As scrapbookers go, I’m probably on the frugal side. It is, of course, my money pit, but the pit isn’t too deep. I save money wherever I can, and try to come up to alternatives to most of the trendy things. The Versamark inkpad is a notable exception. I have tried a substitute that supposedly was the same; it wasn’t, and the $3 I saved turned out to be penny-wise, pound-foolish. So now I definitely fork out the money for the real thing.
The Versamark is a watermark pad. What I like most about it is that it’s subtle. You can use it with any stamp that you have. The only color change is that it will darken the paper to a darker shade of what’s already there.
In the example on this page, I couldn’t find a piece of paper I liked. No matter what I put in the back, it was either too busy or too plain. The picture has a lot going on in it (besides the faces that I needed to blur out *s*), so where I might normally have used some printed patriotic paper, it didn’t look right. Enter the Versamark. I took my rolling stamp and inked it up, then used the same stamp on both the red and the blue. The result is that the colors are tied together.
I also like to let kids use this one because it’s pretty difficult to mess up a page too badly when the paper remains monotone.
Another thing I’ve done with the Versamark is chalking. The watermark is sticky when it first goes on. You can use a cotton ball or makeup sponge to get the watermark to draw in colors. I’ve blended the chalks by lightly brushing with a good quality artist’s brush. It turns out beautifully especially if you use more than one color of chalk.
Versamark lives up to its name – Versatile Marks. Get the Versamark direct from Amazon, and let me know what you think!