Hello lovely Daisies! I hope you´re enjoying your July planner kit as much as I am, wonderful colors and lots of supplies to play with, today we´re bringing you the summary for all the Saturday seminars from June, the topic this month was stamps, here you´ll find all the tips and tricks given by our DT members to use, clean and store them thinking “outside the box”.

Stamping tips and tricks.

The first Saturday seminar of June was all about hacks for stamping, here´s what Lindsay Sasseville shared with us for making the best with our stamps:

• When using a stamp for the first time, place it on your acrylic block, and before any inks are put on it, stamp it off on the back of your hand a few times. This gets all the sticky off and gives something for the ink to adhere to. I even sometimes do it for older stamps that still are very sticky during use.
• Use a scrap piece of paper to check if you get a solid image before stamping for real
• Want your stamped image to match your color scheme but don’t have the right ink color? Use the side of a brush marker to ink your stamps
• Be sure to have a solid surface under where you are stamping, or stamp on a label sheet and cut it out to place your stamped image

Kylie Kingham suggested some other great tips with us, when working on a solid surface It’s important too to check if there are bulky items on the back of the page you are stamping such as photos or puffy stickers. Also make sure you apply your stamp block straight down and do not rock it back and forth as it can give a smudged or bleeding effect.

When she first receives her stamps she gently rubs a white eraser over them to remove any residue from manufacturing. I also apply ‘Versamark’ lightly first before adding ink. This helps limit staining to the stamp.

Also as a creative tip, she loves adding layers of stamps to her backgrounds. Her latest favourite is the confetti stamp from November where she uses it on all her journal pages lightly.

Simone added a simple but really good tip: to have them handy, so that you actually remember to use them.

Stamp cleaning and care.

In this saturday seminar it was all about how to take care of our stamps to keep them clean and perfect for many years, these were the tips given:

• Have some baby wipes on hand for a quick wipe over.
• When you are finished with your stamps soak them in some warm soapy water for a few minutes. Give them a good massage with your fingers before rinsing and allowing to dry.
• For extra stubborn ink I like to follow the above step with some stamp cleaner. It is available at most craft stores.

• HANDY TIP- Worried about staining?? Try applying versamark prior to your ink on your stamp.! It acts as a barrier.

These are quite useful tips to prevent your stamps from spoiling and also stamping better, have you tried any of these?

Functional stamping with decorative stamps.

Lindsay Sasseville found four wonderful ways to use them:

• To outline a title or special event
• Use them with a highlighter ink as background for lists or titles
• Use them as bullets instead of drawing or stickers
• Stamp them on sticky notes

Stamp organisation and storage.

How do you store your stamps? Do you organise them in a certain way or just keep them in a drawer or a box? Kylie Kingham shared how she stores hers, she purchased a three tier set wich keeps her desk organised and sits neatly.

Lindsay Sasseville also shared her way of organising, she uses tabs from the kits to label the stamp sets, then store them vertically in a box.

You can also find some storage solutions in this post from Simone Schermann which includes lots of ideas.

This is all for today, remember to join our facebook group if you haven´t yet, you´ll find lots of ideas and you´ll be able to share yours.

Have a great day!!

@ladyreverse