Weddingbee Blog

I didn’t think I’d care too much about everything being in ‘our colours’ at the wedding. But, the other day I was walking through IKEA, when I saw packages of napkins in exactly the right green! Naturally, I bought three.

Now that we had green napkins, I started wondering if we could personalize them. I have a Gocco that I bought 2 or 3 years ago, but I’ve never used it. I also have quite a large collection of rubber stamps and ink, including a book-themed set that I’d just bought from PaperTrey Ink. I decided that we could use all the little quotes about books on the napkins. Then, if there are leftovers, they won’t so obviously be wedding leftovers. I knew I’d have to test the various different stamp inks for colourfastness when wet—we don’t want Uncle Arthur to end up with an ink smear on his forehead!

Ink Test Station

I got out one of each of all the different types of stamp inks I have: Memento (dye-based), ColorBox (pigment-based), Staz-On (scary solvent-based), and Distress Ink (different dye-based). I know there is a pad of VersaMark in the photo, but I never bothered to test with it as I decided I didn’t want to go to the bother of embossing the napkins. I also had my little CD case of stamps, a stamp block, and pen and paper to take notes. I used a different stamp for each ink so I could tell them apart easily. I made a key on my piece of paper so I’d remember what was what.

I was pretty sure I wanted to use black ink, but I decided to test two different Distress Ink blues to see how they worked. I used Colorbox’s Evergreen because that was the only pigment ink I had. If it won the test, I’d just go out and buy a black one.

I let the napkins sit over night, just to give the ink some extra drying/curing time. Then this morning, I dropped water on all of them to see what happened! It was science experiment time!

I dropped some water from a spoon on to a stamped area, then rubbed it with my fingers to see if anything came off. I also dabbed it on my key paper, to see if any ink ended up on that. The Colorbox green bled all over my paper! The Distress ink didn’t run when wet, but it also didn’t give as crisp of an impression as the Memento and the Staz-on did, so it got ruled out.

StazOn stays on anything—you can stamp on glass, leather—all sorts of non-porous and semi-porous surfaces. It’s stinky, comes with two lids, and the back of the package says to use only in well-ventilated areas, and not to ingest. Mr. CB is concerned about the food-safeness of these inks, so that one was pretty much a no from the start, but I felt like my science experiment needed more than 3 test subjects!

Memento gave a nice stamped impression, and didn’t run when wet. Tsukineko (the company who makes it) doesn’t list it as non-toxic on their website, but many other websites do. It is water-based, and acid free, and conforms to ASTM D-4236. Huh?

In looking up ASTM D4236, I found that it is a labeling standard for art supplies. The fact that something conforms to this code doesn’t mean it is non-toxic! It acknowledges that there may be health hazards involved with the use of the product and how to prevent these effects. Products that conform to D-4236 have been tested for toxicity. This does not mean they are non-toxic, but rather any toxins contained within the product are listed on the packaging. There are no toxins listed on the package, which I suppose means that it has been tested as the standard requires, and there was nothing to write home about in the findings. Luckily, that was good enough to satisfy Mr. CB!

I tried another stamp on the napkins, too:

It’s a background stamp, of very tiny text. I think I like the look of the little quotes better, and I feel like if we use this stamp, people will spend all night trying to read it out—it’s not just nonsense words; there is meaning in there. The text is nice, but I don’t want to see guests peering at the napkins all night. I also think that that stamp might look better on smaller napkins, where it could run all the way from edge to edge, even running off the edges.

These IKEA napkins do have a sort of embossed border along the two unfolded edges. The stamp above is nestled right into that corner—in the photo above the border goes along the bottom, and up the right side. I think that is where I want to stamp. The other option is giving it a little turn so it is a diamond shape, not a square, and stamping the quotes as far down as the fit in the ‘V’ of the napkin border. I’m leaning towards the square look I think, but I’ll see what Mr. CB likes too.

Have you attempted to hand-stamp napkins? What ink/method did you use?