Rubber stamping is the process by which you transfer an image onto a medium of your choice and which can be paper, cardstock, fabric, wood, glass, etc.
Nowadays there many different types of stamps you can use on your crafts. Mounted stamps are the traditional stamps that come mounted on a block of wood. There are also unmounted stamps which you'll have to fix to a piece of wood or to an acrylic block before using them, this is the case with clear stamps for instance.
Mounted stamps Unmounted stamps Clear stamps
In my opinion clear stamps are the most versatile because they allow for a more precise positioning of the image on your project. I must admit stamping is not among my favourite card making techniques although I have made a few cards using rubber stamps.
You don't need much for rubber stamping besides a few stamps, inks, a medium to stamp onto and colouring materials such as colouring pencils, markers, chalks, etc. The amount of money you spend depends on the brand and on the quality of the products you buy.
If this is a technique that appeals to you and you'd like to give it a try please follow the links below to find more detailed information about rubber stamping and some project ideas too:
The basics of rubber stamping at About.com
Rubber stamping techniques
Project ideas and tutorials
Below you can see some of the cards I made using rubber stamps with a brief description of how I stamped the images.
The daisies I used on this card were stamped onto white cardstock using water based brush markers to ink the stamp. The different parts of the flower stamp were inked with different markers, the petals and the centre of the flower were then coloured in with water based pastel markers. The daisies were then cut and fixed onto the front of the card with foam pads.
On this card the background flowers and the sentiment were stamped with bleach. For instructions on how to stamp using normal household bleach please click here.
The image on this card was stamped using a blue water based brush marker.
4 different unmounted stamps were used to make this tree card. The tree canopy was "built" by using the same stamp several times. I started by stamping the trunk and then moved on to the tree canopy. This is made up of lighter and darker tones, I started with the lighter ones and to achieve these I inked the stamp with a green water based brush marker and stamped it onto a piece of scrap paper before stamping the cardstock.
This is my first attempt at a technique called rubber stamp tapestry. I used several different little stamps to create a border for my card. Again, I used the same markers as before to ink the different stamps. The lighter images were stamped first and were achieved as explained above. The use of 2 different tones, one lighter and one darker helps to give the impression of depth to the stamped image as if there are several layers of different elements. For more information on this particular technique please click here.
This is a birthday card I made for a friend of my son who is 9 next week. I stamped the image and embossed it with gold embossing powder and then coloured it in with water based pastel markers.
I created these card toppers with a new set of unmounted stamps I bought recently, the See D's Vintage Collection. I used the same brush markers as before and then applied some matching chalk to the white cardstock.
