Stamps...

Fun Ways to Use Rubber Stamps

Rubber stamps are the perfect tool for enhancing your artwork. They are popular for their versatility and their ability to be used nearly anywhere. Stamps can also be embellished in a number of ways. Most art suppliers offer a wide variety of rubber stamps of different shapes and sizes with handy shapes, text, and images. If you’re an art student or aspiring artist, consider art college as a way to channel your creative focus and make a career out of your passion.

Cards

Stamps are commonly used to enrich birthday cards, graduation cards, wedding cards, anniversary cards, get well cards, and thank you cards. Specialized stamps are always around for any and all of the holidays, and they’re not limited to Christmas and Valentine’s Day—surprise your friends and loved ones with stamped cards for Thanksgiving, Easter, the fourth of July, or Hanukah.
Whenever you use rubber stamps, remember to use a hard, flat, stable surface like a table. Be sure to remove dust and particles off of the rubber with a sponge or stamp cleaner to ensure a clean mark. Also, when you stamp, use your fingers to apply firm, even pressure to the stamp without rocking it in order to avoid a blurry image, and make sure your stamp is well inked!

Scrapbooks

Use rubber stamps in your scrapbook! Most professional scrapbook makers use rubber stamps for their creations, and it’s easy to see why. There will always be a stamp related to the subject on a page, or even an aspect of the topic. You can even get stamps with days and months to commemorate the dates of your memories instead of writing them in. Rubber stamps will provide a delightful contrast to photographs, cutouts, and the other media on the page.
You can also switch things up and make a pattern by forming a series of stamps on a page (this works for cards, too).

Rubber Stamp Ideas

Lost for inspiration? Craft Blogs provides links to art pages with categories including decoration, patterns, and srapbooking.
If you’re comfortable with rubber stamps or an advanced user, The Stampin’ Place offers basic tips for rubber stamps, techniques including heat embossing, coloring, and embellishing stamps, 3-D, stained glass, and background methods, tri-card ideas and advice about stamping on multiple media. The site gives clear directions and helpful guidelines for each of the listed techniques.