Get Inked! Create a Custom Manufactured Rubber Stamp

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to Get Inked! How to create your own custom rubber stamp. My name is Teela Cunningham, and I am a graphic designer and design blogger, currently located in Atlanta, Georgia. So if you've ever wondered how to create your own manufactured rubber stamp, it's actually a lot easier than you might think. Rubber stamps are a great, affordable option to add a personal touch to stationary, maybe make your own gift wrap or just create a return address that's the best on the block. The best thing about it is anyone can do it, whether you're an avid illustrator, an experienced graphic designer or just an obsessive doodler. I'll show you how to take any analog or digital format artwork and convert it perfectly to your own manufactured custom rubber stamp. Just to give you an idea of the type of quality that you can expect from your rubber stamp, I'll show you the rubber stamp that I had made for this class. So as you'll notice on the back of the stamp, it's engraved, so no matter how many stamps that you order, you'll always be able to tell them apart, and you can also get a handle installed as well. Then for the rubber part, you'll notice that's laser engraved, so no matter what your artwork looks like, it'll match it perfectly. So I'll walk you through all the steps from formatting your artwork to uploading it to the manufacturer's website, to completing your order. We'll also go through all the different stamp ink pad types, so no matter what you want to stamp your stamp on, you'll be prepared to put it to perfect use. So hit enroll and let's get started. 2. Get Inspired: The first thing we need to do is figure out what kind of rubber stamp we want to make, so we need to get inspired. I pulled all the following images from Pinterest, I actually made my own Pinterest rubber stamp inspiration board. I would definitely recommend doing that, if you're totally unsure what stamp that you'd like or just to get some ideas, maybe spur some new creative thoughts on the type of stamp that you might want to make. I've grouped and categorized some different stamps just so you can get an idea of maybe what kind of stamp you're looking for for your particular use. The first group of stamps is a pattern stamp, which is perfect for any type of gift wrap, maybe some greeting cards. They're pretty easy to make and as you can see, you can get as simple as just a bunch of lines and you can end up making your own creative patterns from that. The next category is combination stamps, and these are really, really cool. As you can see, this popcorn one, you've got a little popcorn that you can stamp a bunch of times and then you got your container. Same idea with this ice cream. You have the different types of faces, your cone and your ice cream, and even a little cherry on top. You can create your own type of fruit stamps, maybe some cacti, some really hipster hats and mustaches. You can create your own floral arrangements, which would be really beautiful on greeting cards. So you could just create a few little stamp like your leaves, your stems, any type of flowers that you might want to add on there. Then this one was cool. It's just a tree, but then you can see just something as simple as dots; give the impression of snow and you can stamp it however you want since snow is pretty random anyway. So that's combination stamps. The next category is return address stamps. I made one of these recently and I wish I had more mail to send out because they are so fun to stamp. You can see it ranges from hand lettering to calligraphy, to just typeset on the computer, and you can even see down here, you can even put it in a cat. So lots of different options, a lot of different ideas for inspiration. You can start thinking through what would be best for your particular return address with the amount of information that you need to put on there. If you have a lot of information like this one, you can see how they've laid it out just to get some ideas for your own. The next category is embellishment stamps. These are the more random ones that just embellish it or just add that extra little punch to whatever is going on. As you can see, you can do something as simple as a feather and just putting that in the corner that would make a really nice piece of original stationary. This was really cute, so I had to put this one in. You can see right here this is a bird just on the front of an envelope. So that feels like a customer envelope, even though all it is is a rubber stamp. You can also add any type of special delivery notes on your envelope, and then over here you can see, you can just drop your name in. You could do how it was made, where it was made, something that acts like a logo, and then your typical Thank You or Hello stamps. Second to the last, logo and brand stamps. These are really awesome if you have your own business, maybe your own Etsy business. It's a great way to add another personal touch, like over here, you could add this to a letterhead. Then you don't even need to send a letterhead out to get printed. You can just stamp it and you're set, because it adds such a great handmade field to anything you put it out on. You can make your own custom business cards, and this is really cool because it bleeds off, but it's still very readable. You can do your own monogram stamps. Maybe you're getting married and you want to create your own monogram for your future spouse and yourself. So you can create your own stamp for that and put it on your wedding stationary and save a few bucks. Maybe putting a belly band on or putting it at the top of your actual invitation. It's just a nice handmade feel that's original because every time you stamp it, it's going to be different. The final one is miscellaneous stamps. So I saw these and these are just some added great ideas for stamps. I had no idea that people used rubber stamps for sugar cookies, but how cool is this? I think it's a brilliant idea. Then over here, if you are getting married once again, you want to add that extra little decorative feel to maybe your napkins that go along with the theme of your wedding. That's a really affordable option and you don't have to pay for anything except for the cost of the napkins, your ink pad, and your stamp. Then over here I thought this was a pretty cool idea to make your own custom to-do list, pretty simple. Adding a cute little extra piece to your stationary. Here's some custom gift wrap, and then I hadn't really seen this before either. Just creating your own watercolor artwork and stamping within it. That gives off a really cool feel too. So as you can see there's a bunch of different ideas. Just look at what appeals to you for your specific need, for what you're going for, put an inspiration board together in Pinterest, and then grab your favorite ones and now is the perfect time to start your project file and upload them so we can all see what direction you're going for with your own custom rubber stamp. 3. Preparing Your Artwork: In this video, we're going to take our artwork and we're going to convert it into the correct file types to upload to the manufacturer's website, so then we can order our stamp. I'm going to show you how to take artwork created in Illustrator, Photoshop, or if you just hand drew it on a sheet of paper, I'll show you how to use that too. We're going to start in Illustrator and the first thing we need to do is create a document that's the size of our stamp. For me with the Get Inked stamp, it was one and a half inches wide by one inch tall. I need to create a document to those measurements. I'm going to go up here and go file new and create a stamp that's one and a half inches wide by one inch tall. Nothing for the bleed, CMYK 300 PPI for your resolution and then hit "Okay." If I turn on my rulers, you'll see it is one and a half inches wide by one inch tall. This is the area of the stamp, your artboard. I'm going to paste in the vector artwork, and this is the time to scale it, to reposition it, to center it, put it wherever you want within the stamp. Basically, you just want it to fit within this artboard and once you're happy with where it's positioned, how everything looks, this is when you're going to export it to a JPEG. You're going to come up here and go "File," "Export," choose the location where you want to save it. I'm going to save this as 'get inked stamp illustrator'. Down here I'm going to toggle where it says format to JPEG and make sure that you check this box that says 'use artboards'. This'll make sure that this maintains a JPEG size that is sized exactly to your stamp. You're going to hit "Export, " and over here, it's find to keep it CMYK, your quality is all the way up, so you have very crisp edges and we're gonna keep the resolution at 300 PPI and hit "Okay." That's the file, if you created your file, in Illustrator, when you export that JPEG, that JPEG is the one that you want to use on the manufacturer's website, which we'll go over in the next video. If you created your artwork in Photoshop, let me come over here, this is an example of a drawing that I did. I scanned it in and I opened it in Photoshop. If this is how you want to work, totally fine, I'll show you how to make everything work out okay, so it'll show up the way you want it to. We've got our document right here, this is just a scan, nothing's been done to it. The first thing I'm going to do is come over here and go "Image," "Mode" and change it to "Grayscale." You want to make sure you remove any type of color that's on here because your stamp will come out more perfect if you give them a black and white file. With the Illustrator file, everything was already black and white, so is okay that we use CMYK. But in Photoshop, you wanna make sure that your color mode is grayscale. Once you have that selected, now whatever we do to it, we're always going to maintain the fact that it's black and white. The first thing we're going to do is increase the contrast because as you can see, it does have a lot of gray in it and we want more blacks in it. Over here I'm going to come to my adjustments palette, and if you don't see this, you can get to it by going "Window, " "Adjustments." Don't ever go, "Image" "Adjustments," that's very destructive editing and you cannot go back once you apply those settings, so in this way, if you don't like something, you can always go back and change it. Highly recommend, always use adjustments, your adjustment palette. I'm going to come over here and I'm just going to click this "Levels" icon, and you'll see I get a little palette that opens up and a layer right here. I'm going to grab this little black node, and I'm just going to slide it a little bit. As I do that you can see my image is getting far darker. This increases the contrast with all of your blacks in your file. Then I'm just going to slide the white very slightly, just to omit so you can see the darkness on the background, this'll brighten it up. That's starting to look really good. If you want to add even more brightness and contrast, feel free to add another brightness contrast adjustment layer on top of your levels. Here you can up your brightness a little bit more and increase your contrast. Once you're happy with that, if you want to keep these little rough edges, I ended up bringing this into Illustrator and just cleaning up the edges so they're a little smoother, but if you like this hand done effect of the little bit rougher edges, totally fine and we can go with that. I'm just going to unlock this background layer by double-clicking and hitting "Okay." so then I can grab everything together. I'm holding shift and I'm selecting everything. Then I'm going to come over here and go "Canvas Size, " and we want to make sure that this is one and a half inches wide by one inch tall. I always click this middle dot if you have something else selected, you want everything to scale from the middle, so just make sure it looks like this for your anchor and hit "Okay." Whatever it says right here, just proceed because the new canvas size is smaller, but that's okay because we're going to scale it down. Now that we have everything selected since we did that first, all I have to do is hit "Command T" or "Control T" if you're on a PC and now I can scale it down. I'm holding shift as I grab the corner node and scaling. I'm just scaling down very, very slightly because I want it to be large within this space. As you can see, I'm at an angle and I would like it a little more straight so this is where I can rotate it as well. Get a position the way you'd like, like we did an Illustrator, hit "Enter" or "Return" when you're happy, and I will just save this out as a JPEG. I can go "File," "Save As" choose wherever you want to save it, down here where it says "Format," choose "JPEG," and then I'm just going to do PS for Photoshop stamp, and then hit "Save." Quality, we want it all the way up so we get those crisp edges. I'm going to hit "Okay" and that's the file that we want to use when we get to the manufacturer's site. What if you don't have Photoshop or Illustrator, but you have a drawing that you did that you'd like to use? First of all, make sure that you're drawing was created in black and white or some kind of dark color because that'll create the correct amount of contrast needed for your stamp. You can either go to adobe.com and download a 30 day free trial and use Photoshop for this editing, just like I did right here to clean this one up or in Illustrator. Or if you don't want to do that, you can use an app if you've got a smartphone, the app is called Scanner Pro. It costs, $2, and whenever you take a picture of your designs, it'll create a scan so it's a black and white image of it. It does all these levels and brightness contrasts adjustments that we just created here. You can save that and send it to yourself, to your email and then you can use that and upload it to the manufacturer's site. If you don't have Photoshop or Illustrator, you can still make it happen. Or if you have your own photo editing software and you just want to scan it in with a regular scanner, you're free to do that as well. Those are three options to getting your formats correct so then we can move on. In the next video, we'll go over uploading the artwork to the manufacturer's site and ordering our stamps. 4. Upload + Order: Okay. Now we're on our manufacturer's website and small disclaimer I'm not affiliated with RubberStamps.NET at all. I've just used them for every single time I've ever made a stamp and I've loved it every single time, would highly recommend it and I have no need to find a different manufacturer because their prices are super competitive and their shipping really couldn't be faster. So RubberStamps.NET is where we're going to create our stamps for this class. So once you arrive on the website, just come over here to stamp, right here, click there. Now you can scroll down and see all the different sizes. I realize that their website could be a lot better than it looks. But everything is really easy to understand. Just got to look past that. So as you scroll down, you can see all the different sizes that you can get for your stamp and the costs for each stamp. I ordered my 1.5 by 1 inch stamp right here and I ordered it on a Thursday and it got here on a Monday, so they're really, really fast. So I really wouldn't worry about paying any extra for shipping because they are so quick. I also ordered a bunch of stamps because there's free shipping over $30 and as long as I've been ordering stamps, it's always been that way, so I don't think that'll change. So just a heads up. If you want to make more stamps, you spend $30, you'll get free shipping. So just scroll through, see the different sizes and that'll give you an idea of what your cost will end up being as you create it. So I'm just going to come up here and since I already know that I'm doing a 1.5 by 1 inch stamp. I'm just going to click "Customize & Order". Once I get here, this is where I'm going to upload the file that we created in the previous tutorial. So right here I'm going to pick, choose file and I'm going to choose the Photoshop one that we just created and click "Open". Now you'll see it's going to show you what the stamp looks like right here. Exactly how it will appear on the stamp. As you can see, it does give you some other options if you weren't able to use Photoshop and you used the Scanner Pro app for yours. You can come down here and you can increase your brightness a little bit or your contrast. So it does give you a few little settings here. But since we did all this in Photoshop and we were happy with our brightness and contrast, we can move forward exactly how it is. So down here you can see we don't need any text edits. Don't worry about this big block right here at all. We don't need a border on it. If you want to handle, you can get a handle installed. I'm not sure how much extra that is, but definitely something to check out. I purchase my own ink pad separately. They do offer some options here if you can't get to the store in time. But I would highly recommend watching the video on stamp pads and then choosing what would be best from there. So I would advise not ordering your ink pad through them. So we see our stamp preview and we're very happy with it. So we're going to add to cart and from this point forward, that's all there really is. You just put in your information, order it, and wait for it to arrive. So it's really that easy. 5. Know Your Ink Pads: Now that we have our stamp all ordered and we're waiting for it to be delivered. We need to be prepared once it comes in the mail so we can stamp it on whatever we want and we'll know that the outcome will be exactly what we expect it to be. This is the section I want to call know your ink pads. There's a bunch of different ones. I think I've got six and all right here, so we'll jump through them pretty quickly. I think you'll get an idea right away of what will be perfect for what you want to stamp your stamp on. The first type of stamp are felt ink pads and these are the most typical type of stamp pads. When you open up your stamp pad, you'll notice that it's actually felt, the material is felt. These are dye water-based inks. The dye is actually dissolved into the felt, which makes for a very thin ink consistency. When you stamp it, it's going to be a little more translucent. This is the actually the type of stamp pad that I used for the main image of this class for get inked, where you can see it breaks up a little bit, and it's a little bit less opaque than some of my other examples. This type dries very quickly because it is such a thin consistency and it works well on many materials. But you want to use it for lighter, less bold effects because it has that translucency. The next ink pad is a pigment ink pad and I actually use and would highly recommend this brand of ink pad called colorbox. I've got a bunch of them and I've never had any issues. The ink pads that I've had, I've had for probably five years now and they are still working. They are water-based inks. They're very thick ink consistency, so it does take a little while longer for them to dry. But you can always know that you're going to get a nice opaque outcome from that ink. The color on ink pad is similar to that outcome because it is so opaque. The ink pads are made of a spongy foam which keeps them wet longer, whereas felt ink pads dry out a little sooner. You're pigment ink pads, you can expect them to last quite a bit longer. The ink stays on the surface until it's dry because it stays what, so long and it's best suited for absorbent rather than glossy materials. Because if you have a glossy material, chances are if it does dry, it's going to smear pretty easily. If you want to stamp your stamp on a more glossy material, this is not the way to go. The next ink pads are solvent ink pads. These are permanent inks. They're great for difficult or non-porous surfaces. If you are stamping on a glossy surface, this is a better type of ink to use. Just make sure when you look at the label that it says solvent ink pad, they dry very quickly and they're not going to smear or smudge once they're dry. The next one is a chalk ink pad. If you think about chalk in your head, it's very similar to the outcome that you're going to have when you stamp with this type of ink pad, they're very opaque inks, but you're going to get a matte finish once it's dry. They're fade resistant and they work well on very difficult non-porous surfaces. If you need a stamp on a glossy surface, once again, this is also a very, very good option. The next type of ink pad are embossing ink pads. These ink pads are clear, colorless, or lightly tinted. They're very, very slow drying, so they're going to remain wet for quite a long time and they're used mainly for embossing and watermarking. If you just want a watermark, you would just stamp it and then stamp it right on top of your paper or your material. If you want to emboss it, you're going to stamp with the ink pad and then you're going have the wet ink on top of the surface. Then you're going to get some chalk or pigment powders, which you can see right here and you're going to lightly dust over the top and then you're going to shake off the remaining amount. Once it dries, you'll have a raised effect similar to embossing, which is why it's called an embossing ink pad. Or you can add even a dust of silver that's a little more raised. This is a type of ink pad you want to use if you're going for those embossing effects. The last type of ink pad are these distress ink pads. They're very soft color ranges, they're water-based, they're fade resistant, and they're dye based inks. They can be used for embossing if you'd like an extra little color to show through. But they are very, very slow drying and they're ideal for creating textures and backgrounds. If you have a pattern stamp like we talked about earlier, this would be a really good option if you want to make sure that it's faded in the background so you can put your text or anything else on top of it. Distressed ink is a really good option for that. Just keep in mind that these are ideal for textures and backgrounds, not necessarily the main focal point of your artwork. That's ink pads. 6. Unpacking the Goods: So this video is unpacking the goods. I wanted to show you the different stamps that I ordered because I mentioned that I did the $30 free shipping, so I got a few stamps when I ordered them, and this will also be good inspiration, or you can use it as a guide when you're putting your own project up, so we can all see the types of stamps that you ended up getting and what they look like after you stamp them. So getting right into it. This is what it looks like when you get it in the mail. It comes in a padded envelope and then each stamp is in one of these plastic bags and obviously I couldn't wait, so I already stamp these which is why they're silver and gold. Over here is a true representation of what the stamp looks like when you're pulling it out of the padded envelope. So here's just another stamp of the Get Inked rubber stamp that I created, and this was stamped with the felt pad. These were stamped with a pigment pad for this gold one and this was the felt pad once again, and I did get a return address made which is why my address is all blurred out, but I was really happy with how this came out and I haven't been able to stop stamping them. It was perfect for Mother's Day too accept Hallmark puts an embossed logo on the back of their envelopes and I guess they didn't really noticed it before, so I had to press extra hard to try and cover that up. So I made a love you stamp because I send a lot of mail to my mom and I've got two sisters, so it was just a cute little stamp for them. Right here, my sister's birthday was the other day, so I sent her a card and right on the inside of the envelope, I stamped my little love you stamp and she was really excited to get that. Then I put this one on my mom's Mother's Day card right on, since this was a more pointed envelope and this one was a flat flap envelope. Then my last stamp that I ordered was hugs and kisses stamp because I can't ever put enough hugs and kisses on something especially for families, so I thought this would be a fun little stamp to put on anything that I send them. So those are the stamps that I ordered. I had my Get Inked stamp, my return address and xo and then I love you stamp. So that's my collection of stamps and I would love to see what stamps you end up ordering. 7. Conclusion + Thank You: That concludes our class. Thanks so much for enrolling, for watching the class, and I hope that you're inspired to create your own custom rubber stamp. Don't forget to upload any inspiration that you pulled and your final stamp to your project files so the rest of us can see it and be super jealous. If you enjoyed this class, please give it a thumbs up, it's the easiest way for other people to find the class. Thanks so much again for watching and I'll see you next time.