Unmounting my Jolly Jingles Wheel Stamp

How do you make 9 Christmas stamps from ONE jumbo wheel?? With a little DIY!  When I saw that the Jolly Jingles jumbo wheel was on clearance for $8.99 I had to do this!
I already had the Clear Mount Cling Foam (p. 197 Annual Catalogue $18.95), so about 15 minutes later I had my new stamps.

Note:  This may not be for everyone.  You will either be excited or horrified at what follows.

Here's the wheel as it's sold:

And here's what I did:

Using a sharp hobby blade/ craft knife, find the join and carefully slice between the join.  Starting at one corner, gently peel the rubber away from the adhesive.  I found mine came away very easily.

Lay it out flat and carefully cut apart the greetings.  Some of the words are VERY close together, so check twice because you can only cut once.  The rubber is of course flexible, so I found that holding it and bending it gently to get in between the words worked well.  I cut it into 9 separate stamps, you could do more or less depending on where you choose to cut. 

Next, cut a piece of cling mount foam large enough to spread the stamps out with small gaps around each side. The foam has two sides, one that is sticky (rubber attaches to this self-adhesive side) and the other that is not sticky but will cling to an acrylic block.  You can use the clear mount cling foam to convert any of your wood mount stamps to clear mount if desired.

Peel off the backing paper and expose the sticky adhesive.  Stick your newly trimmed individual rubber stamps onto the adhesive ready to cut them out.  I found a great tip by Jeanette Swain, dust baby powder (or other cornflour etc) on to the exposed sticky adhesive to allow easier cutting.  This prevents the cling mount from sticking back on itself.  Use scissors to cut the cling foam to fit the rubber.  Clean the scissor blades with eucalyptus oil or stazon remover if necessary.

****Of course I only found that tip AFTER I stuck my entire piece of rubber onto the foam and then proceeded to cut the rubber AND foam apart simultaneously with my blade.  D'oh.***** 

Enjoy your new custom made greetings!  It's nice to look at your stamps and see how they may be better suited to your needs with a little DIY.

Store your DIY stamps in our clear mount stamp cases.  They are DVD sized and come as a pack of 4 for $9.95.

Happy Stamping,