DIGITAL IMAGES vs. TRADITIONAL RUBBER STAMPS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digital stamps offer crafters a whole new variety of creative opportunities. The  difference between digital stamps and traditional rubber stamps is that with digital stamps there is no physical stamp. A digital stamp is just the image downloaded in a graphic file.  So What Exactly Are Digital Stamps? (Digi Stamps) Digital stamps (digi stamps) are black and white copies of rubber stamps that are downloaded digitally from one computer to another.  These images can be altered  and enhanced before printing. When printed, digital stamps are a just like traditional rubber or clear stamped images.  The big benefit with digital is that the images can have special effects added such as resizing, creating a mirror image (reverse) or altered in a variety of ways before printing.  Crafters may also print and color images the same way that rubber stamped images are colored.  How are Digital Stamps or Digi Stamps Used? Digital stamps are used the same way traditional stamps are used and that can mean coloring, embellishing, cut out and incorporated into cards, tags, scrapbooks and other papercraft projects.  When digital stamps or digi stamps have been printed the images can be colored in the same was as traditional stamped images. However, images are printed using printer ink instead of rubbe r stamp inks, etc. There is apossibility for the ink to run if a wet coloring methods   are used.  It is possible to heat set printer ink using a heat tool.  Pens, pencils and paints are all suitable mediums with printed digi stamps. Embossing? Special effects such as embossing is difficult to achieve. Techniques such as heat embossing or other techniques that require materials to be applied to the ink are difficult to achieve, but not impossible.  An image can be traced using an embossing ink pen and finished as normal.  Impressions? While many techniques are possible, or can be recreated using a little ingenuity, others remain impossible. It is impossible to impress an image into a surface such as stamping into clay, velvet or other materials, such as on surfaces that cannot  be run through a printer is difficult. Therefore it will be difficult to use digital  stamps on fabric, very thick or very thin paper and cardstock, large pieces of paper, pre-formed boxes and many other items. This does not mean that all this iscompletely impossible but traditonal uses may not be optional. The Pluses Digital Stamps are taking the internet by storm. For some artists, digital stamps mean instant access to images that would otherwise have to go through the mail and delay projects by days or weeks.  Digital download virtually eliminates postage costs altogether and with another postal rate increase, digital delivery is looking a lot more promising and reasonable.  Crafters are becoming more and more savey with their creations and digital stamps are just another way of keeping up with American Ingenuity.     See our line of Art Stamps here:  Abracadabra Stamp Makers