Helen Breil Texture Review

Helen Breil Texture Stamps for Polymer Clay

Helen Breil's polymer clay stamps are wonderfully detailed, giving beautiful textured imprints. In this Helen Breil texture review I'll be highlighting all the ins and outs of these popular stamps.

I use this stamp in my Into the Congo Bracelet Cuff Tutorial, so be sure to check that out.

how to use Helen Breil Stamps with Polymer clay

Lay the texture stamp face up on your work surface.
Spray the stamp with water.
Lay your polymer clay sheet over the stamp.
Spray the clay with a light misting of water.
Using your fingertips, press the clay into the stamp, working from one side of the stamp to the other to eliminate air bubbles and excess water.
Give the clay one quick roll over with your acrylic rod.
Gently lift the clay from the stamp.

What i love about these Stamps

Most of Helen Breil's stamps have more than one design incorporated into them. You get more than one texture, in some cases up to six, for the price of one stamp. This feature also gives a lot of flexibility in terms of the design, depending on which part of the texture you cut your piece from. You can mix things up quite a bit by crossing over into more than one texture in any one polymer clay piece.
These are the most detailed rubber texture stamps I’ve seen. Their patterns are intricate and have so much personality in them. This means that you don’t need fancy techniques to have an intricate design on your project.
There are so many patterns to choose from. The Congo Line is my favorite, but there are many other beautiful ones. There are also Helen Breil silkscreens available to match with many of the textures.
Since the texture stamps are made of rubber you can heat them in the oven. This means that you can bake the clay on the texture. This opens up a lot of different, more delicate design options. This is also for useful for getting stuck clay out of your stamp.
The texture stamps are flexible, meaning that they will roll through your pasta machine to give you an easy imprint. They are also strong and will last a long time.
The textures in the stamp are fairly shallow. This means that the resulting imprint isn’t too raised, which can cause problems by making the design too bold.

Problems you may encounter

The texture stamps are rather shallow. While this can be a good thing, it does make it difficult to use these stamps for polymer techniques such as Sutton Slices, Mica Shifts and Mokume Gane.
Another issue is the fact that the designs are so distinctive. You can spot them a mile away, so it will be harder to create pieces using these stamps that appear unique.

That’s about it really. A lot more ups than downs. It’s really up to you to decide if these stamps are going to work for you. If you like to work with Mokume Gane a lot, these may not be the right stamps for you. However, if you are a mixed media fundi, these stamps are a definite must have.