My foray into creating artistamps

[Heather Wilkie (paganfrog)]

Ive got a few manufactured rubber artistamps that I sometimes use. I recently managed to get hold of a pair of sizzix dies to use in my Big shot die cutting/embossing machine. They did cost me a small fortune as they are a retired dies set and there was a 4 way fight for this particular auction - needless to say, with coaching from my dearest husband, I won them at a cost, but I did really want them.

They only cut a small sheet of stamps, but these are still one of the best dies that I have seen for multiple stamps in a sheet.

Lastnight, I played around with a blank precut sheet. I used a manufactured rubber stamp, an inkpad my own handwriting and a highlighter marker.

you can see my original on the left. Sadly, after messing around on the computer with a scan of my work to duplicate it a few times onto a sheet of A4 paper and running it though our computer printer, you can see that our printer is ancient and is fit only for important document printing.

The colours are all faded and do not show up at all. Also, its a bit of a faff trying to re-align my die to the printouts to recut the stamp sheets.

I know that my artistamps do not have the same good quality of many I have seen, but I still enjoyed creating them and from now on, I think I will just create this design again by hand rather than printing them out from a copy. They wont all be exactly the same, but I like my art to have a bit of a rough unpolished look.

[Heather Wilkie (paganfrog)]

Thankyou Bradford. Im looking forward to using these on envelopes and on some add n passes. I aim to create some more fun designs whenever i think about it.

[Bradford]

I think Ray Johnson would have been pleased and perhaps even gratified to receive some of your "distressed" artistamps.