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Making the Holes

© Amy E. Badurina

After you've got a design on paper for your artistamps, you might want to try adding some authenticity to them by perforating them, like regular postage stamps.

PERFORATORS: A perforator is a rather large, heavy piece of machinery, and as such, it is cost-prohibitive for most of us. Even if the price on it is reasonable (under $1000 US Dollars), the shipping costs can double your price, unless you're willing to go pick the thing up yourself. If you have the time and the money to spend on a perforator, by all means -- pick one up. Often, you can do perforating as a sideline business and make back your initial investment. It is the most accurate and "perfect" of the methods, but the initial cost outlay is often just too much for the artistamp hobbyist.

PERFORATED PAPERS: At many stamp or crafts stores, the art of the artistamp has been recognized. Some will offer pre-perforated papers, some with gum on the back, as well. The advantage to this is that you don't have to worry about how to perforate -- it's done for you, and done professionally. The drawback, of course, is that you're limited to the size of the sheets and stamps that are offered. Luckily, they come in all different sizes, but getting them to match up with your printer (if you don't do them by hand) is challenging.

PRINTED ON: Again, at rubber stamp stores, it's not hard to find large rubber stamps with rows of "dots" made to look like perforations. They come in all sizes and shapes (triangle stamps, diamond-shaped stamps, the regular rectangle). For small runs, these aren't bad -- but they do have the limitations of the pre-perfed sheets in that you're limited to the size offered, unless you reduce a pre-stamped image with a copy machine.

The other printed option is to make a row of dots with your computer program around the stamp you create. Pagemaker has a plug in that makes stamp perforation lines with the line tool, for instance. In Photoshop, if you scan in a sheet of postage stamps (real ones), with a piece of black paper behind it, you can cut and paste the "perforations" to your current sheet of stamps for an effect that looks very realistic.

SEWING MACHINES: Get the largest needle you can find, and sew a straight line with a small stitch length (no thread, of course). It's an easy method -- the only drawback is that it punches the paper rather than cutting holes -- which leaves the back looking like the wrong side of a computer motherboard, and about as rough. For the average artistamp creator, though, it's a valued option. I've done my own sheets this way, and they do work out very nicely -- if you can keep the paper in a straight line as you're sewing. You can also do more than one sheet at a time with this method, which makes it fast AND convenient.

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