Creative Stamping with Brush Pens

Stamps are brilliant for applying wonderful motifs to a beautiful background. You might already have experience in handlettering or painting and want to expand your creative skills. Stamping is a great opportunity for showcasing beautiful motifs, even if you don't have a lot of experience in drawing. Read here what you need to watch out for with stamping and what colours you can use to get great results.

Materials made of rubber, silicone or linoleum are suitable for stamps. Ready-made stamps are available in an abundance of motifs and all kinds of sizes. They are often already attached to a carrier material and ready for use. Flat, flexible rubber stamps can be placed on a special acrylic plate to which they will adhere. After use, you can simply pull the stamp off again and use the acrylic plate for the next stamp. You can also combine stamp motifs to produce larger images. Some stamps have a so-called endless motif which you can continue to apply at the edges of each stamp impression and therefore continue stamping endlessly. This is a technique you can use to e.g. frame pages.

Stamping inks should be water-based so that they do not affect the stamp material. Alcohol-based inks can attack or even dissolve the rubber stamp.

There are special stamping inks and pads that you can use. If the stamp is not large, press the stamp onto the ink pad using even pressure and then onto the paper. If the stamp is bigger than the stamp pad, do this in reverse order: pick up the stamp pad in your hand and use it to coat the stamp, which you then press onto the paper.

You can also work without a stamp pad and use pens instead. Water-based ABT Dual Brush Pens are particularly suited to this purpose.

You can simply coat the stamp with the ABT Dual Brush Pens – but make sure that you do not hold the pens vertically, instead coat the stamp using the fibre tip. This way, you will protect the shaped brush tip of your Brush Pens. Be careful: The colour dries very quickly. You can blow on it again before stamping or moisten it with the Blending Mister to give it a watercolour look.

There are some amazing stamps available to buy – but would you like to make your very own stamp? No problem – basically you can use any soft, non-absorbent material and make a stamp from it. Linoleum sheets or old erasers are particularly suitable. You can also buy larger rubber plates that you can cut a stamp out of. Draw the motif on the stamp material and cut it using hollow knives suitable for cutting lino. Leave only the parts that should remain visible as a contour when stamping.
 

What’s really important is: Stamps must be made of non-absorbent material, as the ink should sit on top of the stamp and not be absorbed into it.

Depending on the stamp motif, it can enhance the image if you put some glue on one part of the motif and sprinkle it with glitter or coloured powder. This works wonderfully with the MONO AQUA Liquid Glue or the MONO MUTLI Liquid Glue. If, for example, you sprinkle glitter on the pistils of flowers, you will get a beautiful 3D effect. For very fine lines that you want to sprinkle with glitter, the MONO Glue Pen is ideal because you can apply it very thinly.