You will need a roll of Scotch brand Double Stick Tape to use this product.
Your Red Letter stamp set contains a laminated storage board where you will store your letters. You apply tape to the rows on the storage board and then stick your letters in place as you cut them out. Because it is laminated, the board will be long lasting, resist damage from the tape, and be easy to clean-up. When the tape becomes dirty, you can remove and replace it without damage to the storage board. The storage board, with letters attached goes into the protective sleeve when not in use. Several alphabets can be kept in a binder if so desired.
Please Note: Letter Setters are now sold separately, and the cost of each alphabet has been adjusted downward accordingly. Make sure to purchase Letter Setters with your first alphabet. You can use the acrylic stamp mounts you already own, but ours are only 1/8" thick so there is no distortion when viewing a guideline through them, and they are lightweight and easy to handle and store right in the binder sleeve with your alphabet.
Your package contains a protective binder sleeve, a laminated Red Letter Storage Board, and a sheet of rubber. The rubber sheet contains 169 images - multiples of upper and lower case letters, numerals and punctuation marks for this particular font. This allows you to actually spell out words and sentences and stamp them as a whole.
First, remove everything from the binder sleeve, and run a strip of double stick tape along each row of the storage board.
Find a comfortable spot with very good light, and get yourself a nice cup of tea and your Kai or other high quality rubber cutting scissors. Background music is a nice addition too.
Trim your letters and press them*firmly* in their spaces on the Storage Board. The tape will hold the letters nicely in place on the board. Trim as closely as you can to the sides of each letter so you will be able to place them close together on the Letter Setters. Take your time - this is a fine tool that you will be using often.
When your Storage Board is full, you are ready to start setting type. Choose a Letter Setter of the proper size for what you want to say.
Place a strip of Scotch double stick tape along the middle (lengthwise) of the acrylic Letter Setter. Spell out your words or phrases Remembering to arrange the letters in backwards order. (Heaven help those right brains!)
When your phrase is complete, turn the Letter Setter over and press firmly on a piece of scrap paper. This will “set” your type to insure it won’t come off during inking.
Ink the letters by tapping on an ink pad, or tapping the pad on the letters - just as you would do with any rubber stamp.
We are using an Inkredibles pad by Stewart Superior, which is the “stickiest” we have found. With the strip of double stick tape in place, none of the letters move at all.
Stamp on to scrap paper and analyze the results. Perhaps the best thing of all about this system is that you can “proof” your work. We study this impression and notice that the “t” is slightly crooked in the word Set and in some, the “o” is low and the “e” is high. Letters with round bottoms should sit just slightly below the baseline. Flat bottomed letters should sit right on it. These adjustments are easy to make - although we do get a little bit of ink on our fingers. If that bothers you, clean the stamp first as shown below.
Stamp and proof your “revised” type.
If you like the result, go ahead and stamp it “where it matters”, feeling assured that you won’t be messing up that beautiful page or card you worked so hard on.
Type Setting Tip:
If you don’t care for the slightly crooked “handset” look that most artists seem to prefer, temporarily tape your Letter Setter over a sheet of lined paper. Use the lines you can see through the acrylic to better align your type.
Fold a damp paper towel and stamp on it repeatedly until no impression is left. Then, stamp onto a dry paper towel to remove moisture from the letters. When they are clean and dry, return them to their spots on the Storage Board.
Type Setting Tip:
Our artist brains don’t all read backwards so well. After first stamping with black permanent dye ink, we don’t clean our stamps. Then, the backward letters are easier for our brains to perceive, because of the contrast of black on red rubber. This doesn’t affect future stamping.
Helpful Tip:
When returning the loaded Storage Board to its protective sleeve, push the two edges of the sleeve toward the center as the board slides in. That will lift the leading edge away from the letters and minimize the possibility of scraping them off.
Tuck the two Letter Setters behind the Storage Board and keep the whole thing in a binder for next time. The tape can stay on the Letter Setters until it becomes soiled or loses its “stick”. Then, you can easily replace it.