Custom Mounting Text & Texture Tutorial

By now most people know that, on occasion, I enjoy custom mounting my stamps. Most often it's because I want to be able to stamp sentiments or images separately from other sentiments or images that they are paired with by Stampin' Up! Sometimes, as with my new Text and Texture set, it's because the set is intended to be double mounted and I prefer a single mount.

Anyway, I will show you what I did to create my single-mounted set and index sheet, but first I wanted to show you the card I stamped with this set. Isn't it cute? I stamped the "texture" with bashful blue on whisper white, then used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the text perfectly over the texture and stamped the text in real red. I added a real red mat and my sentiment was done.

For the rest of the card I started with a certainly celery base, added a strop of the Summer Picnic Designer Series Paper and a piece of the zig-zag stitched red ribbon from the Jersey Ribbon Originals assortment (by the way, I finally found a good use for the Tombow Mono-Multi glue. Even though this ribbon is thicker and heavier than our regular ribbon (and, therefore, may not be held on by SNAIL alone) the Tombow Mono-multi keeps a cement-like grip on this ribbon. Just thought you'd want to know.

I attached the sentiment above my designer paper and ribbon strip and then I used a dimensional to add a medallion made out of the scalloped circle punched out of bashful blue, a 5 petal flower punched out of real red and a 1/2" circle punched out of pumpkin pie, all held together with a bashful blue brad from the soft subtles brad assortment.

I think this card is really cute. I might just use it as my swap card for a demo meeting I'm attending tomorrow!

And now to the tutorial. As I mentioned above, the Text and Texture stamp set is intended to be double mounted on 3 large blocks -- with one side being the large "text" and the other side being the smaller "texture". Normally I don't mind double mounted stamps because it does save storage space and, in most cases, it makes no difference to the way I stamp. Also, the index stickers for most double mounted stamps show the whole stamped image, albeit reduced in size. However, because the sides of these blocks are so small compared to the size of the image, this apparently was no possible to do with the Texture part of the stamps in this set.

Since I wanted to be able to see the whole "texture" image as I stamped (just in case I ever want to highlight particular text), I decided to single mount these 3 images. Fortunately, as you may recall, I recently custom mounted the Many Happy Returns set on 3/8" sqaure wooden dowels (see second photo in my April 7 post) so I was left with the three blocks from that set which, coincidentally, were the same size as the text and texture blocks. Woo hoo!

All I needed to complete this project were the additional wood blocks (you actually only need 5 for the stamps if you don't mind double mounting one set of the Text Images like I did, but the 6th block comes in handy for stamping the index images), my black stazon pad and a roll of clear shipping tape. I started by cutting off a piece of shipping tape a little longer than the wooden block, so that it would be easy to pull off the block after I was done stamping. I placed the tape on top of the block, trimmed it even with one end of the block leaving a little tab on the other edge, as shown in the photo above.

Next I mounted a texture image onto a different bloc, inked it up with my black stazon pad, and stamped it on top of the block I had previously covered with a piece of clear shipping tape. Because the blocks are the same size, stamping the top of the a block was actually pretty easy, but you also do not have to worry too much about being straight because you can make adjustments later as you're applying the stamped tape to the correct block.

Here is what the index image looks like after it is stamped. Pretty good, right? Except for the absence of the Stampin' up! copyright information you'd never know it wasn't the original index sheet.

After you stamp your index sheet and the ink has had a chance to dry, peel off the tape from the original block and attach it to the top of the block you stamped it with. To make sure that I didn't smear the image by rubbing it to take out any air bubbles I actually used a piece of card stock on top of the stamped image first, to absorb any ink that was still wet. I then rubbed the top of the block through the card stock to make sure there were no air bubbles under the tape.

After you're done attaching the tape to the block, carefully trim the tape so that it is even with the edge of your block and you're good to go.

Here is a photo of my 4 custom single-mounted stamps. I would not have minded double mounting the Life is Good sentiment, but since there are 3 large images only 2 can be double mounted together so I had to single mount this one as well, and since it had to be single mounted I figured I might as well make an index print for it as well. In the foreground you can see the index tab that comes with the set, and I hope you're able to note that the index sheets of the "texture" images only show a partial image. Again, that's the only reason why I wanted to single-mount this set, because I actually do want to know what the entire image looks like before I stamp.

And here is my new stamp set, all snug in a spare extra large box I had left over from combining a couple of other sets for storage purposes. I really love this stamp set and I was so happy that with a tiny bit of effort on my part I was able to customize it to make it work for me!