Quick Rubber Stamping Primer

Written for new rubber stampers who want to learn about the different ways to buy and use rubber stamps. This primer is not designed to give all the information needed to start mounting your own rubber stamps or cutting unmounted rubber stamp sheets. We do, however, have the information needed on this site in our techniques pages.

Mounted Rubber Stamps

Rubber Stamps purchased off the shelf are generally purchased mounted with a cushion between a block of wood (called the wood mount or handle) and the rubber stamp die (the molded rubber image.)

Rubber Stamp Image Depth & Detail

Rubber stamps are pressed into molds. Those molds are not all the same, nor is the rubber all exactly the same. One of the most important differences in rubber stamps has to do with how deeply etched the image is or the distance between the part of the stamp that touches your paper and the base of the rubber. The more deeply etched the rubber stamp die, the less chance of getting stray ink marks on your paper from open areas in the image or rubber surrounding the image.

Our stamps are all deeply etched. If you own rubber stamps that are not deeply etched, you may find that you get better images by using dye ink pads and being careful to keep the stamp flat when inking and not rocking. Likewise, keep your stamp flat when you stamp, without rocking the stamp. Dye ink pads are generally felt ink pads and don't squish as much as pigment ink pads with a foam cushion. This helps to keep excess ink from getting into the un-raised portions of your ink pad. If you want to use pigment ink with stamps that are not deeply etched or have large blank areas, you can avoid the stray marks by using the narrow end of an individual petal from a ColorBox Petal Point Ink pad and ink only the raised areas, avoiding any large blank areas. This is a particularly useful technique for large rectangular border images.

Unmounted Rubber Stamps

Mounting rubber stamps on wood is a fairly labor-intensive process. Many manufacturers prefer to sell their stamps unmounted. Luckily many stampers prefer to buy unmounted rubber stamp dies. They are cheaper, take less room to store (unless they are permanently mounted), and are lighter and less expensive to ship through the mail. With some exceptions, most companies do not provide mounts or mounting supplies for the price of the unmounted stamp. Additionally, the image may or may not come trimmed and ready to use. We do trim all of our unmounted rubber stamps purchased individually, but most companies do not. We have tips on trimming your own unmounted rubber stamps in our techniques section. We also sell Kai Scissors, which are very sharp and ideal for cutting rubber stamps from sheets.

Using Unmounted Rubber Stamps

Some stampers permanently mount their rubber stamps on wood. Others temporarily mount their unmounted rubber stamps on Acrylic Mounts. Depending on the method, a cushion may or may not be used between the unmounted rubber stamp die and the mount. We describe several different mounting options in our techniques section.

More about Acrylic Mounts

Acrylic mounts are generally not available through your general craft store and may not be available at a local rubber stamp store. More and more rubber stamp stores are selling unmounted rubber stamps and a few of those carry acrylic mounts. Acrylic mounts are generally between 1/4" and 3/4" thick and come in various sizes. It is easiest to use a mount that just slightly larger than the rubber stamp die. If the rubber stamp does not completely fit onto the mount, it will not stamp properly. Also, if the mount is far larger than the rubber stamp, you'll need to take extra care when inking your stamp, not to ink the mount and be careful not to let the weight of the large mount cause the stamp to rock when stamping. Using a 4-inch square mount for a 3-inch square stamp is not likely to cause a problem. You will probably find it awkward to use a 4-inch square mount with a long narrow stamp, such as a one line word stamp or a very small stamp, less than 2 inches.

Storing Unmounted Rubber Stamps

Rubber stampers have come up with clever ways to store and index their unmounted rubber stamps. Some use the larger CD cases that come with most music CD packaging. They create an indexed cover with the stamped images and organize them either by company or by image type. Other stampers keep a rubber stamp journal of their images that they can look through to see what images they have and provide an index number by the stamp image . With this method, the unmounted rubber stamp dies can be kept in any kind of numbered filing system. Stampers using reposition-able adhesive or EZ Mount cling cushion can store their stamps on a plastic page our storage board kept in a 3-ring binder. Images can be indexed by stamping them onto separate pieces of 3-hole paper so that they show the images for the corresponding storage board.

Unmounted Rubber Stamp Sheets

Rubber stamps are pressed into sheets with many rubber stamp dies or images on them. By sellling an entire unmounted rubber stamp sheet, the manufacturer can provide an even lower price per stamped image than individual unmounted rubber stamps. This is because the manufacturer won't be stuck with certain images that don't sell as well as the most popular images and the manufacturer won't have to expend the labor to trim the unmounted rubber stamp sheet. Customers generally trim their own stamps from the unmounted rubber stamp sheet. Depending on the thickness of the unmounted sheet, special scissors will probably be required to do a nice cutting job. These special scissors were originally designed to cut bonsai trees, and are very sharp. There are tricks to properly trimming stamps from a sheet of unmounted rubber stamps. We provide some hints on our techniques page. We can also trim sheets for a small fee.

We have other primers available on our web site. Some are small notes about a product, while others are more detailed. Feel free to send us additional rubber stamping techniques and product information.