As part of my protracted rebranding process I've been needing to redesign the "welcome" cards I send to new team members, and I recently sat down to do that. The previous cards I'd been sending had been created and printed through our MDS software and printing services, and they featured our team's previous branding colors. This time around I wanted something I could stamp myself, yet keep most of the design contemporary with current stamps. And of course I wanted to use the word "Welcome" in it.
Weeelllll, a thorough study of my collection of current stamps turned up only the "Welcome, Baby" from Petite Pairs. I cogitated on that for a while, knowing I could mask out the extra word, but then decided the whole thing was just too tiny for my vision anyway. Eventually I settled on the photopolymer alphabet set "Back to Basics Alphabet". I really like the simple style of that set, and I've used it several times, but I rather *dislike* the process of lining up all the letters!
The way I've aligned letters in the past has been to place them flat-surface-up onto my grid paper and then once aligned, plop the acrylic block over the entire word or phrase. That gets them "pretty close", and usually only a little touch-up to alignment is required afterwards.
But what makes me crazy about the process is that the "very sticky" photopolymer pieces stick to *everything* in the process: my skin, my nails, any tools I might try to use to nudge a letter this way or that just the teensiest bit. To say the process takes patience is an understatement. Ask anyone who attended last month's card classes where we were using our own initials for one of the designs…. and THAT required only THREE letters, lol!
So after beginning the same process with these much smaller letters, a rare flash of brilliance (and believe me, such moments occur VERY rarely in my case, lol), made me grab my Stampin' Trimmer, and I tried the same process on ITS grid line! And the results were AMAZING…… because the stamps actually STICK to the grid and don't get knocked all kattywampus if you happen to breathe! So I got 'em all lined up in a flash, and then pressed the acrylic block down and Voila!…… aligned letters all ready to use!
Click on the image up above for a full resolution view.
Product List
