Easy faux Versamark™

I’ve got an easy technique to share with you for when you want a Versamark™ look but have a digital image instead of a rubber stamp. In case you aren’t familiar, Versamark™ itself is a rubber stamping ink designed to mimic the watermarks found on fine stationery. (These days we think of watermark more in terms of protecting our digital photographs which is why I don’t just call this faux watermarking.)

For this technique you will need an inkjet printer, some medium to light colored  (not white) paper or card stock and everyday software. The first thing to do is open a document in your graphics, desktop publishing or even word processing program and place a few sample elements. Squares or letters work fine or you can use images from your eventual design as I’ve done here. Pick a color you think will match your paper for one element and then choose shades lighter and darker for the others until you have a spectrum as shown in the screen capture below right. Print the document on a scrap piece of the paper you want to use, in my case kraft paper (see results below left).

Pick the shade you like from the printout and note the corresponding color in your digital document – “next to last brown swatch,” for instance. In my case, I picked the color of the volleyball (RGB code 214-185-146 if I want to use with other software). Now all that’s left to do is color your design with the watermark color you’ve determined. The pictures really don’t do this justice. It is a nice, subtle look and it really does look rubber stamped and not just printed.

My background was created from characters in the adorable Doodlebat font DB Beach Doodles. The beach chair (also from DB Beach Doodles) and sentiment (LD Handwriting font) were drawn with a Sharpie marker and cut on my Silhouette SD. The sketch-look border was created using the new Sketch feature in Silhouette Studio Designer Edition.

Versamark™ is a trademark of Tsukineko, Inc. which has no affiliation with this blog.