Find Out About Friday - How Stampin' Up! Stamps Are Made

Earlier this week I told you a bit about our trip to the Stampin' Up! Kanab Manufacturing Plant and today I thought I would share with you what we learned about how the beautiful Stampin' Up! Stamps are made.

The process all starts with the beautiful artwork that is created by the lovely Kathy and her team in Riverton. Once finalised it is grouped to make best use of the rubber and then sent to have a metal plate etched.

This metal plate is used to make Matrix Boards of the Stamp Set which is kind of like a negative mold for the rubber.  

The solid board us put in a machine with the metal plate and under heat and pressure the images are pressed into the board.  Several Matrix Boards are created for each stamp set as the machines take these in batches of four.

A die is also made to cut the rubber and these are stored along with the Matrix Boards in the room where the rubber is cut to size.

The rubber itself comes in huge rolls.

After it is cut to the right size it goes through to the area where the magic happens!  The rubber is put on the Matrix Boards and together with a release sheet they are put in a special vulcanizer machine which applies heat (a lot of heat!) and melts the rubber into the Matrix Board Mold.  These are then taken out of the machine, The Matrix Boards removed and stacked ready to be reused

The rubber is trimmed with a large guillotine and left to cool.

The stamps are then stuck onto a foam backing

The next stage in the process is to die cut the stamps.  Check out this video to see how it is done.

Next the Stamps are packed into their boxes.  We got to have a go at this - I was quite slow compared to the people who do this all day, but here am I with the lovely Lenora having actually managed to do it!

For the wood mount sets they have a packing diagram to help them get everything in the box easily!  Given the number of stamps in some of our stamp sets, how good would it be to have these for them - well here is the one for Moasic Madness

The completed stamp sets are then packed onto pallets ready for distribution and their new owners.

I loved the chance to experience how the beautiful stamp sets are made and the whole trip to the manufacturing plant was one of the highlights of the Incentive Trip for me.  I came away with a whole new appreciation of our products and was inspired by the love and care that goes into their manufacture.

If you would like to know more about the wonderful range of Stampin' Up! products please do get in touch.

Happy Stampin'