Rubber Stamps
Art with Ease!
Stamps by Peddler's Pack
Even if you believe you haven't an artistic bone in your body, you can unleash your inner creativity by using art rubber stamps. Rubber stamps come in all styles, from brush-stroke or woodcut styles to graphic line-art. Using simple stamping techniques you can add beautiful images to your greeting card, scrapbook and other paper crafts.
You may want to look for unmounted art stamps and use a static cling system with acrylic blocks, or use repositional glue to temporarily mount your stamps. Unmounted rubber stamps greatly decrease the amount of space required to store your stamps; you can even put them in page protectors in binders. This saves valuable shelf space for your inks, dyes, paper punches, beads--everything else! Search for unmounted rubber stamps--some rubber stamp makers provide them with foam rubber backing, for others you will have to get your own foam backing to mount to the stamp and static cling sheet.
So, you're not a millionaire and can't purchase five thousand, five hundred or even fifty stamps to start with? Start with a few stamps that will multitask for you.
Before you spend any money, though, determine what your style is. Will you prefer fine-art stamps, with many lines for detailed coloring? Or would you prefer a simpler graphic line-art style that you can splash a bit of watercolor on? Do some window shopping online and visit a stamp/scrap store--without your wallet--and ask for a demo with one style of stamp and then another. Try to meet people who already have stamps who will let you work with theirs to see if you like a particular type of stamp over another. Once you have a good idea what style you prefer, aim for these stamps first:
- Background stamps
- Solid background stamps, either plain or shadow stamps, in basic medium to large geometric shapes will stead you well, no matter what your artistic preference. These stamps make excellent background papers or backgrounds for stamps. When you have coordinated sets of stamp images, like leaves, stamping them all with each on its own background stamp can have the same affect as cutting and mounting the stamped images--without all the cutting and taping or gluing.
- Flora stamps
- Stamps of flowers and leaves may be used in all seasons if the correct design is selected. Just change the color and arrangement.
- Alphabet or Favorite Phrase stamps
- With a plain alphabet set you can spell out virtually anything for your hand-stamped projects, with the added versatility of being able to align the letters in any way. Try a spiral message or border an image with a message. For even quicker projects, the phrases "thank you" and "thinking of you" may prove to be your most frequently used stamps!
- Favorite Theme
- Do your creations have a recurring theme? Buy stamps that work with your recurring theme first. If most of your projects are Christmas projects, look for some versatile Christmas stamps in your preferred art style first. If you use a lot of heart images in your projects, get heart stamps first. Getting sets of themed stamps will help keep the style consistent, but there may be times when you want to mix styles (such as all hearts, but some fine art, some graphic, etc.), so do not limit yourself to buying sets only. If you end up with stamps from sets you won't ever use, you can easily find someone to swap with you. Always keep an eye out for stamps that may work in many projects.
