Before you can start mounting your own stamps let us have a look at the anatomy of a rubber stamp. The stamp you buy complete has four parts.

The Index
This is the image you see stamped on the top of the wooden mount to show you what the design looks like.

The Mount
This is generally a block of wood. It has been shaped, sanded, varnished and indexed to make it easy to identiy and pleasant to use. There are also Acrylic Mounts which uses either the cling sheet or "Off/On" glue (available at any good craft shop).

The Cushion
In a bought stamp this will be a double sided high density foam. It is easy to use. StampMania Australia sells double-sided adhesive cushions at $6.50 per 15cm x 15cm square.

The Die
Lastly we come to the working part. This is the piece of rubber that has been moulded into the design (image) that you fall in love with.

Sometimes this piece of rubber needs to be trimmed. This means that it will have excess rubber around the edges of the design. If this rubber is not trimmed it will leave unwanted lines around the image with stamped. So cut this rubber off with sharp scissors being careful not to cut into the design. All StampMania Australia's unmounteds are trimmed so you do not need to worry about this step.

So now we know the parts that make up a rubber stamp, let's look at what we can do once we have purchased the rubber die. Generally speaking unmounted stamps can be purchased for half the price of a completed stamp. This is a great savings particularly for those who buy lots of stamps.

Peel the backing off the cushion and press the die onto the cushion. Cut around it. I'm sure most of you have bits and pieces of wood lying around at home somewhere. If not, you can go to a hardware store and get a stick of wood and get the handyman (or handywoman) to cut it up into blocks. We sell "Wood Blocks", all precut and ready to use at only $9.95. With the die mounted onto cushion, peel the backing from the other side of the cushion and press onto a piece of wood firmly.

That only leaves us with the index. The easiest way to do this is to stamp your design onto an adhesive address label which you can get from office stationery supplies stores or discount stores such as K-Mart, Big W, Target. Cut it to size, peel off the backing and stick to the top of the mount.

Now you have a completed stamped. And it's so easy to do!