(no subject)

[phosfate]

Spent the evening mounting rubber stamps.

No, not that way.

What happens is, instead of buying your stamps all finished with big fat chunky handles, you buy just the red rubber dies -- the part with the image on it. You can get them individually, or you can buy them in sheets (usually themed in some way). They're much cheaper (often half the cost of wood mounted stamps -- and considerably less if you find a box of 'em at a stamp show), and easier to ship (an envelope instead of a box).

Anyway, the stamp or sheet turns up in the mail. You cut the images you want out of the sheet (DO NOT USE THE GOOD FABRIC SCISSORS, GODDAMMIT!), put them on two-sided sticky pad, trim the pad down to fit the stamp, and stick the whole thing onto a piece of wood, spool, little bitty mint tin, or whatever you have that's an appropriate size. (You can stamp the image onto the wood before you stick it on, or stamp it onto a sticker and put it on the wood.) And you have stamp.

The only annoying bit is if you have to cut a piece of wood to fit a stamp. If you're not woodshoppy, there will be blood and cussin'. (Cut-up mousepads work as well, if not better, but at the moment I have lots of wood and no old mousepads.)

Anyway, lots of good new stamps. Disturbing baby doll, spazzy wind-up Felix toy, Alsatian head, etc. I'm rather attached to a Nixon quote: STONEWALL IT. SHIT, DO ANYTHING TO SAVE THE PLAN.

If you want to give it a try, you can do worse than 100proofpress.com.

Comments

[twigcollins.livejournal.com]

Zettaiology, with various rubber stamp oddments. I do like that Nixon quote, though.

I have to hide the good pinking shears to keep from using them for everything. Yes, even considering the zig-zag edge. I also am a horror with super glue.

Also, they're not everywhere but Paper Source stores are guaranteed wallet-killers.

Sorry for all the commenting - there's a very large amount of work I'm trying not to do.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I have no idea who made the Nixon quote. It was a three-fer from a table at a stamp show years ago, and it's taken me this long to get it mounted. Now I wish I had more of them. (The stuff from that show got put into a box and only surfaced last week. This is why cleaning the basement has turned out to be a good idea.)

Zettiology is indeed awesome. I need to send off for some of their daughter's designs. That big loopy frame rocks my world. No Paper Source store here, but that may be a good thing.

Also, second-hand stamps on eBay are dead cheap, and you can get stuff like individual Club Scrap stamps without subscribing to their hunnerd-dolla-a-month packages.

Wait. Commenting is bad? D:

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

WOW, thank you, Ann!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Easy-peasy. You can also carve your very own stamps from erasers or that soft carving stuff from the art store.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

STONEWALL IT. SHIT, DO ANYTHING TO SAVE THE PLAN.

Best. Stamp. EVAR!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I think they had others, and I wish I'd taken the time to pick them out of the box, but it's hard to read something that's backwards red rubber.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

I had an acquaintance who would buy the stamps mounted on wood, remove the stamp and remount it on clear acrylic because it made it easier to position the stamp. I didn't do that, but I may remount some of the larger ones on a softer mount than wood since wood is unforgiving of a less-than-perfectly-even surface.

*is a stamp ho*

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I'm finding I like acrylic mounts a lot, at least with acrylic stamps. Much easier to position, and to tell whether you've got enough ink on the thing.

Mousepad mounts are great for making sure you've put enough pressure everywhere. I'm having an awful time with my really big wood stamps. I should consider re-mounting them, except they're such wonderful objects in and of themselves that it seems kind of a shame.

[nitasee.livejournal.com]

I've gone to using a fairly new rubber stamp system. You put this sticky cushion on the back of your unmounted rubber stamp. Stamp will now cling to acrylic block like some clingy thing. It saves a lot of space and money because you only need a few acrylic bases and can change the stamp you use with the base.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I finally found that stuff at our stamp store, but haven't bought any yet. It's good to know it exists. I just got a bunch of big Alice in Wonderland unmounts, and I'm trying to figure out whether I should use that stuff, or put them on mousepads.

Hobby Lobby has half off of most of its clear stamps and acrylic blocks this week, so I was able to score some big blocks for next to nothing. (Their blocks are generally cheaper than the stamp store's in any case.)

I'm starting to collect the really cheap-ass word stamps (you know -- they start at a dollar and eventually end up in the quarter bin) in hopes of making some nice, obscene word and phrase stamps. "Live it up!" has so many more possibilities if you snip the "Live" off.

[nitasee.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can combine words from different stamps so it can read "up yours". Or something like that.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Exactly.