You know that feeling- when you bring your new stamp home fresh from being delivered off the UPS truck- the stamp set still has that new stamp set smell (I am not the only person to love that smell!!). You are eager to get out your ink and play with your stamp set, creating all the projects that you envisioned when your purchased it!!Buy wait!!
First you MUST care for your new stamp set- if you follow these very simple steps you will prolong the pleasure of using your stamp set and make sure that it lasts forever!
The first thing that you should do is SEASON your stamp set- this means that you are preparing it for all the inks that it will be meeting in the future. To do this all you need is your stamp set, a block, some light coloured ink (bamboo is ideal) and some scrap paper.
Ink up your stamp as you would usually and stamp the image onto your scrap paper a few times. As you do this you will notice that your image becomes more clearly defined- this is just one of the perks to seasoning your stamps!
Here is an example of a stamp that I did not season when I stamped the ‘before’ image. You can see that the ink distribution is not as clear nor is the coverage. The after image I stamped after I had seasoned it a few times- now I have a perfect image (don’t mind the fact that the whole thing is blurry due to my camera knowledge!)
Another BIG perk to seasoning your stamps is staining- when you LOVE your stamp sets they can start to show that love, especially if you did not season them and you use a lot of dark coloured inks. In the picture above I have the stamp on the left which was seasoned in bamboo and then inked with star stangled blue. You can hardly tell!! Compare that to the stamp on the right-which I did not season with bamboo before using it in the blue- and YES that is CLEAN!!!You will basically ‘seal’ your stamp if you season it with a light coloured ink first.
Lastly, be sure that you clean your stamps properly- they are an investment and every investment should be cared for. Use Close to my Heart Spritz Cleaner and our double scubber to keep you stamps at their best!!
Until we craft again, The Brae-er