Hello Everyone! I am starting a new series on using stamping foam. I might have covered this before with a different product, but for this series I am using the Simon Hurley stamping foam. I have experimented using lots of different items and combinations, but todays post/video is more of an introduction to the foam and I am using a rubber stamp by Tim Holtz. It’s a pretty scroll design and using it with the foam will render the inverse effect of the stamp.
The first thing you do is heat the foam using a heat gun, and it usually only takes a couple of seconds. You just want to get it a little bit soft and then you will press your item, in this case the rubber stamp, into the foam. Try to press with even pressure. In general, I like to use the red rubber because red rubber will not be impacted by heat. I don’t love to bring heat to my clear stamps, so I generally try to stick with the red rubber ones.
I then stamped the image. I realized missed a spot, but that is easily remedied by either redoing the entire process again or trying to just tweak a part of the image. Usually, it easier to redo it, which is what I did in this example. Just heat the entire foam again and this wipes out the imprint in the foam. The foam will return to its initial smooth surface and you can then re-press. This is also the way that you would reuse the stamping foam.
I then inked and stamped the foam stamp and a lot of the finer details were missing. I remade the stamp again (off camera to make the video shorter) and then reinked that new foam stamp with Distress Oxide ink. I showed how to use a wet paper towel or baby wipe to soften the edges of the ink so that I didn’t ink the entire foam stamp. I sprayed Distress spray stain over the stamped image for the Distress Oxide resist technique. Then I then used a Gelli pen to add a little bit of sparkle to the stamped image. I love my Gelli pens and when I am looking to add a bit of pizazz to a stamped or even printed or embossed image I will usually reach for my Gelli pens. So if you have them, don’t forget about them!
The last thing to demo was cleaning the foam stamp, and in my case since I was using Distress Oxide ink, I could just clean off with water. If you are using a different ink, just use the
associated cleaner for that ink. Try to get as much off the foam as you can.
There will be more ideas for how to use stamping foam, so look for those sprinkled in among my other experiments 😉
Enjoy!
