How I Organize and Store my Rubber Stamps
When people hear that I stamp, the question that I'm asked the most is how do I store everything, especially my supply of mounted stamps. If you collect mounted stamps, they are clunky and take up a lot of space. Then there's always the problem of having so many stamps, you don't even know what you have or where to find it! Are you in the same boat?
I don't remember where I got the idea; it might have been from the Carol Duvall Show on HGTV. But for me, it works. I have too many stamps to store in several small plastic containers, but not enough to enlist my husband to build me wall to wall shelving or drawers to hold my collection. (I think he would make me move out with my stamps if it ever came to that!)
This is what I do... I take a 2 gallon freezer bag and place a cut piece of corrugated cardboard to fit inside of it for stability. (A note- use Ziplock or some other very strong bag. I have found that the generic grocery store bags, though a bit cheaper, tear very easily. It's more economical to first buy the good bags than to keep replacing the cheaper ones.) Then, just lay your stamps in side by side and snap shut. The cardboard will help them stand, and I just store mine in a big Rubbermaid container.
I've been doing this for a while and it has worked for me, but I stamp relatively infrequently, so I couldn't ever find what I was looking for when I had a few minutes to make a card. So recently I reorganized my Ziplock bags into categories and filed my stamps that way. Now, my Christmas stamps are together, my flower stamps are together, etc.
A while back I also saw a review for a Stamp Log on the Carol Duvall Show, and I bought one from Artfully Scribed, which is now owned by Create a System. This log is great- it has sections for your stamps, inks, embossing powders, punches, etc. I have also bought some of the inserts for their scrapbooking log so I can include those things in my book as well.
So now what I have done is named and numbered my bags that are in my Rubbermaid container, like Christmas Bag 1 and Backgrounds Bag 2, with a Sharpie marker. Then in my log I write down what bag that stamp or set is stored in so I can easily find it when I get that burst of inspiration.
So far this has worked for me. How do you store your stamps? Please submit your ideas below so we can all find something for us that works!
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I have both mounted and unmounted stamps.
I really like the clear boxes that come with the stampin' up stamps. They store nicely in those. The stamps even come with an adhesive label but it's hard to see. Instead I just use a computer label on the end of the box.
Of course, not all my mounted stamps are from stampin' up. I store the remainder of them in a metal cabinet with shallow drawers. (I believe the cabinet was originally for paper.)
My unmounted stamps are stored in notebooks on those plastic sheets that are made to hold baseball cards. I divide them into sections like animals, flowers, words, and scenic. This works great if the stamp had the foam rubber on and the "temporary" adhesive. (Beware that some unmounted stamps are made to be put on the wood mount and not removed. Consequently if you put those on the plastic pages, you never get them off!)
To use the stamps I just put them on a piece of plexiglass.
Jean
I love the idea of the bags and the corrugated cardboard. My stamp collection is growing and growing and this seems like a good way to keep it all organized. In the past, I have used clear tackle boxes with little dividers. They clicked together in sets of two which also made it portable if you wanted to grab part of the collection and go. This seems like a well organized system. Can't wait to try it! Thanks~
I have a large number of Stampin Up, Close To My Heart, and other wooden stamp sets. I use the SU plastic boxes but have reorganized my stamps by commonality (birthday, anniversary, flowers, alphabets, etc.). I store them all in a blueprint map filing cabinet. I have 3 units and each unit has 5 drawers. They come in different sizes and widths. Currently I have only one layer in each drawer but the drawers are able to hold two rows. In our den we had a place for a desk and since my daughter needed the desk, it created an opening for the map filing cabinets.
Prior to getting the blueprint map filing cabinet, I used an old oak wooden library card index cabinet with many drawers. Each drawer could hold 3 layers of stamps. I used a piece of heavy cardstack/cardboard to cover the empty strip in each drawer. This worked very well until my stamp collection grew too large and it could not hold anymore stamps.
I love my blueprint map filing cabinet. I do like the new acrylic stamps plus they require very little storage space.
This is a wonderful idea. Just wondering where did you get the great journal pages. If you printed them, what did you print them on?
Thanks
You only just SAVED MY SANITY and quite possibly, MY LIFE! The pics helped a lot, thank you very much for sharing ! : )
I've been trying to come up with a way to organize my sets and think I just may spend the weekend getting them all together like you mentioned. Currently some are in the little plastic cases with dividers, some are in the plastic drawers as they're too big for the cases and all of the unmounted ones are in a drawer and I have to go through them searching every time I need one. I had been contemplating stamping them somewhere and giving them a labeling system and I like your method. :)
My mother-in-law has a lot of unmounted stamps. She has a binder filled with plastic inserts (maybe sheet protectors?) and keeps her unmounted stamps attached to them with temporary adhesive. It makes it easy to flip through them.
I have a ton of the unmounted clear stamps -- especially the 2 1/2 inch square ones that sell for a $1. I found that a 3-ring binder with plastic sleeves that hold baseball cards works great. The small stamps fit perfestly, and since they are sectioned by heat, you can easily pull sections apart to store larger sets as well. I also put a piece of white paper between each sleeve so I can more easily see the stamps when flipping through the book.
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