Monday, February 16, 2009

How to- Clingmounting Stamps 101

I have many stampers who are coming around to the idea of using clingmount to mount their rubber stamps to acrylic blocks instead of permanent mounting to wood blocks. So I thought I would do a 101 on cling mounting.

There are two different widths to the clingmount- the usual is about 1/8 inch thick in gray to the left and thin which is about 1/16 inch thick in black shown on the right. My preference for mounting onto the CD cases is the thin mount for Stampin' Up rubber. They are deeply etched, which is a great quality for stamps but in the CD case the regular clingmount is a tad thick and the rubber will sometimes touch the other side of the case.


Clingmount is a foam with 2 sides- a supersticky side to which you permanently adhere your bare rubberstamp and the otherside you adhere to your acrylic and allows you to cling over and over again. (Should it lose its stickiness, you run it through clean water and it will regain its stickiness)

The clingmount sheet comes in 8 1/2x11 and sometimes 8 1/2x14. They are a bit pricey at about 4 dollars a sheet so I use every nook and cranny squeezing in as many stamps as I can - sometimes I can get as many as 4-5 stampsets per sheet depending on the size of the stamps. Whatever I do not use, I keep the white sheet to keep the supersticky side clean.
I peel my rubber from the foam mount that it comes with from SU and mount it directly onto the sticky side as shown. Wood mounted stamps need to be removed from the foam mount and cleaned off some before mounting on the supersticky side. Try to label your stamp so you know which company it came from so you can give proper credit if needed.

You can sprinkle baby powder to make the exposed sticky less sticky and used to use a pair of craft scissors to cut it but it gets really gummy and my wrist got tired. so I changed to a hot knife and I tell you.... it cuts like butter!


I would advise that you double check that you have all the stamps for the sets you are cutting and mount them all before you throw out the garbage. I have couple of sets missing one piece. I have turned my stamping area upside down and still cannot find them. I have flushed one down the drain- it was an itsy bitsy heart image then went down the drain as I was washing all my stuff off. BooHoo. At least it didn't block my drain so a call to the plumber was averted, alas.

Now where to store all those stamps?
This is Kompac storage which is about the size of a DVD case. It already comes with a storage sheet but is pricey at about $2.50 a piece. I buy these from Harry at Rubberstamp Concepts in bulk. I buy the thin clingmount from him as well. He offers the best price by mail order if you do it by bulk- so get a bunch of your stamping friends together and do an order.



For CD's I buy the EZ Mount stamp storage panels from Sunday International. The storage sheets are not the nice plastic like the ones Harry sells but is more like a laminated white cardboard but Hey! if it works and is safe for my stamps, I'm OK with it. I had tons of regular CD cases ( thin ones will not work! ) left over after I got my IPod and loaded all my CD's on them, so ask around. There may be other people trying to get rid of them too. I saw that my clingmounted stamps that I placed directly on the CD cases started to make a cloudy etching on the CD case and I am told although it has not happened yet, it can lose its cling. Clear stamps can be directly placed on CD cases without losing its cling.


Sometimes I like to put like stamps together. Cheep Talk and Good friend set just screamed to be put together so I used one large case to put both in.






The large cases also fit my background stamps perfectly as well- the real reason I bought a bunch of these. But I had to snap off little tabs inside - easy to do with bare hands- because the stamp was just a tad too big and then it was perfect.

The storage sheets fit inside the tabs in the standard CD case and I put my clingmounted stamps directly on them.
You can StazON images onto the sheet but I usually stamp another piece of paper to index easily from the front and then adhere the clear image from Stampin' Up on the cover so I can see where the stamp belongs when I have it out.


I place the label on the spine and all those cardstock strips left overs from the layering I glue and place behind it to make it easier to see at a glance.
Now you are ready to store your stampsets easily in CD/DVD storage units and mount on acrylic blocks for use with minimum space.
The left over SU plastic containers are used as giftboxes, hold projects, little scraps, etc. The wood blocks are in a big bin at home where my three boys play with them like building blocks. I am always looking for a good home for them, so if you are local and interested, let me know.
Happy Clingmounting!
Lynda









4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your stamping site does not sell a hot knife -where do I get a such a coveted tool??!!!

Lynda said...

hot knife is available at Michaels and other hobby stores at the wood burning section- for about $20-30 a pop- with 40% off coupon you can get a pretty good deal- look for ones that have extra blades as a bonus- some come with lots of fancy woodburning tools that I will probably never use.

Lynda

Anonymous said...

May I ask what you place under your Clingmount when you are cutting with the hot knife? Thank you!

Lynda said...

I use a cardboard that comes with a lot of the designer papers underneath because they are usually too thick to cut through with this activity and it does not seem to be affected by the hot knife- I do not want to ruin my table top. Use 2 layers if you are worried.