I recently found a blog with what seemed like a totally brilliant idea for how to make your own 'no carve' stamps. It entailed using 3mm perspex as a base and silicone glue (or filler) to draw with.
It seemed simple enough and since I'm demoing (among other things) Lumiere Paints on fabric at the upcoming Melbourne Craft and Quilt fair on from tomorrow, a rather timely find.
Here's what I learned from my attempt:
1. if you have long hair put it up. Don't ask me how I know.
2. Silicone glue is not your friend. Unless you want a line as thick as your thumb, or, after trying to use a thin hole in the end of a nozzle a sore hand and a burst glue container. (Again, hair up could make the clean up of the last a little easier)
3. If you need to cut 3mm perspex don't expect to score and snap it like they do in the blog. Instead, after giving that up for a joke bribe your husband to do it, with a jigsaw and then allow 3 days for filing the resultant miss formed shards. Of course if we had a fine blade or a semblance of how to cut perspex this may have ended differently.
4. Cotton buds are your friends.
5. So are tissues.
6. Thank the powers that be that you can draw well and don't need to use stamps often.
Now admittedly I couldn't find the type of silicon filler they used in the blog post in Australia and my equipment (and muscle strength) may have not been up to par. I'd love to hear if anyone has more success with this - the idea really does sound like a great one!
The tutorial on the blog I found is:
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/07/how-to_make_no-carve_stamps.html
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1 day ago
I tried this a while ago, too. It doesn't seem to work very well. What I finally did, however, was to use contact adhesive to glue rubber bands in shapes and arrangements, and this works reakky well. I have heard of people using cut outs of inner tubes of tyres in the same way. Like you said, thank goodness we can draw
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a great idea Vicki! Thanks for the input. Nice to know it's not just me either!!
ReplyDeleteI used one of the stamps with expanda medium yesterday and it worked ok, but only for a quite rough, distressed looking print. Mostly I found the stamps just needed too much oomph to get the silicon in place.
I love you rubber band idea - you could glue down anything - pieces of drinking straws, sections of lace etc. Would be a much better use of the plexi glass I think.