Whether you are "wheel challenged" like some of the stampers in my classes, or perhaps would just like to use your wheel stamps work more individually, I want to show you how easy it is to convert them from wheels to a "flat" stamp. You may like the increased versatility and number of stamps that you can have, plus it will store more compactly than the wheel.
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| Wedding Words wheel |
Look at a catalog picture or roll out your wheel to see how you'd like to divide up the images or words. It might be tempting to cut it all up and make yourself lots of individual stamps, but watch out for places where some lines overlap others that would be better kept together. Here I've chosen the Jumbo Stampin' Up wheel called "
Wedding Words" (#125433). Since some loops of the "y" or "g" overlap others in places, I've decide to just cut the rubber in half to use as wide borders or backgrounds. I can also ink individual words with a pen if desired later on.
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| Rubber cut from wheel, ready for cling foam |
Carefully cut along the glued seam of the rubber on the wheel with a razor blade or Exacto knife. Then use your blade to lift one side of the rubber and peel it from the wheel, being careful not to tear it. It should come apart fairly easily, especially if your wheel is older and the glue is more dried up.
Use thin sharp scissors to cut up the wheel as you've planned, being very careful not to cut into any images or words. Place them onto the sticky, adhesive side of the
Stampin' Up Clear-Mount Cling Foam (#124236, two 8 1/2" x 11" sheets) and cut around your images.
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| Index made for my "new" stamps |
You can stop now if you don't mind looking at the reverse side of the stamp, and want to use the nice clingy side of the foam mount on your clear block. But if you want to see an index that's right side up (not a mirror image), stamp the image onto sticker paper/labels or just white paper. Mount these images on your storage case or cut them out and adhere each onto the cling side of the foam (sticker paper makes this really easy.) If the index is on the stamp itself, protect it with packing tape or clear contact paper which allows it to stick better to clear blocks when you want to stamp (although you can also use double stick tape if it doesn't stay on.) If you prefer all wood stamps, buy/make wood mounts instead, glue your foam to wood, then the index on top.
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| "New" stamps in clear case |
You can use an
SU Clear-Mount Stamp case (#119105, 4 cases) or SU Wood Mount cases (
#127551, 4 full size,
#127552, 4 half-size) to store your "new" stamps. In this case (pun intended!) I've also added my cut up
"Baby Tees" wheel stamps, #118621, which I like to use individually. I've cut away all of the background dots from two onesies, but left the remaining three together to make a nice border.
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| Easy to make cards with flat stamps! |
And just for fun, here are two cards I made using my "new" stamps, free
Sale-A-Bration "Sweet Sorbet" Designer Papers (available through March), and some
gold printed vellum. Note that the wedding card is a larger 5" x 7" size. I can make a custom envelope from another printed gold vellum piece and add a "Sweet Sorbet" DSP liner using the
Envelope Punch Board. Such fun! Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
