How To Do Rubber Stamp Printing
For a regular and more defined pattern, use rubber stamps. They look good used to make hand-printed wrapping paper and to decorate picture mounts. Although rubber stamp printing is much easier than taking prints from leaves (see leaf printing), it still requires care, as the stamps need an overall layer of color to avoid a messy blotchy effect.
To do this Rubber Stamp Printing you use a rubber stamp to print out a leaf design and it is a clean and quick alternative to the more traditional method of printing from real leaves.
If you want to draw up your own designs, there are companies who make stamps from black and white drawings. Alternatively, you could send them a copyright-free illustration, such as an old woodcut or engraving, from which to make a stamp.
Ready-made rubber stamps can also be purchased, with all kinds of different motifs available to choose from.
You could use one stamp and print it in different colors, or you could use themed motifs using a selection of stamps sharing a common subject, such as a combination of flowers, leaves and butterflies.
We used just one color for our rubber stamp printing mount, but had three different stamps, each with a different leaf shape.
Materials
Rubber stamps of your chosen designs
Green stamp pad
Card picture mount
Scraps of paper
Newspaper
Practicing the technique
To protect your work surface, first cover it with newspaper. With an even amount of ink on your stamp, practice printing the leaf designs onto spare paper before you begin. This will help you judge the amount of ink on the stamp while you are doing your rubber stamp printing.
Printing the mount
Place the picture mount on the covered surface, with the right side facing.
Load the stamp with ink and print the leaf design all over the frame, reloading with ink as required.
Change the stamps over to vary the design.
Print some of the leaves so that they overhang the edge of the frame, and leave an adequate gap between each one. Leave to dry.
This craft is all about having fun so just have fun doing your rubber stamp printing.
All About Rubber Stamp Printing
Rubber stamping, also called stamping, is a craft in which some type of ink made of dye or pigment is applied to an image or pattern that has been carved, molded, laser engraved or vulcanized, onto a sheet of rubber.
The rubber is often mounted onto a more stable object such as a wood, brick or an acrylic block. Increasingly the vulcanized rubber image with an adhesive foam backing is attached to a cling vinyl sheet which allows it to be used with an acrylic handle for support.
These cling rubber stamps can be stored in a smaller amount of space and typically cost less than the wood mounted versions. They can also be positioned with a greater amount of accuracy due to the stamper’s ability to see through the handle being used.
Temporary stamps with simple designs can be carved from a potato. The ink-coated rubber stamp is pressed onto any type of medium such that the colored image is transferred to the medium. The medium is generally some type of fabric or paper. Other media used are wood, metal, glass, plastic, and rock. High-volume batik uses liquid wax instead of ink on a metal stamp.
Reference: The Country Look—Decor & Crafts
7 Responses
Fabric Printing - Crafting DIY
[…] printing can be done using stamps, linoleum or wood blocks, stencils, or silk screens. A stamp or block is inked either by pressing […]
How To Do Leaf Printing in 4 Easy Steps - Crafting DIY
[…] you feel at all apprehensive about printing with leaves, try rubber stamps first. The stamps are easy to handle and produce a more uniform result, but once you master this […]
Janek
Because of the shape and contour you will have to screenprint or rubber stamp, or print on a flat sheet and cut out and glue it on.
Picean
Does anyone recognize how to print inside a paper plate? What machine could I utilize?
Janek
You can get non-toxic print pads from most craft shops, they are quite cheap.
Mak Sultan
I want to do footprints and handprints of my 4 month old child. What will something like this cost and where can I get it?
Goe122
I have certain designs which I want printed plus produced into custom stamps, either well-defined or rubber stamps. Can anybody recommend a USA based firm which I could purchase these stamps from?