Stamping and cutting
Cutting or trimming your card stock
Generally you don't need a full A4 sized piece of card stock for any of your projects, and so it is good if you can cut it in a way that saves the most card stock for later.
The most efficient way that I have found to do this is to generally cut the A4 sheet either into halves or quarters. For instance, if I wanted to cut a 9.5cm x 14cm piece of card stock, I would do it on my Stampin Trimmer as follows:
Take an A4 sheet of card stock and cut it in half along the long edge at 14.9cm or 15cm. You would do this by lining the A4 sheet of paper up to the top of the Stampin Trimmer, and lining the corner of the card up to the 14.9cm point on the ruler imprinted in the top of your trimmer. You would then use the blade to cut the card.
Take that half piece which now has a long edge of 21cm, cut it half way along that edge at 10.5cm. Again line the corner up to the ruler at 10.5cm.
You now have your two smaller quarter pieces, and a half piece of card stock to save to use for another project.
Trim one of your smaller pieces by a further 1cm on one edge, so that you end up with a piece of card that is 9.5cm x 14cm.
Stamping using your photopolymer stamps and ink pads
Take the stamp from your stamp set and attach it to the corresponding sized clear block.
One way to do this is to put the stamp on the table, face down (so that you can't see the stamping surface), and put the clear block on top of it and apply some pressure. If it isn't sticking, try applying a little bit of moisture to the back of the stamp.
Ink up your stamp using your ink pad, if your ink pad is new you will not need to press it very hard. If you get too much ink on the stamp you might get a build up on areas of the stamp that are not meant to be visible, if this happens then clean off your stamp, turn over your piece of paper and start again.
Press your stamp onto your paper. Don't rock it back and forth or else, again, you might end up with parts of the stamp making contact with the paper and leaving marks that you don't want. The ink will transfer to the page without you pressing particularly hard, and without you rocking it back and forth. If you accidentally do this, clean the stamp, turn the piece of paper over, and start again.
