Easy faux Versamark™

I’ve got an easy technique to share with you for when you want a Versamark™ look but have a digital image instead of a rubber stamp. In case you aren’t familiar, Versamark™ itself is a rubber stamping ink designed to mimic the watermarks found on fine stationery. (These days we think of watermark more in terms of protecting our digital photographs which is why I don’t just call this faux watermarking.)

For this technique you will need an inkjet printer, some medium to light colored  (not white) paper or card stock and everyday software. The first thing to do is open a document in your graphics, desktop publishing or even word processing program and place a few sample elements. Squares or letters work fine or you can use images from your eventual design as I’ve done here. Pick a color you think will match your paper for one element and then choose shades lighter and darker for the others until you have a spectrum as shown in the screen capture below right. Print the document on a scrap piece of the paper you want to use, in my case kraft paper (see results below left).

Pick the shade you like from the printout and note the corresponding color in your digital document – “next to last brown swatch,” for instance. In my case, I picked the color of the volleyball (RGB code 214-185-146 if I want to use with other software). Now all that’s left to do is color your design with the watermark color you’ve determined. The pictures really don’t do this justice. It is a nice, subtle look and it really does look rubber stamped and not just printed.

My background was created from characters in the adorable Doodlebat font DB Beach Doodles. The beach chair (also from DB Beach Doodles) and sentiment (LD Handwriting font) were drawn with a Sharpie marker and cut on my Silhouette SD. The sketch-look border was created using the new Sketch feature in Silhouette Studio Designer Edition.

Versamark™ is a trademark of Tsukineko, Inc. which has no affiliation with this blog.

Sharpie checklist

I love Sharpies, but I am not too impressed with the Sharpie web site. Oh, it’s cute, but a little thin on the info. For instance, there is not a list of colors. You can only see each individual color as you mouse over it <sigh>. So I moused all over the site, writing down each color as it was revealed and thought some of you might want to have a copy of my Sharpie Checklist, too. I made both a checkbox and a space for hand coloring in case you want to test colors you don’t own yet (Office Depot is a great place for this since they have a bunch of individual Sharpies with the colors labeled). The column on the far left is my attempt to match up the Sharpie colors with the Bic Mark-It colors using an untrained eye and the Sharpies I could get my hands on for side by side comparison. In general, the Sharpies write brighter than the Bics, so there aren’t as many close matches as you’d expect.

A big disadvantage to Sharpies is that the color name does not appear on the marker itself and sometimes not on the package either so it can be difficult to tell what color Sharpie you hold in your hand. My next step is to label my Sharpies with their color names. Hmmm, I wonder if you can write on a Sharpie with a Sharpie?

Oh, and if you are looking for a Bic Mark-It Color List along with cross reference to Copic and Prismacolor colors, you can get that from Lindsay over at The Frugal Crafter blog.

Filled in letters with Cricut markers

I’ve heard a few folks looking for a way to create filled in text or shapes when using markers in their Cricut machine. Normally when you cut or draw letters, you get the outline of the font, with open space in the middle. In this Video Tutorial I’ll show you how to apply a screen pattern to the text in Inkscape so that it will fill in with your Cricut markers.

A couple of things to remember

1. Do not try to cut files you make this way, they are for markers only.

2. The size of the screen pattern should not be changed, so work in actual size and import into SCAL at that same size.

3. This takes a very long time to finish marking on the Cricut so take that into account when using this technique.

Download the screen file

Update 8/18/09 here are some great, much simpler, tips for solid lettering with markers on the Cricut from HeatherM.