There are two different formats to choose from when buying rubber stamps.  We sell BOTH mounted and Unmounted.  We find that stampers truly have a preference for one version over the other.  Many stampers prefer the standard wood-"mounted" version because they love the feel of the wood as they stamp.  Other stampers are switching to the "unmounted" format.  Unmounted stamps have two main benefits: they are cheaper to purchase (usually about 1/2 the price of mounted stamps) and they take up much less space to store. 

I've gotten many questions about how to use the unmounted version. If you are new to the unmounted concept, let me explain how you can use it!

First, the stamps you will buy are sold as the rubber only.  Try to purchase stamps with a good-sized margin of spare rubber around the image.  This makes it easier to trim while on the cling foam.  At Purrs And Pants we always cut apart our plates by splitting the rubber in between the images in half as much as possible, so each image has as large of a margin as we can make it.  OR, if you have wood mounted stamps already, you can pull the rubber off and start that way!

We recommend the cling foam system.  Cling foam is a sheet of foam that is sticky on one side and slick on the other.  You will put your rubber stamps on the sticky side.  Try to arrange the stamps to fit as many as possible on each sheet. 

Once your stamps are stuck on the sheet, trim around the images.  We like the Cutter Bee "Honey Bee" scissors which can be found in Michaels.  Try to trim as close to the images as possible.  This will prevent extra ink from building up on the edges of the rubber and making spare marks on your project as you stamp.  If your scissors start getting sticky, clean them with UnDu.

After you trim the stamps you can peel the protective paper off the slick side.  This slick side sticks by static cling!  We store our stamps on plastic storage sheets (which we sell here!) in 3-ring binders.  The storage sheets can hold your unmounted stamps on BOTH sides of each sheet.  Then your stamps are neatly stored in 3-ring binders!

If you use this system, you can ink ALL of the stamps that you have on one plastic storage sheet, then press a piece of cardstock on them.  That piece of cardstock now becomes the image key that you can store alongside your stamps in the binder.  See our picture here:

Now all you need to be able to stamp your images is a small collection of acrylic blocks.  We sell a set of blocks that will fit about 90% of our designs.  We also have a specially-made acrylic block that fits the chocolate hanger stamps we have. 

Now you can peel the stamp you want off the storage sheet, apply it to an acrylic block, and stamp with it!  There is a nice benefit of being able to see your paper through the block.  You can peel the stamp from the plastic storage sheets and stick it to an acrylic block an unlimited number of times.  It sticks with static cling, and will not lose the cling capability.