Will OR Why Won't My Image Work For A Soap Stamp?

I wish I had a number count for every time I've been asked those questions.
I wish I could say every image will work.
I wish John and I could wave a magic wand and just "make it go"...but we can't.  Unfortunately not all images can be translated to a successful soap stamp.  In the same respect not every soap formula is compatible with soap stamps.  Why?  There are many reasons.

1) oils used

2) water discount used

3) essential oils used

4) fragrance oils used

5) type of liquid used for the lye solution

6) image-wise it's just not possible and I will get into that a little later. 

I know some of you are saying these should have absolutely no baring on my soap stamp concept.  That is not true.  Case in point....   

Anhoki is my own custom stamp that I used to stamp almost every bar I make.

The stud stamp is a standard that is perfect for any occasion.  You can do a Google search for stud and soap stamp and see the variety of soapies it has stamped.
Both of the stamps get used A LOT.
BOTH of these soaps are beer.  

BOTH soaps are scented with fragrance oils that I custom blended.  

Both are made with the same soap recipe which I also use for 99% of my successfully stamped beer soaps.  It just happens and I have yet to nail down why.  The only way one will know if their stamp will work with their soap recipe is to try it.  IF they have used a soap stamp with their soap formula before and have not used ours here is a great blog post that might help.  Here is another.

Now that we've touched on the makeup of the soap itself let's talk about the IMAGE.  Any and all images sent to us for review are designated as artwork.  An image is artwork.  Text is artwork.  ONE letter is considered artwork.  I know you think it's not but if it is sent to us for stamp consideration it IS artwork. :~)

We have a maximum letter count of 11 that we will consider.  There ARE some stamps than can go past this amount but they are rare.  Not all fonts are fit for soap stamp usage.  I know that sounds tacky but it is very much true.  

The Curlz font and those like it are extremely complicated because of the amount of detail in the font itself. 

The Curlz font is extremely popular.  However it is not one that is easy to work with.  As you can see we had to make TWO letters take up the bulk of the bar face in order to give the font the amount of space it demands. :~)

Some fonts NEED to be larger in order to give them the respect they deserve.  I like the stamp but do feel it should be bigger to show off some of the more delicate parts of it. 

Some fonts are small and look great that way. :~)

When it comes to PICTURE images....those are a tough call.  Sometimes we think an image will be a "piece of cake" to work with and even we are schooled on what will and won't work.  Sometimes we are surprised....and not just a little bit either.   Some of our most recent stamps...

The donkey stamp is one we just finished and shipped last week.  It was a lot tougher than it would seem.  For starters....we had to round over the middle of the donkey in order to make it impress properly.  Had we left it as a solid image it would not have impressed.  If it had managed to impress it would have brought a ton of soap with it when it was removed from the bar.  The legs, tail, bottle....EVERY small line had to be thickened up in order to meet the minimum bit size we use to mill stamps.  Remember.... we use a CNC machine to create our stamps.   Every time we thickened a line we had to remember the beer bottle that dangles in front of the donkey.  It MAY have milled OK but it was not to scale and we had to remember it, too.  Let's also not forget the letters underneath the donkey.  We had to make those big enough to SEE but small enough to work with the donkey.  Definitely a learning experience. 

Natural Aroma is a stamp that went through quite a few changes in order to make it work.  Script fonts are HARD to work with.  We had to remove quite a few of the curls in the script font and thicken all of the lines in order to make it work.  Since we do not design the stamp images you must give us permission to change the image from its original form to one that will work.  And remember.....Natural could not be too big because it would dwarf aroma.  This worked beautifully. 

Jane's Soaps is a small stamp but needed to be larger in order to make the inside text large enough to shine. 

Saponista's stamp needed very little work. We needed to thicken everything and do the spacing but it worked.

The Live Love Alive stamp had quite a bit more to it and we have to simplify it.  Sometimes less is definitely more.   

Sweetmade needed some modifications to the font but I think it came out beautifully. 

Cosmic was a breeze of a stamp.  We had a great & simplified font style and the bulk of the canvas to play with.  A beautiful stamp.

The mountain range was not as easy as it would appear.  What everyone must remember is we need HUGE images to work with.  When I say HUGE....I mean.... like...5X7 inches or larger.....  We need the image as large as possible with the fewest pixels as possible.  Pixels are the spawn of Satan and make it very difficult to work around.  A black and white image would be ideal.  If you can send us black and white images that would make it SO much easier.  Also....when working with a logo....YOU need to be the one to remove all of the logo but that which you desire in your soap stamp.  If you've had it designed by a third party please have them do this and give us exactly what we have asked.  This will save you money and save us time.  Asking us to pull a very small and very specific portion from a huge logo is very time consuming and costly for those who are not graphic artists. :~)

This is one of the most interesting projects we've had to date.  This image came to us in the form of a picture.  The person took a picture of a vintage gold weight she had been using as a stamp.  This piece was said to be hundreds of years old and deteriorating quickly.  She asked if we could duplicate it into a soap stamp.  Several of the bottom "legs" were missing and we had to freehand those back in.  I think it turned out great.

The beta was interesting, too.  We had to remove a lot of the fine lines in the tail and fins but you definitely know it is a beta.  

The r2s stamp is larger than it seems.  To get the right impression it needed a round-over.

 The double hands has a lot of texture to its image.  This is one that should not be completely impressed.  John says it will lose the ruggedness and detailing if it were to be fully impressed. 

The Cellar Door stamp is complex on several fronts.  Two different fonts AND bubbles.  We needed to thicken EVERYTHING and do a round-over for the bubbles to make them....look like bubbles.  For this kind of stamp I think 10 is the max amount of letters.  You want it to look as great, in soap, as it does on paper.  

More BUBBLES.....I love when bubbles turn out.  SO kewl.  You have to round over the circles or they will look like nothing more than dots on soap.

There is NOTHING about this stamp that I do not love.  It's perfect. :~)

Required round-over AND script font.  Because we removed a lot of the loopy lines from the font and made minor changes to its overall look it worked out well.

We needed to simplify the circle around the SC and thicken it up WAY more than you would think to get it even this small.  The soap creek text needed to be thickened in a lot of places but It's an awesome stamp. 

The mermaid lost a lot of the detail in her face.  Her hand needed to be solid and we needed to simplify the ripple she came out of but it worked.

The "tribal" stamp is an actual drawing he did.  We made it as rugged and true to the original as we could.  

The island couldn't have all of the little nubs but it still looks like an island and pretty awesome with the round-over.

I know we say 11 letters and organicouture is 13.  We set 11 as a base to start from.  IF the font is simplified and easy to read in a smaller format we can go with more letters.  This bar of soap is 3.5 inches wide.  This is the right size stamp for this bar.  

 Panakeia worked because it is the type of font that allows thickening without drastic change. 

Kristi did a great job with this design.  Less is definitely more. 

This one is not like the original.  The branches needed to be thinned our and the text had to be spaced just right to actually make HOTEL show up.  I like this stamp a lot. 

This is one we just made this weekend.  It is a redesign of the original.  Remembering that we try to stay as close to the 11 letters across the face of the bar as possible we had to move some things around.  She loved it, we loved it and it's just a cute stamp. 

After all of this...what have we learned?  

........Images are NOT true to size.  Printing your image from Photoshop or a similar program and place it over your bar to see that it fits.  That won't work.  The printed off image has not accounted for the thickening of lines, spacing between letters and overall modifications we will have to do in order to ready the image for milling.  

........Telling us you are looking for something in the range of whatever font at 48 pt in Word won't work either.  Why?  We need to know what size stamp you would like to have.  Once we have the bar size and the requested info we can let you know if what you are asking for will work.  Fonts show differently in different programs.  It may look like the Georgia font in Google documents and Comic Sans MS in Word.  Please do not tell us it is a standard font and can be font in most programs.  Provide us the link to where it can be found for free.  There are, literally, millions and millions of fonts and variations of them out there and we simply can not have them all.  

........Understand that we must work within the constraints of the image we have been given.  If you provide us with a rectangle image and ask that it be square.....If you provide us with a square image and request that it be rectangle.....:~)

........Since we do not do custom design work we can advice you on what we think will look best but it's up to you or your designer to find fonts that will work.  Not every font can be successfully translated into a successful soap stamp.  I wish they could because I have found a zillion fonts that would be AWESOME in a stamp.  

........DON'T be discouraged by this blog post.  Be encouraged that TOGETHER we can create a work of art for your soap.  

........ We use "scrap" soap to test ALL of our soap.  It's not "trash" soap but older, more firm, harder, less desired than our "normal" bars.  If you LOVE the way YOUR stamp looks on this soap imagine how much you will love it on your FRESH or newer bars.  From time to time I do have to make a batch of soap specifically for testing stamps.  This soap will be a light tan or brown color.  This does not mean your stamp won't show up on your white, beige, or milti colored soapies.  Check these bars out.

   

The MOST important thing.  Your artwork is YOURS.  Taking your artwork and translating it into a soap stamp does NOT mean we own it.  It is YOURS and we will not duplicate it for anyone other than you.  :~)

THIS is the blog post that you need to read in order to provide us with the information for your custom soap stamp.

HERE  is a post on how to best use our stamps.

If you have questions about an image you would like to have made into a stamp email me.  We'll look at the image (text or otherwise) and talk about it.

 XOXOXOXO