Why Piles Are Bad and What To Do About Them.

If you've been reading here for any amount of time, 

you already know that I'm somewhat obsessive about my crafty supplies.  

 

I love my Cricut Cartridges!  

 

I love my paper Stacks!  

 

I LOVE Ribbons!

 

And I love love love my Stamps!!

Unfortunately, my many loves of many things can lead to Piles.  

In my house, Piles are bad.

Piles lead to "Honey.  Have you seen my....?"

And "Why do you have so much crap, er...stuff?"

And "Don't you think it's time to get rid of some of...."

Which then leads to impolite hand gestures and huffy silences.

But when My Sentiments Exactly sends me tantalizing emails with offers of oh-so-cute grab bags of unmounted stamps for super cheap prices.... How is a girl to resist such temptation??

The answer, of course, is that she isn't!  

I must have one!  

I place my order & count the minutes until the mailman arrives with my bag full of treasures. 

The fact that I don't know which ones they will be only adds to the fun & anticipation.

When they arrive, I rip open the bag & spend a happy hour or 2 going through them & thinking about what fun projects I can use each of them for.

Note: This bundle of stamps is not representative of the offer linked above.  This is a smaller bundle.

Uh, oh.  That kinda looks like a Pile. 

  And we certainly can't have that.

Fortunately for me, I accidentley took a mid-day dose of Nyquil instead of Dayquil-- and  a 3 hour nap,  giving me a lovely quiet evening to work on them after Steve went to bed, since I won't be sleeping again until Tuesday.

The first thing I do to get the organized is remove the self-stick padding from the rubber.  Most of the time, it just peels right off, though occasionally, I do have to use my craft knife to cut it off.

This can be slightly dangerous for the uncoordinated among us.

(I keep a bottle of liquid bandage on my work table for just such occasions)

Then I cut several sheets of regular printer paper into 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch rectangles and get out my stamping blocks.  

A couple of years back when the Posse took me to my first

 Stamp Scrap Art Tour  

(and I joyously discovered Grab Bags!)

I purchased an extra set of acrylic stamping blocks and a couple of sheets of

Tack & Peel (over there on the right).  

Tack & Peel can be cut to the size of your stamp block & stuck to 1 side. It's clear, so it doesn't matter which side of your acrylic block it goes on.

Then all you have to do is position your unmounted stamp on it & use the same way you would an acrylic stamp.

The Tack & Peel does tend to get grubby with ink & lint, but all you have to do is rinse it off under running water, let it air dry & it's good to go again!

(Love this stuff!)

I will say that you need to keep the protective sheet that covers it.  

If 2 blocks with Tack & Peel on them get stuck together-- things get ugly. 

I did manage to get mine apart, but it took me, Steve, a screwdriver & many many obscenities to make it happen.

Anyway-- back to organzing stamps!

So, I stamp an image of each of my new treasures on a paper   

then slip the paper & the stamp into the pocket of a Baseball Card Holder page protector.

(This can be a messy process if you have  a lot of them to do!)

I use self-stick tabs to organize the pages by theme within a 3-Ring binder. 

 

If the stamps are bigger than 2 1/2 x 3 1/2", I use page protectors meant for photos- both of which can be found at office supply stores.

I also keep my small Sizzlet Dies, Cuttlebug Embossing Folders, Small Cuttlebug Dies, $1 Stamps and any small acrylic stamp sets  in the pockets, so that everything in 1 theme is together.

I've found that organizing them by theme makes them much easier for me to find them & actually use them. 

All of these are kept in 3-Ring binders, labeled on the spine. 

In summery:

Stamps are Good!  Have as many as possible!

Piles are Bad!  Follow the instructions above to avoid them!

Happy Stamping!