Deidre asked me this today:

SO I have a question regarding Staz On. When I use it I often get splotchy images where the ink hasn’t taken well or it is sticky when I apply to the paper. I really have to ink it up and look at it to make sure I am going to get a good image….it is so much work! I have reinked and more. Do you think it is because my staz on is old? Should I just get a new pad? Does anyone else have this problem???

What a great question!! Actually, the question is so great, that I couldn’t just respond to Deidre alone. I had to share my experience with everyone.

There is absolutely nothing worse that gooey, gloppy, sticky ink that gets everywhere! I avoid this by doing one simple thing…

I ink my stamps upside down!

Seriously, I find this solves the problem 95% of the time. Let’s look…

A lot of people lay their stamps down onto the ink pad as shown on the left.  That is how I stamped the “Oh Hoppy Day” sentiment on the right. 

A lot of times, stamps that are inked in this manner get too much ink on them. And not in the right spots!! The extra gloppy ink can look like this:

See how the ink pools around certain spots? Not every image will do this. But when they do…yuck.

Then, when you put the image on your paper (I’ve used Stampin’ Up! Whisper White here), it gets smudgy.

Now, here are two notes.

1. I find this to happen most often with Stampin’ Up! Whisper White because of its smooth finish. That is why I chose to use it here.
2. There seems to be a “slicker” side on Whisper White. I tend to notice the “stick” sound when I stamp on it. The other side doesn’t seem to do this. I’m not sure how to tell the difference.

Now let’s look at the image I stamped doing the “upside down” technique.

I pat the ink pad onto the stamp making sure every area is covered. I don’t push hard. I just pat it over until the image is completely covered.

See the difference between the two images? No pooling or extra gloppy ink on this one!

And here is my sentiment when stamped this way:

See how much clearer the bottom is?

Now, I said this cures 95% of problems. If you try this and it doesn’t work, I would spend the extra money for a new pad. I’d also try a different paper.

I really love PaperTrey Ink’s white paper. I’ve tried a few other white card stocks and by far, PTI’s rocks my world.

And one last thing…you should check out Deidre’s blog. She’s got some extremely cute projects on there!

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