Remember to BRANCH OUT... Mold an AMAZING Stamp from a Stencil with Cheryl Boglioli

I’m so excited to be playing with Amazing Crafting Products and join you as the Featured Artist this month. My name is Cheryl Boglioli from Cheryl’s Window.  I am a mixed media, very eclectic artist and one thing I love playing with is stencils. I use them with most all my mediums. Nevertheless, sometimes I wish my stenciled image was a stamp, especially when I want to work with Ranger Archival Inks over PanPastels or water based mediums i.e. Tattered Angels mists, and Dylusions Ink Sprays.

I figured that Amazing Mold Rubber would make a great cling stamp, so I set out to try and make one (and I’ll admit I had an epic fail my first time, but I was ‘branching’ out, right?). I decided to work with one of my favorite stencils by The Crafter’s Workshop. It is Julie Balzer’s TCW229 Rain stencil. My first attempt with just laying the stencil flat, which allowed the Amazing Mold Rubber to leak under the stencil. 

Here is a pic of my first attempt with stencil placed directly on my nonstick craft mat. You can see where the stencil is not flush with the mat, but I had thought the weight of the rubber would weight that specific area down enough and didn’t think it would float. It was not flush enough. I used folded wide masking tape to make my containment mold. If I was going to do it again, I would use this method again. That part did work great, but I kept experimenting. 

 

This was how the first stamp came out. See how the rain drops are not defined on the one edge? I could have cut the stamp down at this point and just used a smaller stamp. Maybe I’ll keep this piece and do just that, but I wanted a larger surface stamp for backgrounds. Continue onto take 2.

After some thought, I decided to tape my selected stencil from The Crafter’s Workshop to a acrylic board I have on hand. (don’t pay attention to my stained stencils) I am sure you could use a large, smooth tile, but make sure it does not have any texture or dimples. You could use any flat surface as long as you are not going to move it, but make sure it is smooth and FLAT!!! I prefer to use my board so I can put it on my bread tray caddy while curing and get things off my desk. I would bet we could even use a re-positionable adhesive and tack down the stencil as long as you brayered the stencil down to make sure it was completely flat on your working surface.

To keep the Amazing Mold Rubber contained, I taped down a small disposable plastic bowl with the bottom cut off. Hey, use what you have, right? I then mixed the Amazing Mold Rubber according to directions and slowly poured into my mold. I put the tile on my tray and set it away to cure overnight.  Directions say a few hours, but I am inpatient and would keep touching it if I didn’t put it away.

 

After curing, I removed the bowl and tape. 

Yes, the Amazing Mold Rubber leaked under my bowl, but that is OK.

  

Just use a pair of scissors and trim away and excess rubber. It cuts very easy.

Don’t forget to trim any extra lipping around the edges.

These will prevent your stamp from laying flat on your stamping block. 

This was the perfect size to fit one of my larger T!m Holtz stamping blocks. I usually work on larger surfaces, so I wanted a larger stamp. You could personalize this for your desired size and shape. I also didn’t care that it wasn’t a perfectly shaped stamp as I am very textural and layer a lot of images with a lot of mediums in most of my works.

  

I think this stamp will make an awesome background for canvases, cards, or die cut pieces. I decided to use it and play in my art journal mixing the stamp with the original stencil, some PanPastel colors, Dylusions Ink Sprays, gesso, collage from my stash box using stamped images on scrap papers, tags, and PITT Artist Pens.  

I started with a basic background in PanPastel colors. 

Layered Dylusions Ink Sprays with the original stencil and another Dylusions stencil and then began adding various other layers and gesso. I then stamped the raindrop stamp made with Amazing Mold Rubber using Ranger Archival Inks and added my own journaling and doodling. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking at my stencils in a new light and look forward to making some other stamps to play with. 

Thanks for checking out my project today. I hope you are inspired to play with Amazing Crafting Products and try some Amazing Mold Rubber if you haven’t already. You can see more of my works at Cheryl’s Window.  

   Cheryl Boglioli
   Mixed Media Artist and Educator
   www.cherylswindow.com