Crafting Products: Rubber Stamps

I honestly think we could do a segment every day of the week showing rubber stamps and still not manage to keep up with all of the new ones that are out there. We continue to try, however, because even if you're one of the few remaining people in the world who does NOT rubber stamp, they are often fun to look at. Name a subject, there's a rubber stamp for it!

Over the past few years, the Asian look has become popular in many areas of our lives so of course the rubber stampers of the world must reflect this influence. Even our southern belle Mary O'Neil of Hot Potatoes has a line of Japanese-inspired kimono stamps, however, though the kimonos are legitimate I think a bit of Mary's southern sense of humor sneaked into her naming them. There is Madame Dragon Fly, Quasi Mono, Baby Quasi Mono and Yoko Mono!

Magenta also surprised us with their entry into the field. Magenta, which has stamps that are quite literally works of art, has a group of "faux" Asian stamps. The handsome background stamps featuring Asian symbols are all fake. The stamps are real, the symbols are fake. They LOOK Asian but they only give the impression. Very interesting. Very attractive.

From Sunday International, however, the real thing. They have some beautifully- done stamps . . . some featuring actual symbols, including translation and some that are overall background stamps. Very handsome.

Quite in contrast in appearance are the stamps in their Celtic line. The subject matter varies from dragonflies to butterflies to frogs . . . all drawn in the familiar Celtic style and all very beautiful.

As dramatically different as you could possibly get are the Bad Little Susie stamps, also from Sunday International with bad little Susie inviting you to "Make Yourself at Home . . . Clean My Kitchen" and sayings like "I started with nothing and I have most of it left."

More from Magenta are the stamps done in their well recognized fine art fine line style but with the completed picture or image divided into four squares to look like tiles. The artwork is so detailed and so elegant that by stamping with one color and filling in with some watercolor pencils, you have a card that truly looks more like a work of art than a stamped image. The dividing spaces give a whole new and interesting look to the pictures.

From a company called New Stamp on the Block are stamps that are made from some rubber-like clear plastic. They are similar to unmounted rubber stamps, except that you can see through them. Instead of mounting them to a block of wood, you simply lay them on a block of clear acrylic and they grab hold. After stamping, you simply peel them off and apply the next image. Similar to the line of Halo stamps that are attached to their backing with Velcro, these will take up practically no storage space.

Speedball is a name that many of us remember going back many years and now, instead of linoleum cutting, you can cut and carve rubber. There are kits available for the very beginner to the hard core carver so that you can make your own stamps from designs that you draw, trace or copy on a copier and then transfer to the rubber block. A variety of differently shaped cutting blades make the carving easy and fun. On the program, we spoke with one of our regular guests, Linda Ragsdale of Mixed Nuts, to whom my staff had sent a photograph of me. Linda had it copied on a high-contrast copy machine, rubbed the picture onto the rubber block to transfer the image to the rubber and then carved. She now has a rubber stamp of the image of Carol Duvall! And if anyone recognizes it as me, I will be truly upset! Obviously, these are tools for making some interesting and unusual stamps or for some that are strictly for fun!