Working with Photo Polymer Clear Stamps! Fine Detail Grunge Designs (Not Foam!)–Tutorial Tidbits

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-03

[00:00:04]It is grunge clear stamps take 400 [snorts] action.

[00:00:11]Grunge clear stamps. Elizabeth spent a great deal of time in Photoshop.

[00:00:17]I hesitate to use the word collaging, but collaging, arranging all >> Montaging. There you go. Arranging all of these elements to create these really fun grungy stamps that have all of this interesting patterning and design on it so that we don't have to. The hard work is already done. You just get to choose how you want to use it. So, Elizabeth that's her name. Begins with E.

[00:00:41]When I'm writing emails, I type E because there's just too other many too many other >> letters.

[00:00:46]>> Yeah, so you you're just E in my emails.

[00:00:48]>> There you go. Anyway, she is going to show you how she uses wet strength tissue to collage this imagery over various things on her board. And then I'm going to play around with um our imperfect journal signatures because that's my jam.

[00:01:03]Oh, I thought they were greeting cards.

[00:01:05]They can be. They're 5 by 7 so they can either be a card. They're multi-purpose or they are very imperfect. That was a long story about how that happened. But they're ready to go as either a card or I have taken these in various incarnations and you can put them together and they become signatures in a journal. So, it works really well. But >> Hmm. your thing first. Well, actually, I think that she's going to show you how she did this, but I think just these stamps over that kind of uh multi-color background is like a really great card.

[00:01:38]>> Yes, absolutely. Super easy.

[00:01:39]>> It's easy, it's colorful, and it's got all like Barb said, all the layers that I built in Photoshop. But I mean, she just stamped these in dark over light kind of roll-off sheet kind of backgrounds and and I think they're beautiful and so much more personal than uh than what Hallmark's going to make.

[00:01:56]>> Yeah. Some of the Hallmark cards are beautiful, let's face it, but there's no comparison between a store bought a store bought card. You can tell it's getting late.

[00:02:05]>> Yes. And something that you took the time to make yourself.

[00:02:08]>> Absolutely. She is the card maker of the of the two of us. She's the one who will actually make and send cards.

[00:02:13]>> I do send them. I it. So, I think that that's close.

[00:02:16]>> It's close. Do you have any stamps? I do. Okay. I actually have some stamps.

[00:02:20]>> closer for you.

[00:02:21]>> Yes, it is. It's not like I have to go to the post office.

[00:02:23]>> No.

[00:02:24]So, uh yeah, and you know what? When I make cards, I get fingerprints all over them cuz I'm kind of messy. And somebody at one time asked me um something about the messiness of the fingerprints like if it isn't that bad or whatever whatever. And I was like, "Look, nobody sends cards anymore anyway, let alone make them themselves.

[00:02:42]So, I'm sending these to my friends and family. They don't care that there's fingerprints in them. They're just excited to get a card in the mail."

[00:02:49]>> That's right.

[00:02:49]>> Right?

[00:02:49]>> I'm always excited when I see yours turn up for me. Yeah. I never send them to her, but she does Cuz I do send them to her. I'm a horrible friend.

[00:02:56]But don't feel as though they have to be perfect is my point. No. Because because a a handwritten handmade card is so rare that even if it's it doesn't need to be perfect, it's still going to be special.

[00:03:08]Yep. So, and then so what I did with uh my stamps is I stamped them on uh as I would use them in my work in my collage work as I stamped them on wet strength tissue paper and I laid them over other um papers.

[00:03:21]And I'll show you how I did this in the background of a funky florals collage.

[00:03:25]So, um people always ask me how I'm going to use them in my work. So, we showed uh for me in my demonstration, I show you how I use them in my work. And for me journal pages and tags or 4 by 4 pieces of watercolor paper are my surface of choice and then I can glue them those small pieces on something else or, you know, I can bind these together. So, here happens to be the more or less finished one. I can bind these together and if I want to come back and we have limited amount of stuff here, you know, obviously we're in our remote Sacramento studio and I don't have all my supplies. So, I'll probably add some more to this, but in the meantime, it's a good start and you get two perspectives. You get kind of my art journaling and mixed media perspective and you get Elizabeth's collage and paper painting perspective.

[00:04:12]Yeah, so lots of different ways you can use these fun stamps.

[00:04:15]>> Let's go play with perspectives.

[00:04:16]>> All right.

[00:04:17]>> [laughter] >> So, I am going to be using two of these new photo polymer stamps, clear stamps.

[00:04:27]I'm going to use grunge grit work and grunge grounding. Those are the two designs. These are so much fun. They give you super-duper fine detail, really fine lines, really fine marks, something much finer than you can get with the foam stamps. So, it's very different. Um I'm going to use them I'm leaving them mounted to the mylar on the back that they came with in the packaging so I can sort of manage them. And I am going to show you how I would use these in my artwork. But first, we shall make the overlay or the print of this. So, I'm going to use wet strength tissue so that I can have them as a transparent overlay in my artwork and I want to print them in a metallic color. So, I've decided I'm going to use copper. And I'm going to use them with paint because I wanted a metallic color. A lot of the times uh Barb and I use them with the Versa VersaFine Claire permanent ink pads um because they apply like a nice thin layer and they allow you to stamp really fine and they're permanent and they're archival and they're fade proof. But they're not metallic and I had my heart set on metallic, Barb. Well, and this is a nice opportunity to say that you can actually use these with um paint. You just need to be thoughtful about making certain that the paint doesn't dry on there and then cleaning it off before you put them away. Yes.

[00:05:52]So, yes, absolutely 100%. Just like foam stamps, there's no different with foam stamps. You don't want to let the paint dry on the surface of your stamp because it will make it ineffective. So, we have a uh sink right here. So, after I'm done stamping, we'll just put them in there and rinse it. But the other thing that I have luck with that I didn't bring with me this time, Barb, is I take a damp microfiber cloth and I keep it on my desk and I'll wipe the surface off with that damp micro microfiber and it cleans it really well. Um and then I don't have to worry about getting to the sink. Yes, your substitute's going to be a damp paper towel. Or my substitute is going to be you taking it to the sink.

[00:06:28]>> Oh, silly me.

[00:06:30]Cuz uh the towel the the paper towel if you scrub back and forth is going to is going to pill, yeah. That's just the nice thing about the microfiber is it doesn't pill um and and it'll just clean the surface.

[00:06:41]But I have been having no problem just taking them to the sink um and and rinsing them. Okay. So, I've got my wet strength tissue because I'm going to use it as a transparent overlay in my work.

[00:06:52]I've got um bronze paint and I'm going to put it out in a thin layer on the gel plate.

[00:07:02]This way, I press the stamp into the gel plate and I get a nice thin layer of paint on the stamp rather than trying to brayer the paint directly on the stamp or apply it in a way that it hits the low areas as well as the design high areas. I don't want that. I only want the paint on the design and not down in the low parts. So, I'm [snorts] going to press the stamp on to that thin layer paint on the gel plate.

[00:07:29]And then I'm going to transfer it over here to the wet strength tissue.

[00:07:38]Something that's worth noting is I forgot to bring mounts with me, acrylic mounts. But with that said, this is probably not a situation where you would use an acrylic mount anyway. You need that flexibility to kind of bend like you just did. Um and when I get to my part of the demo, you'll also notice that I'm not using a mount because again, we don't have them.

[00:07:59]But if you don't need a perfect image, then what Elizabeth is doing or using them like I will without a mount is still okay.

[00:08:08]Yes, I don't need a perfect image. I'm just trying to make a pattern. But if you wanted it to be, you know, How big are these?

[00:08:15]Roughly 4 by 6.

[00:08:16]>> So, if you wanted it to be like a 4 by 6 note card and you wanted one solid print of this, then then that's a case where you would want the mount, right?

[00:08:25]>> Yeah.

[00:08:26]Like one solid intact not messy print.

[00:08:30]Yes.

[00:08:31]So, I'm just transferring and I'm going to do multiple of these because sometimes they're not perfect or sometimes there's one section of it that you really like more than another like maybe this kind of swipe is interesting um and you want to have more of that.

[00:08:46]Let's see. Put this this way. So, I give myself a few. And this is another one of those things and I I've said this in previous videos, when I make these transparent overlays for collage, I put them all in their own pile together.

[00:09:00]So, you know, I organize my collage papers by color, but when I do uh transparent uh overlays on tissue or deli paper or medical exam paper or whatever, um I put those all in one drawer together.

[00:09:15]So, I have these options to um overlay in my collage. So, okay, so we've done that. May I take those from you?

[00:09:23]>> I'll give those to you.

[00:09:24]>> Thank you.

[00:09:25]Okay. So, now what we have here, if you see that I kind of curated where I I stamped them to take the paint off of this plate, I can make a print out of this. I can make a pickup print out of this and take advantage of all of those um patterns on the plate. But uh so, I will just set that aside, but I'll definitely use that later to create a sheet of collage paper.

[00:09:51]Okay. So, now people are always commenting below the videos and asking me, "I would like to see how you use this paper in your art. So, today I have brought a piece of my art. It's a funky florals piece. It's in progress.

[00:10:04]Still in progress, but I have established this a stenciled background area here where I stenciled directly onto the wood panel. So, this was stenciled directly onto the wood panel.

[00:10:15]It's not paper that's torn. But, here I have two strips of old printed material.

[00:10:22]And then you'll see that I've overlaid a transparent overlay with metallic. This one is kind of gold on top of that old printed material. So, I've got a trans- transparent layering in my collage here.

[00:10:35]Then down here, I've got another piece of transparent uh wet strength tissue with the stamp on it in that kind of smooth negative space there. So, you could stamp directly on here with the stamps, but you have so much more control when you have it on a transparent piece of paper that you can move around and decide where you want to put it. So, that is how I would use these stamps in my art, and I have created this little sample board where we have the same background color here.

[00:11:08]I've got the solid negative space, and I've got the old letters.

[00:11:11]So, I'm going to take my gel medium and a nice rigid bristle brush.

[00:11:20]And then I'm going to determine let's start with the first the simple stripe here. So, what you know, what section of this do I want to put there? Do I want to put these dots there? Do I want to take advantage of this squiggly line?

[00:11:35]Um you know, this where it's got kind of the the ticket. That's kind of neat there. So, I'll take the scissors and I'll trim this out.

[00:11:49]Now, before you send me a note about not using scissors, um this wet strength tissue has a grain, so it only tears in one direction. And so, for me to go across of it across the grain, it it fights me. So, that's all right because I'm just going to trim it with scissors and it's going to disappear into the background anyway, but it's something to know about the wet strength tissue. Um it doesn't always want to tear across its grain. Okay, so I'll do it either this way and wrap it around the edge, and I've brought that color around the edge of this board so I can bring the pattern around the edge.

[00:12:23]I think I like it like that.

[00:12:26]So, I get to decide what part of this what part of the stamp do I want? Which way do I want it to go? And you can audition no harm, no foul. That's the best thing about this option. Exactly. I don't have to stamp it right on there and be committed to it. And then if I didn't like it, it would be a big process to get rid of it because it would either be the permanent ink pad or the paint.

[00:12:47]So, this gives me a lot of forgiveness.

[00:12:49]And if I don't like it even once I put it down, I can peel it off.

[00:12:54]So, it's much more flexible.

[00:12:57]All right, so we're going to put that there and then brush. Oh my goodness, look at how clear and transparent that goes.

[00:13:03]>> Beautiful. Then I'll just bring the the glue around the edge here, and we'll press it so we get the same transparent pattern goes around the edge of the board.

[00:13:14]And so, you can take a solid area that's just one solid kind of plain color, and you can give it some amazing visual interest with a part of this foam stamp. I mean, this polymer stamp. And what's cool about the way that I designed these is they've got like old tickets and numbers and swirlies and dots and patterns. I did them in Photoshop, so they're they're very unique and kind of layered themselves.

[00:13:42]If you have a look at this, they've got like a lot of different patterns that I put together in Photoshop, so they've got a lot of um overlaying in in the stamp itself. Okay, so I've got that.

[00:13:54]So, now I will show you how I layered it in this area. So, we've got this effect, and now we'll have this effect.

[00:14:06]Okay, so let's get what we use over there. We get a different piece of this.

[00:14:11]Maybe we can use this wiggly line.

[00:14:14]And it doesn't even have to be the whole um section in one piece. We can glue a couple of pieces of the wet strength tissue together.

[00:14:24]And what I mean by that is I can take pieces and parts of the design out and combine them on here.

[00:14:29]So, I don't have to just tear to take one strip and be happy with what's in that strip. So, I'm going to put this here and I'm going to put it around the edge.

[00:14:41]So, I'll put a little glue over the edge and then put that. And you can see the writing of the old letters right through it, but you have that fun pattern on top.

[00:14:52]So, now I'm going to grab another section that I like and put it on the bottom. So, that's what I mean, you don't have to just go with the one stamp. So, I can go sort of in this How about in here with these dots? So, I can cut that out and see if I like that in here.

[00:15:15]And I think that would be pretty cool.

[00:15:17]So, I think it needs to be a little narrower.

[00:15:24]Okay, so we'll put that here.

[00:15:30]And again, I just I'll just take it right around the edge.

[00:15:35]So, here we have some really beautiful transparent layering going on with the metallic copper on top of the old letter.

[00:15:43]So, we might as well do the rest of it, right?

[00:15:45]>> Why not?

[00:15:48]Okay.

[00:15:49]So, and you don't have to cut this tissue exactly the same perfect size underneath because the the tissue itself disappears. So, all we're looking at is the gold patterning. So, it doesn't matter that it's uh even it could overshoot it. Let's see what it looks like if we go over it into the blue.

[00:16:10]So, we could go like that.

[00:16:13]That's kind of cool, too.

[00:16:17]>> So, now we bring the pattern out a little bit into the blue.

[00:16:27]And let's see. Here's I think the edge the border is kind of cool.

[00:16:38]>> [snorts] >> So, we could use that heavy pattern and the edge border.

[00:16:49]So, we'll put that one here.

[00:16:52]Put that like that.

[00:17:02]That's cool.

[00:17:04]That actually is a really effective color combination. Yeah, thanks. I like it. It's neutral, really. You know, the the old letter is neutral uh because it's kind of just like off-white. And then this is it's copper, but it's still relatively neutral, right? So, it's it's a good kind of not super-duper bright. So, look at that. I just love it.

[00:17:30]So, it's got the >> Yeah, it's easy. But, it's forgiving because of the wet strength tissue, and it's got the grunge stamp effects and the super-duper fine line detail that only these stamps allow. And you can see again like it's it's neutral um like that. These brightly colored flowers can really stand out against that. Like even if that was the whole background here, they would still come forward because this is kind of in the neutral family.

[00:17:57]And then down in here, like I said, you can put that um over this area even to extend it out into the stenciled area uh is kind of interesting.

[00:18:07]So, you know, lastly, you can you could even consider doing that. So, this is like that's got a stencil pattern on it.

[00:18:19]So, so we've overlaid it over the old letter, over a solid, and here I'll just I'll overlay it over a stencil pattern.

[00:18:29]And you can see how you're just building up some interest and layers with texture and pattern with these fine line stamps and wet strength tissue paper.

[00:18:44]So, not all not at all rather unexpectedly is that my approach to playing with these stamps is going to be different from Elizabeth's because I'm a journaler, and though I don't make cards, these this started as our 5 by 7 ivory and white imperfect journal signatures. And because they're 5 by 7, that means they're A7, and this could absolutely become a card if you chose to do that. So, I started First of all, I'm going to use grunge graffiti and grunge grit work. I started with one in white, and I have one in ivory, and I brayered color on. This is just regular Amsterdam acrylic paint. And then the next step was to add the darker blue in the background. And for that, I'm using the VersaFine Clair Twilight ink pad.

[00:19:28]As Elizabeth mentioned, we because I'm an idiot, I forgot to bring There we go. I forgot to bring acrylic mounts. But, honestly, for something like this, I probably wouldn't use it anyway. The stamp comes mounted on a piece of acetate, and you can see it's indexed with the design. I never even took it off. For this, it just makes sense to work this way. So, I I necessarily need super heavy coverage. I just want to get some texture on the background. So, I'm just kind of lightly tapping this. And if it's super inky, great. And if it's not, that's okay, too. I don't mind.

[00:20:01]So, I think what I'm going to do is let's do this kind of like this.

[00:20:08]And I'm just going to press this on.

[00:20:14]Okay, that works. And now I'm going to So, that was grunge graffiti. Now, I'm going to take grunge grit work. And I'm going to basically Oops, that's the cover. I'm going to pretty much do the same thing. Except that this time I'm going to stamp more or less the entirety of the design along the top. I just want to leave a little bit of open space. I don't necessarily feel like I need a ton.

[00:20:33]That's good enough.

[00:20:35]And then we'll just go ahead and put this down.

[00:20:39]And again, give it a press. And that quickly and that easily, we've got all of this interesting pattern going on in the background. Elizabeth has done all the hard work. She combined all those elements to make this really interesting background.

[00:20:52]So then, the next thing that I did was I took a stamp I forgot to grab.

[00:20:59]>> [laughter] >> That is it. There it is. And I forget which one that is, but it's the one that has this ticket area in it. And I went ahead and stamped that on some white, and that is my piece right here. You can see that I kind of grunged up the edges with some brown. That one is named grunge grounding. Thank you, Elizabeth. You saved my bacon.

[00:21:20]And so, what I did was I stamped it and I cut out the chunk that I wanted to use. And now what I'm going to do is take This happens to be pebble beach, and I'm going to just going to take this, and I'm going to grunge up the edges here. I don't like the idea of it being solid white. Sometimes you want things to look old and kind of been around the corner a few times. Um sometimes you just want to darken the edges, but since I've done that on this piece, I feel like I want to do it on the edges of this as well. And if I want to come in the middle and grunge it up a little bit in the middle, I certainly can do that. I mean, this is your project. You can make it be whatever you want.

[00:21:57]So, this is pretty easy to do.

[00:22:00]And then what I would do would be I would adhere this. I would probably adhere this on this side this time, just for the heck of it.

[00:22:07]And then I came in and I put these numbers on. And honestly, I don't think you need me necessarily to see how to glue something on, but you get the overall effect. Um I know I'm going to do some more up here. Maybe it would be words. Maybe it would something that runs horizontally so that I have something kind of opposite of everything else that's going on here. But this is the basics to get it started. And with these four stamps, you have the opportunity to create all kinds of interesting patterns truly effortlessly.

[00:22:38]So, four new photopolymer clear stamp designs with excellent What do you call it? Fine line detail that you can't get from foam stamps or other things. So, definitely something good to have in your mixed media repertoire. There you go. Now you go.

[00:22:53]We'll see you back here next time.