From the desk of
Leslie Blackburn Ohnstad,
President Luminarte Inc.

Direct To Rubber (or DTR) is the technique of applying color on the surface of a rubber stamp with a paintbrush, a sponge tip applicator or whatever tool suits the application.
Materials

• Fine Mist spray bottle

• Paintbrush or sponge tip applicator (Tsukineko)

• Rubber stamp: The best type of stamp for this technique is a solid stamp versus an open “lined” stamp. There also many botanical style stamps that the lines are so tight if you were to emboss the image in black there would not be much room to color in. Companies such as Fred B. Mullett, Magenta, Hero Arts and Penny Black just to name a few have great stamps for this Direct To Rubber technique.

Example:
Solid Stamp: Would be the pear from “A Stamp in The Hand”
Lined Stamp: A beautiful rose that one could be color in the lines.

Technique

Begin waking up the colors by misting the jars with the fine mist spray bottle. Allow the water to soak in by letting the colors set for a few minutes. Mist the jars a second time wait a couple more minutes.

The paint should begin to soften and easily mix into a creamy texture with your paintbrush. (Consistency of a pigment in a re-inker bottle)

Start with a dry stamp and dry paintbrush. Dip your brush into the pot and roll the excess paint off brush. Paint the color across the top of the stamp.

Too much paint can fill in the design and create a blob of color when stamped. Note: Each time the color is rinsed off the brush squeeze the excess water out keeping the brush dry and paint consistency on your stamp creamy.

Once the image is colored, it can now be stamped. Many times the first couple of colors applied will have dried. However, this is a good thing, so don’t worry because this is where your fine mist bottle comes in handy. With the stamp image facing up, lightly mist from between 6 to 8 inches away, allowing the mist of water to gently rain on the rubber. Now, turn the stamp over and stamp. Mist again and stamp, mist and stamp repeat for multiple stampings until no more color comes off.

The depth of the grooves of the rubber determines the amount of impressions achieved. For example a solid stamp has no grooves therefore might reap you 3-4 impressions. Versus a tightly lined stamp may stamp 8-16 impressions.

Note

• If you hold the stamp upright and mist directly on the surface of the image, gravity could make your colors run – not good.
• Watch your water as you stamp. Does the image have good detail? There are exceptions where we mist & stamp then maybe mist stamp, stamp.
• Twinkling H2O’s clean easily with water, and wash right off your stamps.