Rubber Stamping is a popular craft, and has gained popularity with the scrapbooking crowd recently. Rubber Stamps can become very expensive, as can scrapbooking. Here are a few ideas to incorporate stamping in to scrapping, simply and cheaply.
    Buying Rubber Stamps

1. There are two basic types of rubber stamps- Mounted (attatched to a wood or sometimes a foam block), and unmounted, sometimes called UM. Mounted stamps are generally more expensive and larger to store. Usually, the block it is mounted to will feature an image of the stamp with ideas for decorating or coloring your design. The Unmounted stamps are very small and flat, as well as very inexpensive. UM stamps don't take up much room, but you will need to buy a Stamp Mounting Kit. A stamp Mounting Kit will include either Repositional (can be removed from the stamp) adhesive or permanent adhesive, as well as blocks to mount to, and usually some kind of thin padding to 'cushion' your stamp.
   
2. There are two basic types of ink pads- Pigment or Ink. Pigment inkpads stay moist for practically forever( I have a Pigment pad from 1991 that I still use faithfully). They allow you to stamp light colors on to dark paper. If you want to use Embossing Powder (I'll discuss later), you are going to need a Pigment Ink Pad. Pigment Ink Pads also require a spray setter since this ink never really dries. Regular Ink Pads are made with a more liquidous ink, which can bleed into fiberous paper but dries quickly.

    Stamps come in a million sizes and a billion shapes. The cheapest are not always inferior. Look at the design, the rubber of the stamp. Does it look like the design is deeply etched (cut) into the rubber? Is the image cleanly applied to the mount? Does the image on the stamp mirror the image on the woodblock? If all these answers are 'yes', you have found a decent-quality stamp. The rubber should appear fresh and pink, and smell fresh,  not be brittle, sticky, or smell bad. The woodblock should not have big cracks or dents in the wood on the stamping side.
    The cheapest way to start Rubber Stamping- buy two pigment inkpads (I really like the metallics, and was working on a wedding scrapbook so my color choices were Silver and Gold. A better choice might be Pink and Red for a little girl's book, or Blue and Green for the Park, a Little Boy, or Frog Catching pages.). Now pick out three stamps- One should be a small heart or star (you will use these shapes over and over), one a medium stamp, and one should be a larger stamp (no more than 3x3 inches). Try to buy your supplies on sale whenever possible, on sale a Pigment Pad can be as cheap as $1 each. Many craft and superstores have a $1 section with rubber stamps. Those are still quality products, just less expensive.
 
       Tips To A Successful Stamping:

1. Work on a flat surface.
2. Lay the stamp straight down onto the inkpad. If you rock the stamp, you risk getting ink on your woodblock or on the part of the stamp that is just flat rubber. Remember, anywhere the ink goes, will stamp as part of your image.
3. Lift the stamp from the ink pad, position it where you want it on your page and press straight down. Again, do not rock or move the stamp.
4. Lift straight off the paper and marvel at your stamped image.
5. Clean your stamps before chaging color ink or putting them away for storage. To clean stamps- stamp the last of the ink on a scrap paper, then use an alcohol-free baby wipe to gently remove the last of the ink.

     If you would like your Pigment Ink stamped image to be three-dimensional and raised, you can use embossing powder. I prefer clear, although there are hundreds of types and colors.  Stamp your image, immediatly pour a small ammount of powdered embosser and dump the excess back into the jar. Hold the page over a bare lightbulb or by a non-steam iron. There are heat guns for sale on the market, but a lamp is just as easy at the beginning.

    Now, how to incorporate rubber stamping into a scrapbook:

1. Make custom papers by randomly stamping all over a plain piece of cardstock. Vary the angle you hold the stamps. You can make background papers, mats, or even cut tags from this paper.
2. Try creating a border for a page with a row or column of stamps dancing across the page. Stamp in just all four corners, or try filling in the gaps between photos.
3. Stamp small images on tiny tags or round tags, then string them across your page. Stamp a round tag, hang a string from it, and you've made a balloon.
4. Stamp on vellum. This looks very elegant if you use embossing powder.
5. Stamp on die cut or plain letter stickers to add pizazz to your page. When I do this, I vary the way I hold the stamp, sometimes overlapping one delicate design over another.

    There are many stamping techniques. One way to get more use from your stamps is by using different techniques so the image appears a bit different each page. Here are a few basic techniques:

1. Pop- Stamp a light colored image. Using the same stamp and a darker color, stamp almost directly over the first image. Your picture will 'pop'.
2. Moving- Stamp an image. Without re-inking, stamp the back corner edge again and again so it 'fades off'. This is great to create movement with animal stamps, but a balloon or cloud, canoe, ball.... anything that can move.
3. Pretty Marker- Use water-based magic markers to color the rubber part of the stamp (I like Crayola Washables, but you can use any brand). Breathe hard on the stamp to moisten the ink and then stamp your image on paper. This is nice for things like butterflies, flowers, clowns, anything you would like to be multicolored.
4. Mask- If you want one image in front of another, here's how: say I have two stamps, a boy and a dog. I want the dog behind the boy. I stamp the boy first on my paper. Then I stamp the boy on a piece of PostIt paper and cut him out. I stick him on my dried image, then stamp the dog right over the boy and let it all dry. When I peel off the PostIt 'Mask' , the boy is in front of the dog.

    I hope this has inspired you to try rubber stamping. It is a beautiful and fun hobby and craft.