Clearsnap StamPress

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Reported by Sara McKenzie

Clearsnap is a company that manufactures Ancient Page, ColorBox and Fluid Chalk inks, in addition to jumbo and standard size stamping wheels. The "StamPress" is a machine that allows you to use both size stamping wheels for "imprinting, impressing and embossing" just about anything: paper, foil, polymer clay, shrink plastic, ribbon, fabric, sticker paper, drywall tape, cork- get the idea?

I purchased the StamPress some time ago, and was excited to finally pull it out and explore what can be done with it. It also appears that the StamPress is now provided with an instructional DVD- which was not included when I bought mine. But there is a pretty good video on the Clearsnap site if you need it.

The StampPress comes with everything you need to get started, including a Coal Black Ancient Page ink cartridge, a Jumbo stamp wheel, and two Polyclay trays (one for Jumbo wheels and one for standard). The Clearsnap price is $45.00.

When you pull it out of the box, it looks like a complicated contraption- but it really only has a few moving parts, and it does disassemble and re-assemble easily for cleaning.

Above is a photo of the essential pieces of the StamPress, unassembled.

The photo above shows the drive wheel being inserted as part of the re-assembly process.

Above, you can see the housing for the stamp wheel and the ink cartridge. Everything is easily put together by lying the machine on it's side until you have both the drive wheel and the gray housing inserted in their respective slots.

The photo above shows the simple locking mechanism that holds all the pieces together.

A regular, Jumbo-sized ink cartridge fits into the housing, and with a spring-loaded mechanism, snaps into the proper position (just like in a handle). (See above.)

The ink cartridge housing snaps into place on the back side of the gray housing. The photo above shows it in relation to the stamping wheel that has already been inserted.

Finally, the photo above shows the StamPress ready for action. This is what it looks like with the wheel up, before you have engaged the material you will print on. Below is how it looks when you rotate the wheel downward and apply enough pressure on the drive wheel to pull your material through while making the impression.

Clearsnap provides numerous supplies for use with the StamPress. (Note: They have a funky website which does not allow you to bookmark a specific page. Personally, I find this annoying, but I suppose they have their reasons. To find the StamPress and supplies, go to the Clearsnap website, then click on "Stamps" on the menu bar, then "StamPress" on the drop-down menu bar. From left-to-right are photos of the StamPress, Jumbo wheels, Standard wheels, the drive wheel, StamPress supplies, and ink cartridges. Click on any one of those photos to get the product details.)

Available Clearsnap supplies include:

• White adhesive-backed paper strips: 2" x 12"; 24 pieces, 12 each of matte and glossy finish, $6.00. Use these to print out Jumbo (2") or standard size (approx 1") borders for use on scrapbook pages, cards, frames, and other papercrafts.


• Scored, adhesive-backed metallic paper: 2" x 12"; includes 4 each of silver wavy; silver straight edge; gold wavy; and gold straight edge for $6.00. You can print on these with permanent ink and then separate the 2"wide strip into narrower strips along the score.


• Scored, adhesive-backed white paper strips: 2" x 12"; 5 each of matte wavy, matte straight-edge; glossy wavy, and glossy straight-edge, $6.00. These, like the metallic paper, can be imprinted and then separated into narrower strips to make decorative borders.


• Embossable foil strips: 2" x 12"; 10 each of gold and silver, $6.oo. These are not self-adhesive.


• Polyclay trays: 20 trays for use in imprinting polymer clay; 10 each for Jumbo wheels and standard wheels. $6.00. These trays can be baked, and can be re-used, so one package will go a long way.

In addition, Clearsnap makes over 200 wheels for rubber stamping. The Stampin' Around Wheels from Stampin' Up! also work.

I played around with good old-fashioned cardstock, embossable foil, and polymer clay.
The photo above shows the gold embossable foil being fed into the StamPress, without any ink. Underneath the foil you can see the red, rubber embossing mat that is required for creating the impression in the foil (included with the StamPress kit).

Above, you can see the resulting embossed foil, without ink. Below, is the same foil, embossed and impressed with ink.

I did not end up using the foil on on a project, yet. I found that because it is soft enough to be easily embossed, it is also soft enough to be easily marred or bent with simple handling after you have made your impression. Right now I don't see how you could use it on anything that was going to be handled after it was finished, because of the possibility of damaging the impression.

So I moved on to polymer clay. After conditioning the clay in my clay-only pasta machine, I cut a piece slightly shorter and narrower than the tray, and put it on the glossy side of the tray.

In the photo above is my conditioned polymer clay in a jumbo Polyclay Tray. (Why I used white clay, I'll never know!! What was I thinking!!)

If you have any trouble with the clay sticking to the stamping wheel, you can brush it with a bit of baby powder, or if you are using dark clay, spritz it with a bit of water.

The Polyclay Tray feeds into the StamPress as easily as any other medium, and you have a lot of flexibility in achieving the right amount of pressure to obtain a deep enough impression. You can then put the entire tray into the oven for curing the polymer clay. In my case, however, I wanted to divide the clay into separate panels. So I gently pulled up the impressed clay from the tray, and cut it into pieces, before putting it on a tile for baking.

Impressed and baked polymer clay, above.

Below, the lid of a box that was decorated with one of the polymer clay panels.

Above: A charm that I made after running shrink plastic through the StamPress, cutting out the image, and coloring with pastels (pencil for scale).

Below: The charm used to decorate the top of a tiny hexagonal box.

Pros:

• The StamPress provides constant, even pressure as it prints, resulting in a firm, uniform impression.

• You can use jumbo wheels, and with simple adaptors, standard wheels as well for even more design choice.

• It is very easy to swap out wheels (they snap in and out with just a little pressure) and just as easy to swap out ink cartridges.

• Clearsnap provides interesting supplies pre-cut to fit into the StamPress, and at a reasonable cost.

• You can print on just about anything you can feed through the machine: paper, cardstock, polymer clay, shrink plastic, ribbon, foil, fabric, etc.

• It is very easy to assemble and disassemble for cleaning.

Cons:

• It's expensive!!

• The widest thing you can imprint on is 2".

• It doesn't really do much more than you can already accomplish with a wheel and a handle. And in some ways, it is less versatile. For example, with a wheel on a handle, you can decorate an entire sheet of paper, running the stamp wheel again and again across the paper. You cannot do this with the StamPress; you can only make decorated strips.

Even with all of the "Pros", overall, I was disappointed in my investment. I think of the StamPress as somewhat like a hot dog cooker: it does it's job really well, but it only does one thing. In the same way that there are other ways to cook hot dogs without a specific cooker, you can use stamp wheels with a handle and achieve even more than you can with the StamPress.

If, however, you are always disappointed with the way your images turn out using the handle and a wheel (e.g. light impressions, uneven impressions, skipped areas), you might want to give the StamPress a try. This is the one thing that it did repeatedly and did really well: make even, dark impressions.

You can purchase the StamPress online from:

• Clearsnap
• Blockhead Stamps
• Suzy Scraps
• Amazon

And you can purchase the supplies for $5.75 from GotaStamp.

I would really love to know if you think I've been too harsh on the StamPress- I'm always ready to learn new ways to use all of our toys! Let us hear from you!!