Kanab is a very small town in southern Utah, and is the home of the manufacturing plant that makes our wonderful Stampin’ Up! products.  It was a mamouth journey to get there but one I am so grateful to have made.

We started about 4.30am, quick breakfast and in the coaches for an hours coach ride to Salt Lake City airport, after security it was onto the plane for about an hour and a half, now what I didn’t know at that point was the Stampin’ Up! had chartered the plane for us……..and by some miracle Brian and I found ourselves in first class !  Then a 2 hour coach ride to the factory, we played bingo too!  We only had 2 hours at the factory and then the reverse journey via the park……….!

So here is a quick guide to making stamps…….and yes I really did make them !!!!!!  ( Still grinning!!!!!) First the rubber is pressed and melted into the molds to make the stamps.

The the sheets of rubber are cut……….carefully !

Then peeled off the molds.

And then trimmed.

Ready for die-cutting, now I mistakenly believed that this was done by machine, but it’s not, each stamp set has a set of matching handmade dies to cut it, the rubber is placed onto the press and die-cut.

Then the stamps are packed by hand.

Thankfully there is a map of each stamp set, so you know which wooden blocks you need and where to put them, I wish we had that map for some of our stamp sets, you know the ones that you can never fit back into the box……!

Ink pad assembly was labour intensive too, but the amazing thing was how the ink gets onto the foam…..

The foam and die are mixed in a large kenwood mixer………..really !!!!!

No trip to kanab would be complete without a trip to the park, dedicated to Shelli’s father-in-law, the park is covered with ground up rubber a by product of the stamp making process.

Happy Stampin’