Finding a better use for the plastic boxes from Stampin’ Up! wood mounted stamps.

First, I wish to take a few moments to thank all of the Operation Write Home card makers who stopped by my blog last week.  Seriously, I thought something had gone wrong with my blog stats thing.  Usually my number of visitors, on a high traffic day, is 60.  To see there were 500 that came by totally blew me away.

A heartfelt “Thank You” goes out to all of you who came by to take a gander at my public outing of a problem I have with paper.  I appreciate each and every one of you.

My scrap paper project has been handled and I am quite happy with the results.  This new project is to find out just exactly what kinds of rubber stamps I have hidden away in several drawers.  I don’t consider myself a card maker…mostly because I don’t think I have the knack for it.

I accumulated several Stampin’ Up! stamps a few years back.  Most of which remained in their boxes unused and chucked into the dark cavern of my closet.  Not willing to spend the time involved in becoming a deft rubber stamp artist I pretended those blocks of wood with rubber on them were not even here.  Time to get those stamps out of the dark and into the light.  I need to take an inventory of what I have.  I like the idea of making cards for our military heros to have something to send home to their family members.

I have a small crafting area and those boxes take up a lot of space.  First on the agenda is to get all of the Stampin’ Up! wood mounted stamps unmounted.  That project has been completed.

I have a package of weekly time cards I purchased from my local office supply store about three years ago.  They have sat on a shelf and been forgotten.

These time cards are 4″ wide by 7″ long.  I’ve lopped off the top inch, removing the punched holes, for the cards to measure 4″ x 6″.

I am the proud owner of a recipe box given to me by my daughter, Carissa, a couple years back.  That box will do nicely.

The time cards fit nicely in the box and the stamped images are there for me to see.

I have created a video to show you how I use the plastic boxes for my stamp storage solution.  The lids are cut off, trimmed down, and attached to photo copy paper that I have copied the cards to.  This video takes you, briefly, through the steps of unmounting the rubber stamp and making it sticky backed with the use of Two Way Glue.  I show you what I have come up with to reduce the space taken up by those boxes.  My rubber stamps are going to be in a couple of 3-ring binders when I’m finished.

Once I have completed this project I will have to think about another one.  What to do with all those blasted wood blocks!

The plastic boxes have come in handy for my bead drawer.  That thing is a tangled mess.

What is your system for knowing what rubber stamps you have?  How do you keep track of your stamps?  Do you prefer wood mounted over the cling mount?  I’d love to know what you do with your stamps.

Leslie

Hello. My name is Leslie and I am a paper hoarder.

Scraps.  Man those bits of paper can take over your craft area.  They are the abandoned children of the whole sheets of paper.

Most paper crafters get so excited about the new lines that come out several times a year.  We hot foot it to the nearest scrapbooking store or craft/hobby store to romance the new collections.  I do mean romance these papers.

Alright, I have to speak for myself and no one else.  I’m really bad about this.  I love paper with texture and that has some weight.  I’m not a big fan of the design paper that is almost the weight of photocopier paper.  I like my paper to have some heft to it….some meat on its bones – kind of like me 😉

If you have gone to Hobby Lobby or Michaels and picked up a pad of paper by DCWV, K&Company, or Recollections to find the 2 inch round sticker holding the pad closed torn away that means I have beat you to the paper.

I have to see the full page, feel the texture, look at the printed designs, feel the weight of the paper, listen to it as I flick from one page to the next.  If a particular sheet of paper captures my total attention I have spent several minutes looking at the colors, images, and light reflection.  If the paper has that machined embossing that shines over some of the images I have to feel the whole sheet.

My craziness is akin to when Joe and I were first married.  Every chance I got I would run my fingers through his hair, touch the skin on his arm, brush my hand over his clothing, give a little squeeze of his backside.  This paper “fetish” is almost the same.  I have to touch my fingertips to the sheet of paper.  Let my fingers gently run across the face of it.  Open my hand and let my palm run over the texture caressing the slick surface of the product applied to the paper.  Let my fingertips trace the glitter applied to the papers.  Give the paper a gentle squeeze to feel the thickness of it.

When I have made my purchase I fantasize what I could make with the paper once I get home.  Sometimes I get so caught  up in my solo orgy that I forget to purchase glue, adhesive, or any other type of embellishments to go with the paper.  When I reach home I can’t wait to rip the packaging from the paper and freely run my  hands over each and every sheet enjoying it to the fullest without looking over my shoulder to see if there is someone else close looking askance at me.

When I have a project in mind for the papers I get out my trimmers and begin cutting away.  The scraps are shunted off to the side to be later dumped, unceremoniously, in a storage bin somewhere.  These scraps will languish away and be forgotten.  They no longer serve a purpose in my creative life.

One morning earlier this week I found a website whose sole aim is to gather greeting cards from crafters to be sent to our service people to be able to have cards to send home to their loved ones.  OWH “Operation Write Home” has lots of information about creating cards.  Videos on making cards, tips, techniques, and a really fun site to check out.   One of the videos and blog posts was on scraps to be used in card making.  Using Scraps is the title for the tutorial that I have used to reacquaint myself with my abandoned scrap children.

I made a note of the sizes used in card making.  The sizes for scraps on this website is to fit card fronts that are A2 or measure 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″.

In cleaning off my work surface yesterday I had a huge pile of scraps from the Christmas Card Boxed Set.  A massive pile.  I thought I would start there first before I gathered all the rest of my scraps.

You can see, off to the left of the photo, I have a white storage bin with the scraps of white and cream that I dumped in the bin last year.  I got a start on the papers on my work surface and began placing them in neat little piles with a small sticky note stuck to the top of the stack.

Once I finished with clearing my table I went to work on the basket of white scrap papers and got that bin empty.  This is what my scrap bins looked like.  Poor things.

This is not a project that is fast.  It is quite time consuming to be exact.  I worked on two of the baskets yesterday all the time wondering if I had lost my mind and taken on a project with no end in sight.  The cutting and stacking went on today for another several hours.  I am happy to say that I have gotten through it all and am quite happy with the results.

This bin has all of the 4″ scraps ranging in size from 4″ x 4″ to 4″ x  5-1/2″.

This bin holds all of the 2″ x 2″, on up to 3″ x 5-1/2″ scraps.

This bin holds all of the 1″ x 3″ to 1-1/2″ x 5-1/2″ scraps.

These bins hold an assortment of card stock and designer series paper.  This project took so long to do there is no way I’m going to put these in color order.  I thought about it but decided I’m not that energetic.

I have one final bin that is full of cut apart embellishments from Club Scrap and various other unique papers I did not want to cut up.

I am really happy that I took the time to do this.  I think I may actually use these scraps to create things.  At least I had some ideas floating around in my head as I whacked away with the paper trimmer.  Rest assured I’ll be blabbing about any project I come up with to use these scraps.

How do you store your small-ish scrap pieces of paper?  Are you a card maker and find you need to cut up whole sheets of paper to use your punches?  Do you end up creating more scraps from whole sheets when you have a die cutting project?  If you do take this project on I’d love to hear what your solution has been.

Leslie