As I've said before, I enjoy making handmade cards. Many years ago I used to really enjoy rubber stamping, but one thing led to another and I moved away from the hobby. As my children grew, my crafting room was dismantled and became one of their bedrooms. We (my husband) decided to donate all of my crafting gear (stamps, inks, embossing plates and tools, heat tools, paints and more) for a tax deduction. Now, 15 years later I find myself inching back into rubber stamping as a way to decorate my cards and possibly some polymer clay. Times have changed quite a bit. Back in the day, all the rubber stamps you found in the stores were red rubber mounted onto wood. Only the "hard-core" stampers bought unmounted stamps or carved their own. Nowadays, the local craft stores carry unmounted stamps in both rubber and clear polymer. To top it off, they cling via static cling to clear acrylic blocks. Now stampers can actually see where they are stamping. No more close enough guess work! Sure beats carefully cutting around the rubber image, cutting foam pad to match and then gluing the whole think to a wood mount with rubber cement.
My first sets are called See-D's stamps. They come in a nice plastic case with an index page of the images and some extra static cling. They are made of purple rubber - kinda cool. They are deeply etched making a nice, clear stamping. If you don't want to buy acrylic blocks you can certainly use the sturdy case. I think you could construct an entire layout for the front of your card by placing multiple stamps on the lid and then ink them with pads or markers.
Enough talk, here is a link to the company web site: http://www.goinque.com/asp/product/
