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Talk to me, please, about the benefit of switching out my old linen SU! stamp pads for the new foam ones. If you chose to get rid of functional older ones in favor of the new, what did you do with the old ones? Do you feel it was money well spent? And, to verify, the 'new' ink refills will continue to work on the old linen pads, correct? I thought there were a few colors that wouldn't. Thanks for your insight.
If the linen pads you have still work, keep them. The new ones are nice but, unless you are an SU! demo actively selling and demo-ing only current product, there are lots of other things in the catalog to buy. There are many colors I hardly ever use so the old pads still work fine for me.
Mary Beth
Thanks ladies. I know I don't need the new pads -- I haven't needed anything in a long time. I wondered if people felt "renewed" by the new colors and the new pads.
I just replaced my Wild Wasabi ink pad this week only because it was no longer transferring ink well. I'd used it so much over the years that the pad was actually concave! Even when I gave classes I kept using the older style pads; I thought it would show the quality of our products over the long haul. Anyway, if they are still working for you and inking your images properly, no need to replace them. I can't think of any technique or reason to replace them if they still work.
The formulas were changed for the Basic Gray and Basic Black, so you don't want to use new ink refills on those.
I have discovered that I like BOTH the old style linen top SU pads and the new foam ones for different reasons. And because of that I have selectively bought new foam pads in favorite "old" colors and kept the old linen style pad in the same color.
Here is what I have learned using the SU linen and foam pads in the same color. First off, the color of the old linen pad always stamps a different color from the new foam iteration of the same color. It irks me that the new foam won't give color that matches the old linen pad. On the other hand, the new foam pads offer substantially better ink coverage if you use transparent stamps. So my solution to this nagging color issue vs coverage issue is to to keep both styles of pads for a favorite old color.
I've already spent the money on the first pad and still like the color, so why get rid of it? I will pony up the money for the foam pad style in a favorite color just so I can use it for all those transparent sentiment stamps that I've collected. I can also do heat embossing with ink from the new foam pads (have to work fast), so this is an added bonus reason to get them in favorite colors.
I'm not sure my experience will be helpful to you making a decision....I guess the take away from my comments is to try one of the new foam pads in one of your old favorite colors and see for yourself the difference. You can decide from there if you want to make the switch, stay with the old or selectively add new pads your existing collection.
I like the foam ink pads for the photopolymer stamps. It just inks up better. The linen pads are great for wood mount or cling mounted stamps. I am moving more to the photopolymer because I can see where I am placing the image. I am only replacing the ink pads as I need to.
I'll agree, the firm foam pads are awesome with photopolymer stamps, or full coverage stamps. I have switched most of my pads out, but not all. I enjoy stamping with the firm foam pads more than my old pads, but that's just me.
I found that a lot of my Linen pads dried out. No matter how much I reinked them they wouldn't hold the ink. The same happened to several of my friends. Some of our pads are 10 years old. I also don't like the new pads with my wooden Stampin Up stamps. I feel like their is too much ink.