Weddingbee Blog

As soon I received our Etsy address stamp, I was dying to stamp all our envelopes with it. You see, when I went to place the order for our invitations, the lovely people over at Ajalon Printing & Design gave me all our invitation envelopes and about 1/4 of our RSVP envelopes to take home, so I could have time to add calligraphy them (more on that later!). I was able to hold off on the stamping for a few days, but in the midst of finals craziness, I decided to take a break and try out my stamp. Unfortunately, my first try was kind of a fail. I used dye-based ink (Marcela K from Target) and it bled on the 100% Cotton Crane Lettra envelopes. Additionally, my attempts at eyeballing the placement of the stamp resulted in crooked addresses. The following conversation ensued:

Me: OMG, I stamped some of our envelopes and they came out blurry! The ink is bleeding onto the paper!
Mr. Jelly: Let me look at that. It looks fine!
Me: Do you think anyone will notice it?
Mr. Jelly: If someone actually cares enough to notice that our return address is slightly blurry, then I don’t want them to come to our wedding.
Me: What if that someone is… um… your wife?

Touché, mon frère.

So it was back to the drawing board.

I had to find some way to make the ink not bleed and to align the addresses. Off I went to my trusty local Paper Source, where I was able to test different inks and find one that didn’t bleed on my paper! The one I bought is ColorBox Pigment Stamp Pad, and it works great! Even Mr. Jelly noticed a difference.

But there was still the problem of alignment. How would I get the stamp to be parallel to the edges of the envelope? I didn’t want to buy any fancy alignment tools, so here is what I came up with:

1) Take your standard paper trimmer thingy

2) Place envelope under the arm of trimmer

3) Make sure it’s lined up to the straight edge

4) Line up bottom of your stamp with top of plastic arm each time you stamp

5) Voila! Perfectly aligned address stamps. I wish I could show you, but so much of it would have to be blurred out that it’s not worth it. Just trust me—see all those envelopes on the table? The addresses are straight on all of those!

Some more stamping tips:

• Apply even pressure on all parts of the stamp (which in my case, meant not using the handle)
• Use the right kind of ink for your paper (this might require trial and error)
• Practice, practice, practice – on scrap paper. I ruined about 10 envelopes before I started getting a knack for it

Have you had any difficulties doing seemingly simple crafting tasks? I’d love to hear your tips!