Monday, March 30, 2009

From double-mounted to single

This isn't to say that I'm not irritated that I had to spend additional money to have my stamps single-mounted, but since Stampin' Up has promised NOT to double-mount sets other than alphabets/numbers, I've decided to just move on and deal with it.

This post doesn't even have any stamping in it, other than what I stamped on the blocks. I stamped on the blocks to show the full-size image, because when SU double-mounts a set, they give you labels that are more what I'd consider to be indexes, rather than full-size, since both sides of the block are covered with a stamp, leaving no room for a full label. You can see these little labels at the top of the picture immediately below.
The photo above is the set as it's mounted single-sided. To have enough blocks to mount them, I resorted to hitting the clearance section at Michael's and the Dollar Tree's stamp section.

The cheapest, largest stamp that I found to plunder was marked down to $3.99. Considering that I thought it unlikely I'd use the set nearly as much with the double-mount setup, I think the $3.99 was worth it. If I'd looked longer/other places, I might have brought my price point down further, but was it worth it to waste gas/time on that? Didn't seem like it, so I bought my stamp, took it home and sanded the other stamp's image off the block and peeled the stamp off the other side. This left me with a great block, ready to mount to.

I got out my Stazon permanent ink, laid out the tree image,


inked up the rubber

and carefully pressed the new naked wood block onto it. I repeated this process with the branch stamp as well. Once they were stamped, I mounted them like I would normally. I did this with the rest of the set as well.
Some of the other stamps could just be separated out among the provided blocks by cutting them in half, and others were mounted onto other dismantled stamps that I'd bought previously at the Dollar Tree store.

I marked where the block should be cut, and Ky cut them apart on our chop saw. I sanded the edges with a sanding block which is a sand paper adhered to a sponge so that it can follow contours - I like them because they don't have to be plugged in and are very low tech and user friendly.

It's better that you not have to deal with purchased stamps this way, but if it will help you use your sets, do what you need to to make them work for you!

3 comments:

Ms. Crafty If You're Nasty said...

great idea... i had been holding off on ordering that set because it's double mounted...

Cheap Like Me said...

Wow, what a process. I wonder if you could find a box of children's blocks to sand and use less expensively? Wouldn't be worth it unless you did a bunch.

Leslie Deering said...

wow why didn't I think of this.......smart woman!!!!