Le Prevo Custom Leather Stamps Review

[Ian Atkinson]

Geoff and I recently got some new stamps made at Le Prevo and since a few people have been asking about stamps recently I thought they might be worth a review!

I think this is my first review I've written on here, only taken me 6 years

What's on Offer?

Le Prevo offer a service whereby you can send them art work and have what they call an 'embossing plate' made, details are here: http://www.leprevo.co.uk/embossing.htm

How Are They Made?

The plate is made using a process called photoengraving.

In this process a machine takes a photograph of the supplied artwork and prints it onto a plate of magnesium. The magnesium plate is then dipped in an acid bath which eats away at the plate in the areas that do not contain print.

In this way, any printed areas on the plate remain raised and form the stamp whilst the rest is eaten away by the acid to form the backing.

Upsides and Downsides (Compared to Engraving)

The upside to this method is the cost (detailed below). A single hand stamp made by an engraver out of steel (like these http://www.infinitystamps.com/leather_stamps.html) by hand costs around twice as much as this entire plate full of stamps (nearly £100 each for something small). Because this process is more automated and less time consuming you get a lot more for your money.

The downside is that because the plate is acid etched the photoengraver has to calculate a time to leave the plate in the acid. The longer the plate is left in the acid the more material is eaten away. Because of this you can't have artwork that contains a big variety of stroke widths because the smaller lines will be eaten away completely whilst the bigger lines are being formed. That's no to say the artwork has to be uniform, but you have to bear it in mind when designing. Basically you can't have any really thin lines (although you can have thin relief detail).

When a hand stamp is created the engraver can obviously grind any variety of stroke widths they please, so this problem does not exist.

Other downsides are that the metal is softer and therefore not as hard wearing and you also have to make your own handles! Given the savings I think this is a good compromise!

Creating the Art Work

As they say on their page you can either have a big design made, or you can simply lay out a lot of little designs and then cut them up, which is what I did. The minimum size is 20 square inches, so I laid out the designs in a 4x5 pattern (you can use any ratio you like they said).

The artwork must be supplied printed piece on paper by post, not electronically. I thought the machine may accept electronic files like a flow jet so printing as an intermediary step seemed like a waste of time but apparently not!

I'm of the opinion that for the best results all artwork should be vectored using a program like Illustrator rather than than created in a bitmap form. Vector artwork will have perfectly clean lines and can be scaled to any size required and infinitely adjusted.

I think this is where most people would struggle with this if using the service, I don't think a lot of people would necessarily have the skills to use a program like Illustrator without sitting down to learn it (unless they have an interest in that area already like me) because it's not something most people ever need to use.

You could of course send your artwork to someone else to vector, I did Geoff's from TIFF files and it didn't take too long! Later versions of Illustrator have live tracing features which makes the process a lot quicker than it used to be

You can just use bitmap stuff of course, once it's printed it's printed after all, but a fuzzy jpeg scaled to the right size isn't going to produce results that are as strong unless it's carefully cleaned up I don't think. If you've had artwork made in the past for business cards etc. then you may already have a vector logo of course, in which case there's no need to worry about it it can just be printed and sent straight off.

If you have text on the stamp I would make sure that it's not too small and not too fancy and use the bold version of the font to create a stronger impression. Remember that what it looks like in print (for a business card etc.) and how it translates into the leather are two very different things!

This is what I sent off to Le Prevo in the end (minus the guide lines):



Finally on the artwork I would say to be careful to leave enough space in between each stamp if cutting them out to be sure not to damage them.

Cost

The costs are on the website (excluding VAT and delivery).

For 20 square inches for me and Geoff it came to just under £50 but as you can see we squeezed 16 stamps on there making them £3.13 each on average, which is actually less than a normal craft tool stamp!

Remember that to get those 16 stamps made as proper hand stamps would have cost well over a grand I reckon.

Cutting Up

When the plate arrived it looked like this (phone photo sorry!), the lines are where I started to cut it out:



I cut it up outside as magnesium dust is explosive or something! I used a dremmel to start the cuts and mark lines and then a hacksaw to finish them off.

One thing to be VERY careful of if you're doing this is not to nick the raised parts with the cutting tools!! I managed to do that on the edge of the big stamp so now when it's used there's a little bit that needs punching with a screwdriver!

The magnesium does cut easily enough though and I'm sure more practical people than me would find it a lot easier than I did!

Mounting

I mounted my smaller stamps onto some bolts using some sort of strong glue. The bolts act as handles as on a traditional stamp and can be mashed with a hammer as normal:



The larger stamps can't be hammered and need to be used with G-clamps. I mounted these on wood first and then backed the wood with some thin metal (IKEA book ends that I cut up):



This may not be the best way to mount these I don't know, it does seem to work fine for me though even if it is a bit Heath Robinson (like everything I do!).

Results

I will let the results speak for themselves, I think they work really well and I'm very pleased with them for the cost. There was some faffing about involved but it was definitely worth it! I don't have any pictures of Geoff's ones, you'll have to keep an eye on the leather forum and see if he shows some work with one on!

[parbajtor]

Thanks for the review, I had been considering using this service for a while and having seen the results, II definitely are going to give them a go.

[Stew]

Looks great Ian but you know they've spelt leather wrong, right?!

[Stew]

(Made you look )

[benp1]

that is very impressive, nicely done!

[Chui]

That's great, Ian - many thanks for sharing.

Simple and most stunning results

[tburgess]

They certainly work then, don't they!

[Ian Atkinson]

(Made you look )

Well you got me there good and proper!!

[Mr_Yarrow]

Looks great Ian but you know they've spelt leather wrong, right?!

Nearly dropped a brick there, and its not even mine

Great stuff Ian

Rgds

[GeoffWood]

Not tried mine yet. In fact, I haven't cut them up. I will try it with my fret saw in the next day or so.
I must say that Ian's look great and at the price, I thought excellent value.

[Ru Titley]

Nice one Ian , they could be quite useful me thinks .

[dougster]

I'm going to order some more soon as I've been using my current ones for a few years.

PMs for GB?

[gorilla]

I'm going to order some more soon as I've been using my current ones for a few years.

PMs for GB?

good idea mate

[Simon K]

They look great Ian. I haven't seen them before.

I'm going to order some more soon as I've been using my current ones for a few years.

PMs for GB?

If this goes ahead, I'd definitely be interested.

Simon

[gemmajabowski]

Hi, I've been looking at having a custom stamp made for a while now and found your review really helpful!
I want to stamp my business name onto leather tags, so these look like they would be perfect for me. I have just one quick question though - on your photo of your impressed design, the leather looks darker. Have you used some kind of dye to make the image stand out more?
Hope you don't think I'm being cheeky asking.
Regards,
Gem.