Take your leather crafting to the next level with a custom made stamp for embossing and foiling work.
We can transfer designs into 6 mm thick etched magnesium stamp which you can then emboss* into damp veg tan leather or use with a hot foil machine on any leather.
For example:
For embossing work the stamps can be used in a fly or hand press, a vice or even a G clamp.
Small stamps can be glued to wooden blocks and struck with a mallet or small hammer.
For hot foil work just place the stamp in the foiling press.
Stamp design:
1) Create your design using only clear black lines on white background.
Shading isn't picked up very well by the etching process and grey isn't picked up at all.
Black is up and white is down - so anything in black on the design is raised on the stamp and will emboss into the leather.
The plate making process is photographic and the finished product is totally dependent on the original quality of the artwork. It can't improve a picture so any marks or blots on a design will come out on the plate.
Time spent on producing crisp artwork is time well spent.
We’ll let you know if we spot a glaring error on a design but the responsibility for producing the artwork is yours.
If you are creating your image we'd advise against saving the files as .jpeg or .jpg before converting to PDF as those formats can loose a lot of fine detail which will come out on the plate. Better to save images in .png or .bmp format as those keep the fine detail.
We don't advise using images with large black areas - these will need more pressure to push it into the leather and that will probably give a shallow emboss. A big black block with small white lettering won't emboss well.
2) Only add lines or borders around your design if you want it to appear on the plate and be embossed into the leather.
3) No need to reverse the image - just make it the way you want it to appear when you emboss with it.
4) You can fit multiple image designs on one plate - i.e.
but remember you'll need to cut them out to use them as individual stamps. Leave at least 5 mm gap between images to make your life easier with the saw. Magnesium is hard enough for stamping leather but can be sawn with a hacksaw or jigsaw.
5) Email your design in PDF format to emboss@leprevo.co.uk
Note: please let us know the required height and width of the image as it should appear on the plate - i.e.:
If you are sending multiple
images to be made into a single plate please compile these as a single PDF file.
After producing your PDF file it's worth printing it on paper as a quality check. If there are any spare pixels giving a grubby image or a fuzzy outline these should be removed or they'll end up on the plate.
Production time
Plates are usually ready to send out within a week of being paid for.
Cost
Plates are charged at £3.17 per square inch (£3.80 inc VAT).
Minimum plate size for an order is 20 square inches in a standard 4 by 5 inch rectangle (10 cm x 12.5 cm) which costs £63.33 (£76.00 inc VAT).
As you can fit multiple images into a 20 square inch area this can be a cost effective way of obtaining a stamp set.
Maximum plate size is 27.5 inches by 19.5 inches (70 cm x 50 cm).
Plate sizes are rounded to the nearest square inch for total cost.
* strictly speaking the process is actually 'debossing' as you're putting an imprint into something, but hardly anyone calls it that (except Will).