The Crimson Moon

I’ve spent the last few days sorting out my stamps. Like many stampers I’ve got a huge collection and limited space so storage is a real problem for me. Until now they’ve been in four large plastic drawers but while they’re divided into categories, I still have trouble finding a stamp when I need it. But most of all, I worry about them getting damaged. So I decided it was time for a serious sortout. I really like the way Paper Artsy send their stamps, cling mounted and attached to a laminated piece of card with the images on the other side. So when I saw a pretty basket filled with these in Craft Stamper magazine this month I thought ‘this is the storage for me’!

First off, I have to admit that I hate wood mounted stamps! So the first job was to remove the ones I did have from the wood, this didn’t take too long because most of my stamps are unmounted anyway. Same goes for the black foam mounted stamps, I think I dislike them even more than the wooden ones!  Next was to mount the stamps onto EZ Mount foam and I can tell you, that was one sticky afternoon! Then I had fun stamping them onto  pieces of white card before laminating them. I’ve never used a laminator before and I’d spent ages on the ‘net looking for info on what kind of laminator I’d need and how many microns the pouches should be. Didn’t find a scrap of info that helped so I just crossed my fingers and bought a cheap one…..it worked like a dream! For anyone wanting to do this, I used a Texet hot laminator which I got for around £12 and used A4 150 micron laminating pouches. Four pieces of 14cm x 10cm lightweight card fitted into an A4 pouch perfectly.

I still have a lot of stamps left to do – my Fairies/Ladies collection is enormous! And I also need to find some pretty baskets or boxes to keep them in. Maybe I’ll make something. Anyway here’s some photos of the stamps I’ve done so far (please excuse my dirty stamps, as you can see I’m a bit lax at cleaning them!). This is two drawers worth condensed into one pretty little pile : )