Tips for using a background stamp (part 1 of 2)

 Warning: wordy at first, but then photos!

I'm a sucker for background stamps, and have bought a lot of them over the years. Still, I ended up leery about using them after some poor attempts.

My biggest issue is that I've had trouble getting a clean impression on paper of the entire image. 

You may have seen some of my acrylic blocks in pictures I've posted here. I'll discuss them more another time, but one of my most recent failed attempts was with a different block.

I was switching up my acrylic blocks, and I needed a new one for background stamps--none of the ones I had were large enough.

The typical handmade card has a card front size of 4 1/4"x 5 1/2" (or 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" when held horizontally, AKA landscape mode)--a quarter of a standard US piece of paper.

Most background stamps are made to fit that size, so they are typically that size or larger (up to 6x6" usually). Some background stamps are called background stamps but you'd need to stamp them multiple times to fit that standard sized card front.

Stampin' Up!--from whom I bought most of my background stamps (I was a customer and an on/off demostrator for them for years) uses the standard size for its background stamps. 

Recently I purchased a large acrylic block for stamping, and...it was very thin. I couldn't really grip it when trying to press it down into ink or press it onto the card front.

Luckily I found this extra large Inkadinkado stamp block from Amazon. 

Inkadinkado Extra Large stamp block/Birch stamp from Stampin' Up!

Let me show you another angle:

same stamp block & background stamp

As you can see, the stamp image actually sticks out just a little on the edges. That actually did not end up being a problem for me when stamping, though. You can also see how nice and wide the clear stamp block is. (This is a red rubber stamp mounted on cling foam, which then sticks to the acrylic block like clear stamps do.)

I have another helper that gives me a good impression, but...I don't have any photos and am on vacation right now, so I'll have to do a post about that another time.

inked rubber stamp with cardstock

The Stampin' Up! design is actually slightly larger than the 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" card front size, as you can see here. I stamped the image, and the paper is actually sticking to the rubber a little bit. Making the design a little bigger than the standard size is perfect--no worries about not getting a section stamped when just eyeballing it.

It's late at night and everyone else is asleep, so I'll save part 2 for tomorrow--showing the design once stamped, and another tip.

I hope you had a lovely day!