Rubber Stamping Technique
From LoveToKnow Crafts
How is your rubber stamping technique?
Rubber stamping seems like a simple enough hobby, but there is a technique involved in getting the very best image out of stamp and ink that you can. Here are a few pointers to make the most out of your stamping experience.
Rubber Stamping Technique: Inking Matters
Perhaps the most important selection you can make when starting a stamping project is the kind of ink you want to use. There are all sorts of inking pads on the market, the most popular being the dye-based and pigment ink pads.
Dye-based pads tend to give richer, more saturated color, while pigment inks are lighter and thicker. Dye-based inks dry quickly and are great for use on glossy or matted paper. Pigment ink dries more slowly, so it is the ink of choice if you’re going to be embossing, and if you use pigment ink on glossy paper you will have to emboss it because otherwise it will not dry.
Whichever kind of ink you choose, it will likely come in a felt pad with a lid. Proper inking technique is the first step to stamping success. You want an even layer of ink all over the image so that the whole image will appear on the paper and one part won’t be inked more or less heavily than the others.
The way to achieve this is to tap the stamp against the pad. Resist the urge to press very firmly or grind the stamp into the ink. This will cause excess ink to end up in places you don’t want it.
Also, make sure your pad has a lot of ink on it, that is, that it isn’t dry, before you start inking. If parts of the pad have dried out, the stamp won’t be able to take up any ink and therefore you’ll end up with uneven color.
Rubber Stamping Technique: Testing and Marking
If you want to make sure you’ve completely covered the stamp and that it looks right before doing the final stamp, try a test stamp. Keep some scrap paper in your supplies and stamp a piece of paper to make sure you like the color, position and look of the stamp before going on.
After the test, you will want to reink your stamp. Sometimes you can get a decent second impression from one round of inking, but if you want the image to be crisp and dark you should reink.
Decide where you want the stamp to go on your project, and carefully set the stamp down, ink to the paper. Don’t try to readjust if you don’t get it in the right place. You’ll end up with a smudgy image.
Place one hand on top of the stamp, palm down, and the other hand on top of the first. Press down firmly and evenly. Don’t rock the stamp. Then lift the stamp straight up from the paper to prevent smudging and allow to try before coloring or applying another stamp nearby.
Rubber Stamping Technique: Practice Makes Perfect
As with many things, the more time you spend working with rubber stamps and practicing the basic techniques of inking and stamping, the better your work will look and the easier it will become to make works of art from rubber stamps.
Here’s one technique you can use to make your work more sophisticated, known as masking. If you want to stack images on top of each other or have them run into each other you can use this technique.
Stamp the first image, then use a different piece of paper to trace the image. Cut the tracing out, trimming just inside the lines. Then place this paper on top of the already stamped part and stamp your second stamp as you like on top of it.
This simple technique gives the illusion of depth and makes your stamping a lot more interesting. Again, it’s something you will need to practice, but it is pretty easy to do.
As you play with stamps and the masking technique, you will come up with all sorts of great ways to use your rubber stamps and make striking cards, scrapbook pages and gifts.
Related articles
This page has been accessed 3,641 times. This page was last modified 12:33, 29 April 2006.
© 2006-2008 LoveToKnow Corp.
