can you use somthing other than an ink pad to make imprints with rubber stamps?

Good news! You can use a small ink pad to ink up a large stamp. Just turn the stamp over on its back and tap the ink pad all over the rubber till it is evenly covered. You might find you can also stamp better with this stamp by leaving it on its back and laying the paper on top of the inked stamp. Press down smoothly all over the paper and then lift off the paper, straight up.

You can experiment with using paint on the stamp too but be careful to clean it off very well afterward as paint will dry in the nooks and crannies and reduce the details on your stamp.

If you colour it with markers, 'huff' on the stamp before you use it - that is, colour it up then breathe on it to re-moisten the ink before you stamp. Try huffing on the stamp after you have inked it up with an ink pad too.

You can also use lots of other mediums to stamp with - Twinkling H2Os, Alcohol inks, Versamark ink and chalks, embossing powders, bleach, two or three colours of ink, etc - see what I mean on this page:

http://www.papercraftcentral.com/cardmaking.html

HTH!

If you have an ink pad already & have the ink to refill it you might try to use a hobby paint brush to brush the ink onto the pad. If not you might try using craft paint on a sponge that is big enough to fit the stamp, just make sure you have something to put the sponge in to keep ink from running everywhere.

you can buy stamp ink, cut out a large piece of felt and glue it down, then pour on your ink. But the best way is what has already been said...turn stamp over and use any size stamp pad.

I have several large stamps and I understand the frustration when trying to ink the stamp. I now use my brayer to spread ink on the stamp and it works perfectly every time!

You can use markers called brush art markers. They tend to be like watercolors. Using markers lets you use more than one color at a time, too. You can use paint, but you need to use it very sparingly and be sure you clean your stamps immediately. There are numerous colors of ink pads. They are not all dark.

You totally Can not