways. So if you look closely at the base bow on this you will see it is a poinsettia, But it is multiple layers of the same stamp colored, glittered, embossed and cut out to design the four layers of this bow.(I had to stamp my poinsettia for times on card stock to create this project) Then I picked some different Halloween stamps and stamped, glittered and embossed those.  With the actual poinsettia, you but a sticky square on the bottom to stick to the package. I use double sided kids foam sheet from Walmart, they are cheap and easy to cut and use. Then cut them into medium  length of the layer rectangles to go down the bottom of each layer of the poinsettia leaves. I used green for the bottom leaves because that’s what I do when I make these for Christmas and Yule, but my mother in law said she wasn’t thrilled with the green and i think if i do this again ill do brown. I took the next layer and used my embossing color markers and did orange and used clear embossing powder.( I love to use different elemants to bring out the textures in my stamping.) I did black colored pencil next layer with silver glitter to split the oranges up. The small top layer is orange marker and Glitter. Then I put the layers together with sticky foam. I took the other stamps I did the bongy things with and glittered, embossed them. I place them on there own foam and cut them out, I did this so they would be a little stronger to hold up to the whole project. The scull was glittered, the pumpkin too.  The grave stone is a punch out from halloween punches and I wrote on it with pencil, and the bat was done with a silver/ black embossing powder. To emboss you must have the embosser heat tool. I stuck the pipe cleaners after cutting to size and curly in between the stamped card stock and the foam backing and glued them under the layers of the flower. So there, my own homemade Spooky Nightmare before Christmas themed gift bow.

Spooky gift days ahead, Boo Stampy

P.S you will see this stamp again at christmas when I do collections of holiday gift wrap stuff.

Basic Stamping Techniques

I was going over my posts cleaning them up and realized I missed explaining some of the basic stamp tricks I used to make these projects and thought I would fix that by explaining how I did them.  (Sometimes I forget to explain because I get so wrapped up in the pretty stuff I forget I’m here to help) In the Mabon card I talked about direct stamp coloring and the technique in doing is to use long lasting wetness markers of any kind, just make sure they are safe for rubber stamps. I like and have always used Le Plume II markers for over 10 years and they do a great job. They come in over a 100 color variations. You turn your stamp over and pick your color scheme. Color the stamp completely and then breath on the stamp to moisten it up again, then stamp.(Keep in mind that each time you stamp you have to reapply the marker and that the stamp doesn’t always come out completely so just be patient.)

Also in the Fall card the leafs card they over lap.  You should keep a sticky notepad in your stamp products because, they come in handy. Take a sticky note and stamp the image as close to the sticky edge as possible, then cut the image out so its like a sticker. Stamp the image on your project  let stand and dry, then use your home made sticker thing to cover it. That way when you stamp the next image it can overlap a little or layer and it wont ruin your initial image. You can do that as many times as over lays are required for your project.( The first time I did the overlay I thought it was so cool I did a whole page of playing with the concept, I know pathetic of my but its cool to do) I use overlays in a huge chunk of my stamping and its useful in scrap-booking  because you can stamp the picture the first time create the window frame concept and the overlay without messing up all the other work.

Happy stamping, Stampy

Falling Leaves

I’m telling on myself, I love the Fall, leaves changing colors and the cool weather coming. So lots of my projects are based on this subject, duh of course. I was playing with my mother- in- laws stamps over the weekend and found she has this beautiful leaf that has all these swirls and stuff and would work great with glitter. I pulled out some basic ivory card stock, black ink pad and started to play. I’m not sure why but I always start with the envelope when I do cards; I think its because, if I don’t like the way the envelope is looking I scratch or change the project. (I know I’m weird) I did my envelope and loved the stamp. I found her phrase stamps another one of my fav. things to have. She had a single word FALL. It can’t get much simpler than that, perfection the word FALL. So I threw the word at the bottom and then in my digging I found the phrase I put inside. I thought this phrase suited my card ” Everyone must take the time to watch the leaves turn.” With the way I’m coloring the card with each leaf a different color and then I did my normal glitter work. I used the beautiful swirls and natural stamp cuts to guide my glitter, it optimized everything perfectly. Now I’m no expert but I love the way this stamp worked. So I have added this stamp to my top 20 stamp list and hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Happy Falling Leafs, Stampy

Mabon Sparkle Postcards

Well, here I go again with the just note- card thing. I have a thing about post cards there simple and fun to make, even kids love to help. I pulled out a four sheet of post cards and was just playing with coloring my stamps. I have some of those stamps on sheets that you pull off and use the acrylic blocks as a base. Those stamps are fun because you can change the look of the project from card to card. I changed the rotation of the leafs on each card, making it look as though the cards were done watching the leafs falling outside. Well as usual my favorite glitter got pulled out to do detail work on the leafs. I did the centers and some of the branch work in glitter so that the leaf has some definition. Now something to remember with the clear mounting stamps is that the markers right on the stamp technique has to be done several times to make sure that the color is really well put on before stamping. Also I have found that the Le Plume II are my favorite but there are several other styles of markers but you must use the stay long wet markers other wise they wont come out on the paper and sometimes they can ruin the stamps.

Happy Mabon, Stampy

The Basic Blank Card

The best way to either start stamping or just keep your stamping technique up is the blank basic card. The way to start is select the card stock, I use white a lot because it makes the colors  pop out .(Also it tends to be cheap and you can find it everywhere.) I use card stock for cards, gift tags and as a layering tool so that its thicker to build on. After picking the color and type of card stock with matching envelope, now comes the fun part. A note before we truly get started the world of stamping is limitless, from your colors to styles and all the accessories. I choose the colors and supplies for this project because I like Asian style stamps, and traditional colors; but you can change the selections to your likes, so please remember its all personal picks. Here we go, I was taught that starting with a simple stamp was good; something with a large image or repeating theme. I have chosen a stamp with a repeating theme it will make it easier to work with. The stamp is a cherry blossom, (Cherry Blossom3552, Delta Rubber Stampede purchased at JoAnns Craft Store.)    Now, I have an issue with making sure the stamps are going to look right before I do my final project so on a separate white paper I design how my cards look or in this case I couldn’t figure out what colors to do. I stamped the picture a few times and then colored with a varying range of color picks. I went with the pinks because I tend to be a traditionalist. I have my card stamped and colored now, and I can now do the writing portion. I like to stamp as much as possible so I have alphabet stamps and even some common phrases I use regularly, you can always run the card prior to stamping through you printer and then stamp.(You should always do printer work before you stamp because some printers heat the paper while printing and it can smear your stamped ink.) Well there you go our first card!!! I tend to do several cards at a time because I don’t get a lot of time to work with a child running around.  Have a great day, bye from Stampy.

All the stamp goodies

The first thing you need to have is all the stamps you own. (I tend to make a mess when I stamp because I pull all my stamps out) Ink pads are a plus, everyone should at least have a black pad and then any others that you may want. You can use any kind of material to stamp on but I always say keep some basic card stock on hand and some decent paper. (I also keep regular printer paper to do basic stamp practice and project layout on.) I am a coloring person, I like making stuff personal so I keep lots of coloring supplies. I always have regular kids color pencils, markers fine tip. Also stamp markers; they are great to have because the markers stay brighter and moist longer. You can use them to do direct embossing and can actually color the stamp in different colors then stamp it so you dont get outlines. (I always use Le Plume II stamp markers because thats what I could afford but there are many different brands of these type of markers.)
I have a fettish for glitter. I use glitter all the time with stamping either as straight glitter or as glittery embossing powder. I don’t have a preference for embossing powder I use all of them; I haven’t had trouble with any brand I have tried. (I do recommend getting a jar of clear powder just because it comes in handy.) You will also need an embossier.(That is the heat tool that turns the powder into the raised impression.) Raw glitter with application glue is also fun.I have also use the kids school pre- mixed glitter glue in one. I tend to use them more because they are easier and they usually come in tubs with a tip on them.( I even find them at the dollar store and they last pretty well too)
A must have in every stamper supplies is non-perfumed baby wipes for you to clean your stamps.

Bye Stampy