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Make Your Own Rubber Stamp

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Life is all about moving ahead. However, at times we do tend to turn back to look at the fond moments that we have left behind. These fond memories make us happy and help us to remember the beautiful times that we had spent with our loved ones. There are various ways of preserving these memories and these moments. We maintain photo albums and do what not to keep the by gone moments with us. Scrapbooking is one such great technique of preserving our memories and those lost moments with ourselves. Gone are those days when we manually created our scrapbooks. Now the days are of maintaining a scrapbook on the internet. This has in fact, made scrapbook a more fun-filled activity. Scrapbooking rubber stamp is a tool that is used in maintaining scrapbooking.

A scrapbooking rubber stamp is one that features a particular design on it. When you add ink to the design, you can then place it onto your scrapbooking pages to create unique and beautiful pictures. Some common scrapbooking rubber stamps include letters, numbers, animals, pictures, and symbols. If you are looking for an original scrapbooking rubber stamp, you have a couple of different options. Scrapbooking rubber stamps can be custom designed and can be ordered through the internet. This is more expensive than a pre-made scrapbooking rubber stamp, but well worth it to complete your perfect scrapbook page design. You can also purchase the material to make one yourself but it is a complicated process.

Not all scrapbooking rubber stamp products are all the same. However, there is a significant amount of difference when it comes to the quality of the different brands. You want to use a very high quality scrapbooking rubber stamp. Not only will it last you much longer, but the transfer from the ink will be more detailed. It is very important that you only use the scrapbooking rubber stamp with ink that is specifically to be used for scrapbooking. This way you don't have to worry about the ink bleeding through the pages, smearing, or not aging well. This type of ink can be found at most craft stores by the scrapbooking rubber stamp collection. The ink is available in a variety of colors so you can make your scrapbook rubber stamp designs very colorful and unique.

To help preserve the quality of your scrapbooking rubber stamps, make sure you store them properly. You can find a variety of plastic storage containers at any retailer to hold them securely. You also have the option of buying a scrapbooking rubber stamp kit. They include a variety of different rubber stamps as well as a great storage container in which you can keep the stamps and the ink. Scrapbooking is a great habit and a hobby to indulge in and trust my words, once you get the flavor of it; you will remain hooked to it. In fact, you will love the entire thing of online scrapbooking and moreover, you can preserve these web pages for your future generations to cherish those moments that they were never a part of. Therefore, go ahead and start maintaining your scrapbooks.

Make Your Own Rubber Stamp

You may currently be paying $12.00 for an unmounted, mass produced stamp in the shops, buying the same size stamp direct from a rubber stamp manufacturer will be about $9.00 and be custom made for you!

The following design guidelines assume that you have scanned a drawing into your computer or have located a piece of artwork and imported the image.

Design Guidelines

The easiest stamp to make from a manufacturing point of view is one where the artwork has a line thickness that does not fall below the minimum required. The minimum line thickness that is recommended is 0.2mm (0.00787 inch or 0.57 point), if it does fall below this, the 'wall strength' of that part of the stamp is compromised and may become distorted. Having said this, you can convert an image with fine lines to one suitable for stamp making.

Computer programs work with image data in a number of different ways, for example programs like CorelDraw work with both Vector images (lines) and Bitmap images (pixels), CorelDraw is also the preferred program for making rubber stamps from images.

When scanning a drawing into your computer it will always load as a bitmap image, (a bit like a photograph in a newspaper). This can be sent directly to a stamp manufacturer as long as it is a black and white scan and the line thicknesses do not fall below the minimum. If the lines are too thin you can convert the bitmap image into vector data by applying a trace to the image. Programs that have tracing ability place a vector line around the lines or can be set to follow the lines, these lines can then have a thickness applied to make them suitable for rubber stamp making.

Complex drawing and illustrations can also be made into rubber stamps, these may not contain many lines and look more like photographs. It is best to send a few different options of these to your stamp manufacturer, one option would be to increase the brightness of the image then convert the bitmap to a simple black and white image. Here it is best to select a rubber stamp manufacturer that is familiar with these types of images, see below recommendations.

File Formats

All images that enter your computer have an extension relating to what format they are in. You may have an image from a scan, a clipart disk or downloaded from a clipart service. Some are .eps and .wmf files (Vector line format more common for logos or line drawings) and other jpeg and .gif (Bitmap pixel photos and illustrations).

Both image formats can produce excellent stamps, however simple images are always best in .eps and .wmf format to allow you to easily manipulate line thickness in the event the lines are too thin.

Online Clipart Services

There are many online clipart services that provide excellent clipart for rubber stamping, the best images are from services that are subscription based that charge a yearly or per image fee. If this does not suit and you really want to save money you should find out which service your rubber stamp manufacturer belongs to, it costs nothing to search through the clipart service that he belongs to as he will be the person downloading the images. This bit of lateral thinking and finding the right manufacturer will save you lots of money because you will never have to pay for the clipart. Clipart.com is one of the best services that some manufacturers subscribe to, I estimate that over 3 million images at Clipart.com are suitable for stamp production and they are fine with manufacturers using the images for rubber stamps.

The craft stamp industry is very large indeed and most people are still buying stamps that are mass produced because they don't know how to get a 'custom made' stamp manufactured. So if you are into card making or scrapbooking and want to find that 'special stamp' you should find yourself a manufacturer, it doesn't matter where they are in the world as unmounted stamps are thin and lightweight and can be posted easily.

A network of stamp manufacturers that offer stamps made from online clipart services can be found online, at Stamp Search these manufacturers will make unmounted stamps from clipart or your own artwork and send the finished rubber stamps to anywhere in the world.

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About Author

Both John Foster & Robert De Rooy are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

John Foster has sinced written about articles on various topics from Ideas for Scrapbooking, Small Business and Ideas for Scrapbooking. . John Foster's top article generates over 14800 views. Bookmark John Foster to your Favourites.

Robert De Rooy has sinced written about articles on various topics from Ideas for Scrapbooking, Crafts and Manufacturing. Robert de Rooy is based in Australia and has been involved with the rubber stamp industry in the Pacific region for over ten years, he has provided consultation to the development of. Robert De Rooy's top article generates over 2400 views. Bookmark Robert De Rooy to your Favourites.

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