Review | New Teresa Collins Stampmaker

Reported by Angela Butler-Carter

Teresa Collins is a product designer of "craft and scrapbook products with timeless style and chic appeal" (TeresaCollinsDesigns.com). She has designed some of my most favorite scrapbooking collections including her new Memorabilia Collection as well as her Far And Away collection. I am also a huge fan of her stamps. They are high quality and fantastic for cardmaking.

Today, I am sharing with you her most innovative project yet which is the Teresa Collins Stampmaker. Teresa has partnered with Photocentric, the first company to bring a personal sized stamp maker into the scraprooms of crafters everywhere, to market their Stampmaker machine. Crafters and stampers like myself now have the opportunity to design and create our own stamps. It really is a dream come true as I'm sure many crafters, myself included, have been in the position of wanting just one perfect image that we could not find anywhere in a stamp form. Now with the Stampmaker, that is no longer a problem!

The package arrived in a gorgeous grey polka dot box. And here is the contents:

Teresa Collins Stampmaker

The Stampmaker was very easy to use. It comes packaged with a 12 step handout that tells you exactly how to create your stamp plus sample images that you can use to create stamps. I used one of those samples to create the stamp pictured in the bottom of the image above.

From start to finish, it took less than 15 minutes to create my stamp. That is fantastic!

IMG_1208

The new Teresa Collins Stampmaker kit comes with a timer, gloves, and wash tray to be used when creating your stamp. It also comes with design software that can be used to design your own images and invert them to be able to print the negative image with the black background.

It is important to note that you will need to be able to print on acetate to create your stamp as well as have an inkjet printer.

IMG_1213

In the image above, you can see the finished stamp along with my initial inkings. The stamp is not perfectly clear. It has a pinkish tinge to it, and this picture shows the stamp after stamping with a dark aubergine ink.

I  was pleasantly surprised by how well this image stamped. I used a Hero Arts Shadow ink (Peach) for my initial inking because they are known to be very forgiving since they tend to spread a tiny bit correcting any areas that may not have stamped correctly.

The stamp came out to be about 3/8" thick so it's relatively thin in photopolymer stamping terms. I was initially worried that this thinness wouldn't produce a crisp image but I was happy to see that the image stamped just fine. Also the acrylic block that came in the kit was perfect for working with the thin stamp because the handle provided the perfect place to apply pressure to the center of the image so that all the little details came out perfectly with this particular design.

Below, you can see a close-up of the stamp on the acrylic block and a darker inking of the stamp. I used Papertrey Ink's Scarlet Jewel ink to really get a good idea of how the stamp would perform. Scarlet Jewel is a dye ink so it isn't very forgiving if the stamp was not made properly and would certainly show any imperfections in the quality of the stamp.

IMG_1211

Above, you can see the stamp on the acrylic block as well as that third inking using the darker ink. The image came out very well and I am so happy with the design and the quality of stamp that the Teresa Collins Stampmaker produces. I love it!

Pros:

  • From start to finish, the stamp making process is less that 20 minutes
  • Very clear directions
  • Video tutorials as well as software included

Cons:

  • Kit includes very limited supply of cling material (only enough to create one medium stamp or two smaller stamps)
  • Included brush was cheaply made and shedding bristles
  • Availability of the refill materials is quite limited.

Contributor

Craft Critique is delighted to welcome a variety of talented industry professionals as contributors to share their expertise with our readers.


Previous
Previous

Review | Close To My Heart My Acrylix Spritz Cleaner

Next
Next

Review | Xyron Mini Sticker Maker