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      Wednesday, May 27, 2015


craftstuff
06:50 AM - 05/27/2015

The topic: I’m getting a new crafting tool today

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And I'm really excited about it. 

Brian uses rubber stamps in his business. He has these tags he stamps directions on that he attaches to what he sends out, so the customers know what goes where. The first stamps I got were about twenty or thirty dollars each. As the business evolved, he's changed what the stamps need to say. We never got more stamps, though, he's been hand writing on the tags. 

Then I started doing this craft stuff.  At the end of last year was when I realized how much fun stamping can be. (I used stamps on my Christmas cards). I had stamps from ages ago, before we were married, but never did anything with them. And the acrylic stamps interested me. And I started buying them, because I really do want to sell stuff I make and my handwriting is awful. I have enough stamps now to fill probably any occasion.

Well, earlier this month I'd ordered some Disney acrylic stamps, just to have on hand. And I didn't get the Disney stamps, I got some other stamps for babies. I contacted the manufacturer and she was surprised to see what I'd gotten. They hadn't even been released yet. But she told me she designed her own stamps and had a company make them and you can buy her brand through Amazon, Walmart and eBay. Well, this got me to thinking. Maybe I could have someone make my acrylic stamps.

I found a place to make them and ordered some. The baby lisa graphic, "created by lisaviolet", "lisaviolet designs", "lvdesigns.com" and one other one. The cost was about seventy dollars for all of them. And I did more research.

Now, earlier this year I'd purchased Silhouette's branded stampmaking kit and was nothing but frustrated with it. I got it to make new stamps for Brian. What a mistake. And, doing some after purchase research, I read that the Silhouette media was particular in the inks used. And so it sat in the box in the storage cabinet since. So, I wasn't really sure about finding anything workable for stampmaking. But I did. And this thing has got great reviews.

The Photocentric Imagepac Stampmaker (this link is to the cheapest place I've found for the kit). Right now, that site has a sale, as well as free shipping, on orders over $99.00.  So, I ordered extra consumables (I read that there is a learning curve with this machine, so I want to be prepared) and it's supposed to be here today! Yay! Brian has given me a list of ten stamps he wants. And since I will be making my own negatives and the film used to make the negs is bigger than each stamp, I need to come up with enough different stamps to fill a page. I haven't gotten much sleep, I'm so excited about this.

I've tested out my printer (when they're printed, the black needs to be solid black, no light should get through) and it's good to go.  How this works is this kit comes with gel packs. The negative is placed over the gel pack and put into a light machine that hardens the gel under the clear areas of the negative. It doesn't do squat to the gel under the black part of the negative and this gets washed off with brushing and dish soap and water. Then it gets put in the light machine again where it hardens all the way.

This gel isn't the kind that comes out sticky on the back, you know, to put it on acrylic blocks for use, so I ordered some Graphix cling paper over on Amazon. Hopefully, that will allow the stamp to stick to a block.

And the blocks...I really don't want to spend a lot on acrylic blocks, since the purpose of this is making my own stamps as cheaply as possible, after the initial outlay. I've done research and I think I'll contact some local plastics places to see if I can get a good deal on acrylic sheets. Brian can cut them to size and I'll glue pieces together to get the thickness I want. As for handles, I ordered some empty wooden thread spools over on eBay. I can paint them and make them pretty and glue them to the acrylic.

If you want to research this, this machine is the same one that is sold under the Teresa Collins brand. Check out the YouTube videos. 

Yeah, I've put a lot of thought into this. I'm really stoked about it.

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And then there's all that paperwork I need to do.....

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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