Create Your Own Layout with Clear Stamps

Clear stamps let you arrange different parts of the stamp on an acrylic block to create you own layouts. With a clear alphabet stamp you can create your own stamped wording and this technique shows you how.

Materials and Tools

• A Clear Magic Alphabet Stamp
• Acrylic blocks
• Ink Pads

Instructions

1. In our example, we will be adding the wording "Happy Birthday Jack" around a picture of a birthday cake in the middle of the card. The picture below shows the card before any of the wording has been added.

2. Start out by placing a large acrylic block over the central image, so you can see through it to the card underneath. You can now start to position the letters for your message and see how they will look when you are done. Don't forget that you will need to put the letters on back to front, so when you turn the block over to stamp it, everything is the right way around. If your stamps are clean you can keep turning it over and look through the block to see how your design is coming along. If you run out of letters you will need to leave gaps or stamp your message a few words at a time. Because you are using a clear stamp, positioning later words and letters is easy. In our example, we have left gaps for some of the letters that we will fill in later.

3. Ink and stamp your message as you would with a normal rubber stamp. Once you are done, you can clear the letters and remove them from the acrylic block.

4. If you had to miss out letters or words in the second step, you can now fill in the gaps. Place each missing letter onto a block (you may find it easier to work with a small block for this step, as they are easier to handle) and ink it like normal. Looking through the acrylic block, you can position the letter in just the right place to fill in the gap. If you stamping a single letter and find that the block rocks around too much, you may find it easier if you place a clean letter in each corner. This just makes the block more stable.

5. In our example, we have put the letters on by eye using a slight curve. This makes any slight errors in the position of letters look like part of the design instead of mistake. If you prefer to position the letters in straight lines or along the curve of a circle, simply place the block over your guide lines when positioning the letters.