jalex

Materials:
Note book of choice
All your rubber stamps
Stamp Pad
Permanent Marker
A bunch of baby wipes to keep you stamps clean



Instructions:


Finding the perfect rubber stamp, just when you need it, isn't always the easiest thing to do. Here's my solution for finding the perfect stamp in your collection, every time.

You can sort your stamps according to category, etc, before stamping them in your book, but as long as your collection is not too large, you shouldn't have much trouble, flipping through the pages to find the stamp you are looking for.

Simply stamp an impression of every rubber stamp you have in a notebook. Using a marker, mark the side of the stamp and the impression in your notebook with the same number. Storing your stamps with the number visible will make finding the numbered stamp easy and a quick look through your notebook will tell you what number that particular stamp is marked with.

Keep plenty of baby wipes close by to rest your stamps on while you stamp all of them into your notebook... it'll make the clean up of all your stamps much easier when you are all done.



Rubber Stamp Positioner




Materials:
3 building blocks (I used blocks from a child's building block set, 2 that measure about 3 inches by
1 1/2 inches and 1 that measures about 1/2 of that) you can use any wood pieces with similar measurements for this project

Tacky glue or wood glue

5 x 7 acrylic or glass piece (I used a piece of glass taken from a picture frame)

Instructions:

I'm fairly new to rubber stamping and I was having a difficult time making a perfect clear impression and sometimes needed to restamp an image. Without a little help, it is almost impossible to line up a stamp perfectly to make an exact impression, exactly where you want it to go. I found these tools to be much too expensive and knew I could make one that would work, for a fraction of the cost!

Refer to the photo, and glue your wood pieces together to form an "L" shape, allow the glue to dry.

To use your positioner, you place your glass and "L" shape together as shown in photo, making sure the glass is as tightly fitted to the corner of the wood blocks as possible. Position your inked stamp, fitting tight to the corner and make an impression on the glass.

Now, remove your stamp and you'll see an impression of your stamp on the glass (see diagram 1 above) and you can move your positioner around your artwork, until you see the perfect placement of the image you have stamped on the glass.

Once you find the exact placement for your image, holding your wood guide securely in place, slide the glass away from the wood, careflully position your rubber stamp tight to the corner of your "L" and press down to mark your image.

If you have never tried one of these tools, it's well worth the effort to make one. They are very inexpensive to make yourself and will make your stamping impressions so much more perfect

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Get our guys out of Iraq!!

sofiasmom

jalex: thanks for the tip! i also am new to rubber stamping and while enjoying it, i've not been enjoying too much success with getting evenly stamped impressions.

have you found a particularly good site for rubber stamps at a good price? i've decided that i would like to purchase some background stamps (i think some people call them shadow stamps) but i would like to get a nice variety of shapes and sizes so it's a pretty big investment.

thanks again!