Made by Gail Mitchell

I have been looking for a nice and easy way to add a "made by me" label to the small gifty items I make to give away.    I have no idea if this will work or not, but time will tell.  

I decided to order myself some custom jelly stamps. They are like rubber stamps, but without the wooden blocks.  You apply your jelly stamp to an acrylic block, do your stamping, then clean it, remove it from the acrylic block and store it away.   I think these stamps are mostly intended for paper, but I'm using cotton. I got my acrylic stamping block at Michael's.

I started out by ironing a piece of washed muslin to paper backed fusible Pellon 805.   I only own one stamp pad, so I used it to start my experiment.  It is ordinary archival based ink.    Here are some of my notes so far.

Note 1 - Be careful not to move the stamp.

Test 2 - Be careful to give even pressure.

Note 3 - too light

Note 4 - Use a heavier fabric so you don't see the under fabric.

Not bad for the first label.  

I did iron this little label on before stitching around it.   This particular label will be on the inside of a little zippered pouch that I'm making for a silent auction at the guild next month.  I like it    And I like the brown color of the ink as well.   But you can be sure that I'll be checking out Michael's selection of other colors.

I'm not sure if it will be waterproof.  I may do further experiments and try one of my mis-stamps to see if it runs after heat setting.   But for now, I will only use on items that will not likely be washed.

So, what do you think.  Do you like the idea?   I may do a small demonstration at guild next week.