Tip for Imagepac users

Went to NEC on Friday. Visited the Imagepac stand where Paul (the owner) told me that you can now use thin paper (45 - 60 gsm) to create negatives for stamps. Apparently he found this out by accident when a client was having a problem creating stamps using paper negatives. Paul told her that it couldn't be done although the client had been using them without problems up to then.

He went away and experimented and found it was true! The process is exactly the same as when using acetate negatives.

He felt this was a real breakthrough as the main problems people were having was creating dense enough acetate negatives to create good stamps.

You can also use 80 gsm paper but the timings are longer and you can't produce photo stamps with this paper.

Hope this helps.

This is true as I tested this for Paul... I used normal 80g copier paper and it worked fine..

The proper negative film is still better for highly detailed and photographic images though..

Thanks for that Renni.

I was going to give it a go last night but the battery in the controller (I've got the original system) had died. Will try again later today.

Sorry Renni

Meant to ask how long your timings were for 80 gsm.

These are the official times from the manufacturer..

For 45 gsm very thin paper use 2 mins and 10 mins, however if
you use thick paper use 2 mins and 18 mins..

Hope this helps hun... if you have any other questions feel free to ask..

Nikki x

Thanks for the info Renni.

Well, I've had a go but I wasn't that impressed!

There was little relief between the image and the "floor" and the "floor" had a bumpy, orange peel type texture to it and was very thick.

I made sure I washed and hardened the stamp properly.

There was good contrast between the white and black parts of the negative. It wasn't a particularly intricate design.

The funny thing was when I trimmed the stamp it and tested it, it gave a perfect image!

It wasn't an "outline" image and my worry is that these type of images won't make very good stamps using paper. Have you tried producing these types of stamps using paper?

I've contacted Imagepac to see if they can offer any help. Fingers crossed!

After contacting Imagepac for more advice, I tried a different negative image tonight following their advice (it appeared that the room I was using probably had too much natural light coming through which I blacked out). They also suggested printing the image using "standard" quality and choosing matt photo paper and it worked perfectly!

The images were quite tricky - strips of cotton daisy type lace which I had created negatives from and they reproduced lovely stamps - very clear and crisp.

Now I'll be creating more negatives and stamps using this method.

Excellent... yes too much natural light will affect the polymer..

Really pleased that you have had great results..

Nikki x