Silhouette Mint Custom Printer (White) 4x4

My business had a request for some stamps, we knew we could easily do the art work but the rubber for our laser wouldn't arrive in time to fulfill. I came across this when looking for alternatives and pulled the trigger. Device arrived next day. Full plug and play no messing around. In 10 min I uploaded the art work that we created in Adobe, inserted the blank and we had our stamp. Quite amazing. No fumes, no mess no hassle. This Device saved the day for sure. It does have a few cons but if you are a crafter or hobbyists this is everything you'll need for making a stamp. Pros: - User friendly - Speed - Cost to value Cons: - Expensive blanks - No self ink stamp pads - Designed/ Advertised to work only with Silhouette materials. Inks, blanks and so on. Possibly no market for cheaper alternatives.

I got this for my birthday after waffling for a bit on whether or not I wanted it. I was thinking about trying another system that uses photo-sensitive polymer packs (which is also one way that commerically-produced stamps are manufactured), but those are even harder to find than refills for the Mint system and are also only made by one company (based in the UK). The Mint is definitely capable of doing detailed images at a fairly high resolution. It's not going to do microscopic shapes, but I was impressed with the quality of the first stamp I made. I've also added some screenshots of what my original image looked like and how it looked after the Mint's filtering was applied to prep for making a stamp. I've tried to find information on the potential to use non-Silhouette inks. I've come up with pretty much nothing. The inks are oil-based, and while I doubt they are unique to the Mint system (or its Casio-branded Japanese counterpart, the Pomrie), I can't find enough information on the ink to trust that a cheaper alternative will work. I may risk one of the smaller, less-expensive stamp sheets with some oil-based self-inking stamp refill and see what happens - if I do, I'll make sure to update my review. The downside of the Mint is that it is a completely unique and proprietary product. This is a rebranded and repackaged version of the Casio Pomrie, which is also unique and proprietary in its market (East Asia), so there's really no way to get refills on the cheap. I found inks and stamp sheets for a bit cheaper than other sites (including Amazon), but even at $2.95 per 5mL bottle of ink and $3.95 to $12.95 per two-pack of stamp sheets, the cost adds up. I spent $65 on the machine and another $100 on ink and stamp sheets so that I'd have a variety of sizes and all the available ink colors. Theoretically you should be able to mix ink colors together, but since it's difficult to do that at the time of applying the colors to the stamp (without wasting a bunch of ink and sourcing extra application bottles), I don't know if it's worth it. The stamp sheet refills are quite expensive as well, and unlike the dyes I don't think there's any potential for a cheaper alternative from a third party. The stamp itself is made of some kind of heat-reactive (aka thermal) material. From what I can tell, heat applied to the sheet in the shape of your design causes the heated portions to become porous and slightly raised, allowing the ink to soak into the design for self-inking stamping. The material is very resistant to the ink otherwise, which I think is how you're able to apply a blob of ink to a small design and, after waiting a bit, all but a minute amount of ink has disappeared into the stamp material. So far, I am very happy with my Mint. I'm disappointed that the refills are so expensive, because it means that I have to be choosy about my designs, whereas with my Cricut I can just use scrap cardstock and even cheap printer paper to test a design before cutting it on more expensive specialty materials. That being said, it's definitely a unique product that packs a lot of creative punch, depending on your needs. One tip - the stamp kits are not worth the money. A stamp kit costs more than a stamp sheet set and isn't at all necessary for making your stamps. A kit comes with a single stamp sheet and a stamp base, whereas a stamp sheet set comes with two stamp sheets. A stamp sheet in this context means a stamp sheet to run through the Mint, a plastic base onto which the printed stamp is adhered, and a plastic snap-on cap to protect your stamp and prevent the ink from drying out as quickly. The thing is, the stamp base is literally just a piece of composite material (something similar to MDF) with a plastic bit glued on. A completed stamp can slide into that plastic bit so you can swap out different stamps with a single base. Instead, you can just use some foam squares on the underside of the completed stamp base and adhere your stamps to wood blocks! Buy some scrap wood and saw it down to the sizes you need, or look on Amazon for cheap wood blocks. You'll end up saving a decent amount of money, and you won't have to change out the stickers on the back of your blocks since the stamps are permanently attached rather than interchangeable. I also learned the hard way that if you want to use multiple colors on a single image and you want them to blend smoothly, you need to use something small and pointy (like a pin or needle; I used a dental pick) to mix the ink where the colors meet BEFORE it absorbs into the stamp. On the other hand, if you do want colors side-by-side without bleeding into each other, this stamp material is amazing - colors don't seem to bleed at all unless you force them to by mixing.

Got the Mint to make a signature stamp for a friend who was getting writer's cramp from signing customer receipts. I am now hooked on designing and making stamps with the Mint. And like with any other digital software it does take a little time and patience to learn it. The process of making stamps with the Mint is awesomely easy tho. The quality of the Mint machine, its materials and the stamps is impeccable. I am "talking up" this machine to everyone who will listen.

Picture it: 2011, a dark and smelly time. William and Kate had a royal wedding, and Charlie Sheen went mad talking about his tiger blood and Adonis DNA, which turned out to be his way of telling the world that he had HIV. (I really miss Charlie's public kerfluffles.) Anyway, I was trying to buy a custom stamp for our business, and for whatever reason, it was impossible to find an affordable one that could incorporate our logo and the fonts I wanted. I ended up buying a custom stamp with some generic clip art and a limit on number of lines. We were never really happy with it. I saw this item not too long ago and added it to my wish list. When the price came down enough, I bought it. This is my first Silhouette craft machine. I've never had any of their other machines, and I haven't used the prior software. You can make a different kind of custom stamp with one of their other machines. I don't know how good the quality is. There are several other reviews here that compare the software, so make sure you read those. When I ran the app the first time, it immediately notified me that there was a new version available from the Silhouette web site. Having seen the complaints here, I went ahead and installed the new version without using the old one. I think the software is easy to use, but I didn't use the first software, and I'm used to using graphics programs, so the interface was easy to figure out. If you're not computer-savvy this may not be so easy for you. You'll also find that your choices for images and text will be somewhat limited to the Silhouette online store, and what fonts you have loaded. If you've had prior experience in a graphics program, and /or Powerpoint, the concept of grouping and ungrouping, resizing objects and how to make changes in the fonts and graphics will kind of be instinctive. There are plenty of You Tube videos with people showing how to use the program and make your stamps start to finish. I didn't use any Silhouette images to make my first stamp. I made a high resolution version of our logo in Paint Shop Pro, saved it as a transparent PNG, and opened the image in my first project. It was easy to scale it down to size, and then to add text with our address and phone number in any font I already had loaded on my computer. If you don't know how to make and import your own graphics, you're going to find yourself limited to your font collection and what you can buy from Silhouette. I'm sure the novelty will wear off with time, but it's fun to watch the Mint cut the stamp and to take it out and see your design. One note of importance-- you should leave the thin plastic film on the stamp until after it has been put through the machine and your design is finished. This wasn't completely clear to me until after I watched some videos. It's also important to load the stamp printed side up, into the Mint from behind, and not from the front. I don't know if this thing has stop gaps to prevent you from loading it the wrong way. It does know if you've loaded the wrong size stamp. The Mint itself is not that expensive for a one-time purchase, but the stamp kits are. There are two kinds of stamp packs. One type of pack comes with one stamp, labels, one plastic housing, and one wooden block. The other pack comes with two stamps, labels, and the plastic housing for each, but with no wooden block. The idea with these is that once you have one wooden block, you can interchange all your stamps of the same size on the same wooden block. However, if you're planning to give the stamp as a gift, or you're sending it to work with people who lose stuff, you're going to want one wooden block for every stamp. Looking at Amazon's listing for the blank stamps, it's not easy to tell which pack you're looking at. The two kinds of kits run about the same price, so you'll want to get the single stamp pack if you want a wooden block. The ink isn't cheap, either, and from what I've seen online, other users trying different inks were not getting great results. The bottles I got with the Mint are not labeled with how much ink is in each one, but I'm guessing it's easily .25 to .30 ounces. You lose some in the inking process, too. So when you make a stamp and ink it, you should make sure you really love it before you use cartridges and ink. There is not really a generic alternative for stamps and ink, so you're stuck buying the Silhouette brand for this part. You're going to have to clip your coupons, wait for sales and carefully read the exclusions. This kind of stuff is almost always excluded from sales and coupons at places like Joann's and Michael's. Of course, the question is how good are the images? I've only made one stamp so far, but I don't want to upload an image of the stamping results since it has identifiable information on it. The images are the same as most of the pictures already posted here, and the videos are true to the results I got. I seem to get the best images when I stamp a piece of paper directly on a hard surface, or with only one or two pieces of paper layered underneath. My design had enough space between images that I didn't have a problem with one color bleeding into another. Try not to be sloppy with the ink, and make designs taking into account how close each element is to another. Overall, this is a four star product. It does what it says it will do, and I love playing with it. However, stamps and ink can add up pretty fast. Just be aware that this could be an expensive addition to your crafting projects depending on your skills and compatible supplies.

Brilliant fun x

Nice 👍

I spend a good $100 a year on stamps for work and it takes ages to arrive. With this guy, my stamps look a lot better and they're printed in seconds. The quality is amazing too. This was definitely worth the money spent.

ソフトが格段に使いやすくよくなっていますが、中に入っていたデザインストア1ヶ月無料券が使えなかったので星を一つ減らしました。 家庭用浸透印作るのに最適。住所印もしっかり読み取れる解像度です。

This is the coolest little machine ever! In no time at all you can be making your own stamps. It is as simple as designing something in the Mint software and then running a stamp sheet through the printer. That's it. The package includes the Mint printer, four bottles of ink (red, yellow, blue, and black), two reusable stamp blocks (for mounting your stamps while stamping), and two stamp sheets (one in the medium size of 30mm x 30mm and one in the small size of 15mm x 60mm), the required cables, and a free one month subscription to the Silhouette image store. There is also a disc which contains the Mint software, but I suggest going to Silhouette's website and downloading the newest version directly. The software is very easy to use and offers lots of options for customizing stamps. It is able to create stamps from lots of different sources, including simple line drawings all the way to photographs. You can import PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and .studio files; in addition, you can also use any of the fonts installed on your computer. The quality of the finished stamp depends on the style options you choose and the size of the stamp you create. I would recommend picking up a Stamp Set in each of the sizes not included in the kit. The sets include the reusable stamp block and one stamp sheet. From then on you can just get the stamp sheet sets, which include two sheets but no blocks. Silhouette sells ink made exclusively for use with these stamps. The stamps are self-inked and need to be re-inked after about 50 uses. It is possible to use some other inks, but not all will work. I'd suggest doing some research to see what other people have discovered. Silhouette has a great series of short videos available that will teach you how to use the software. I found them very helpful. Overall, I feel that this is a great addition to my craft room. I'm able to make stamps that help me embellish my cards (made with a Cricut, sorry Silhouette users!), return address stamps, and more. I seriously love this little machine.