I’ve been posting a little bit more from our Founder’s Circle trip last week, when we had the chance to visit the facility in Kanab, Utah where Stampin’ Up! stamp sets are created. I already showed you how the stamp sets are burned into the rubber. (And made some stamps myself!) Here are some other steps involved.
This is Cherokee — he’s the guy in charge of turning the mag plate for each stamp sets into the matrix boards that do the actual burning of the stamps.
Funny story — he’s a big Packers fan and during the tour a demonstrator offered him season tickets to the Packers in exchange for seeing into the locked vault where the mag plates for the 2014-2015 Stampin’ Up! Catalog are stored… but he didn’t go for it :)
You know how the Stampin’ Up! stamps are all die cut rubber? Here’s how those knives for the die cutting are made. It’s an art form!
See here, one of the finished knives. Can you guess the stamp set?
After the burning process, the excess rubber scrap is cut away. Good news on that — it’s either recycled into new stamps or it’s donated as playground ground cover material. Talk about soft and squishy!
Then the foam layer is added to the back of the stamps:
And the stamps have to go in the boxes along with the sticker sheet. Oh, and you have to get the box cover art going the right direction — pay attention, Meg!
Stamps, stickers… you’ll never know if I packed your stamps, because I did it just like I was told!
See? Goes in the box!
And of course, as demonstrators, we LOVE free stamps! Here are Robin Merriman and I posing with the stamp set we got on the tour.
One last shot from the tour — did you know that Stampin’ Up! cuts and packages their own card stock now? It’s a cool process to see in motion. Since they made other changes to increase the efficiency of the stamp manufacturing process, they had extra employees. Rather than lay them off, Stampin’ Up! invested in equipment to move more of their process on site, allowing them to keep all their employees busy! I love this company.
Thanks for touring with me! I have one more “how to make” series to share with you — it’s the process for making the fabulous firm foam ink pads that we love! And here’s a hint… there is a bread mixer involved. Think about that one :)
Happy Stamping!