I’m even happier with the new Juxtapose Collection that went live along with the shop. I talked about it a bit last week, the series I’m calling the “Dark Collection”.

I am already dreaming about the next collection. Lots of white and pastel colors. I can’t wait!

One of the selling points for the Silhouette Portrait was its ability to make custom stamps. You can either buy a Stamping Starter Kit, or buy the pieces separately (which is what I did). I bought the Stamp Material, the Cutting Mat and a Fiskars Stamp Press (this thing is great for centering and getting even presses with no ghost markings).

The first stamp I made was just the logo, no boxed in areas. It ended up being a pain to transfer the cut silicone sheet over to the stamping press. So for the second cutting I added the background, and everything that was positive turned into negative space. I still lost the little piece inside the tiny “P”, but I’m cool with it, it adds character.

I did a few test runs on paper which looked a bit distressed, but again there was that homemade character, and I like that. I watched a few YouTube videos that said different inks react in different ways with the stamping material. So I may try some others out when I have the time and money. For now, the stamp is great!

It’s about 4″x4″, which is a little on the big side. I don’t plan on using it for product packaging or anything like that. I really only wanted it to stamp on the back of outgoing boxes and shopping bags at shows. Brand recognition!!! For those purposes its mostly perfect. My only complaint has to do with the boxes themselves, not the stamp. The currogated texture makes for a very striped logo. Again, it looks handmade, and not in a bad way. I imagine when I stamp bags, it won’t be striped.

I wish I could make all of my stamps this way, but the process really doesn’t allow for super detailed designs. So instead I ordered some self inking stamps for tags and product packaging. I’ll show the process for those once they come in.

I’m so excited for the switch over this weekend! I can’t wait to hear feedback from you all!!

On a side note: I’m almost done reworking the ecommerce side of Art School Dropout, and once thats done I’ll be looking more at this here blog. Trying to figure out what to share here. As a reader, would you like to see more blog posts like this? If not, what would you like to hear about?