CoronaCrafts - Fun with Organization...

I once read that if you're any kind of crafter, you really have three hobbies, not one:  making whatever it is you make, shopping for and buying craft supplies, and organizing your supplies.  That's me for sure.  Some days I feel like doing one of these sub-hobbies more than another.  Now with the plethora of online everything, I like to have some craft projects I can do that don't require intense concentration so I can listen to the concert, or whatever, and still keep my hands busy.  This week's project has been color combo tags focusing on two stamp sets:  the Papertrey Ocean set I wrote about last time and the Altenew Nature Snippets set.

I've written before that choosing colors is not a thing I'm confident about.  It's dawning slowly that others may feel the same, even the crafters who make the fancy videos.  The key thing for me is giving myself permission and time to try a bunch of color combinations, even if I have to throw away some of the poor choices (I think the fancy video people might do this, and just not show it, or they might just have a great eye for color, which is why they are fancy video people.).  What I've decided to do when I can is make a bunch of color swatch samples for different stamp sets.  This way, when I go to use that set, I'm not constantly stressing over which colors to use.  I'll have a head start, and can make adjustments as necessary.  So while Karen Axelrod was playing the piano the other night, here's what I was doing...

I scoured the internet for card examples using the Nature Snippets set.  Whenever folks actually included the ink names in their post, I wrote them down and gave them a try.  I made 20 samples in all for this set, and am still collecting more ideas.

I die cut each sample with a tag die, and wrote the ink names on the back.  I did the same for the Papertrey Ocean set the other day.  I am so happy to have these as a reference!

Here are some of the cards I made with the Nature Snippets set this week (plus one from last year).  AND, I'll put the pink colors in the caption beneath each picture!  There were others, but I forgot to photograph them before they went out the door...

Altenew Inks:  Artic, Sapphire, Silver Stone

Altenew Inks:  Iceberg, Fresh Leaf, Sunray

Altenew Inks:  Ultraviolet, Jet Black, Volcano Lake

Altenew Inks:  Minty Mint, Just Green, Cotton Candy

Altenew Inks:  Coral Bliss, Heartbeat, Soft Lilac

CoronaCrafts - Mini-inventory

The days are so strange now, and so monotonous that I can't even remember what I did this past weekend.  Sunday, of course, was Easter, which I don't celebrate, except for watching Easter Parade every year.  Though I don't celebrate, Easter was always an important time of year for me because that's when there was an influx of bunnies, my stuffed animal of choice in my formative years, in stores.  While most of my early bunnies are gone, I still like bunny images.  Last year on Easter Sunday, I made this card:

I used the Gina K wreath builder stencil, the Simon Says Stamp Oh Bunny set, and the Kiss Kiss set from Right at Home for the sentiment.

This year, the spirit wasn't moving me, but as I've been doing a bunch of stamp organizing and cataloging, in addition to trying to make and send a lot of cards, I decided to round up all of my bunny stamps, just for kicks.  I knew I had more than the set I used last year.  Yup.  I was right.

(I'm not going to even attempt to tag all of these images, but for all three of you reading this, if you really want to know where any of the images comes from, just ask.)

The fun, yet time consuming thing about this process was that I pulled together wood-mounted, cling-mounted and clear stamps in a single place.  This is my ultimate goal for my entire collection, but right now, my clear stamps are cataloged and tagged on Airtable, [most of] my wood mounted stamps are in organized by category in a physical paper catalog I've been keeping for years and years, and my cling stamps are inbetwixt inbetween.  But if this stay-at-home order lasts for much longer, I will have time to not only finish adding all of my unmounted stamps to the physical catalog, but create more specialty sub-category pages like these.

(Lies.  I will never be done organizing my stamps.)

Those bygone days...

I wasn't feeling especially creative last night (turns out I was hungry - who knew?), so I worked on my unmounted stamp catalogue.  I have a bunch of stamps that I've either unmounted from their original wood blocks and then remounted with cling foam, or that are cling-mounted duplicates of stamps I already had.  As I was looking through my mounted stamp catalogue for company and stamp name references, paging through that binder, was a wonderful trip down memory lane.  Yes, I'm now securely in the unmounted camp, for ease of use, storage, and the game-changer stamp positioning tools that all but remove the possibility of inking mishaps, but I don't want to lose track of and stop using those older images I love and collected over many years.

Above is a favorite card that I never quite had the courage to send.  Marvy dye inks on glossy paper, mounted on black felt, gold paper, and then the perfect shade of purple card stock.  Image:  Acey Deucy/Lynne Perrella.

Getting Organized - Still...

Unmounted stamp catalog - example page

They say that rubber stamping is actually three different hobbies:  shopping for/buying stamps and supplies, organizing said supplies, and then actually making things.  So true.  And while it's always a good time of year for stamp and supply organization, somehow January seems like the time to buckle down and cross some of these tasks off the list (although, if you do the shopping bit, you can never really finish the organizing bit, can you.  Darn.).  I'll probably post more about my latest organization endeavors over the coming weeks, but this is a slight tangent...

Way back in 2015, I got a MISTI (I posted about it here).  And then a year later, I got the smaller version, the Mini MISTI.  And then this past summer, I got a Tim Holtz travel-sized stamp platform (with its useful case!).  The MISTI is definitely my favorite, but all of these do one thing very well:  they prevent stamping mishaps that ruin everything.  If you're a stamper, you know this moment...

• Your paper moves at the last second
• You missed inking a spot on a stamp, or didn't use even pressure everywhere
• You drop your stamp on the good paper by accident
• You do any and all of these things and you only had five minutes to make anything anyway and now everything is messed up and your card won't get done and everything will be horrible forever

The MISTI fixes all of these things with magnets and cling and magic (but not for wood mounted stamps, alas - but I persevere and take risks using these, and am one-by-one, converting them to cling mount - that's yet another post...).  But enter my stamp organization process, where I am finally creating a catalog of my single cling-mounted stamps that live on individual 8.5 x 11 sheets by stamping them out on 8.5 x 11 paper (see example at the top of the post).  That's too big a piece of paper for each stamp to be happily stamped out using the MISTI or the Tim Holtz platform.  But I can do this - I have acrylic blocks.  Uh huh.  Spoiler alert...

Because I'm left-handed, I work from the bottom-right corner of the page, and work my way up.  All was going fine until I dropped the inked stamp into the wrong spot - twice. Click on the image below to really get the full effect.

Stamps by Flonz, Hampton Art, Technique Junkies

And then I clearly missed a spot with my inking, pressure, or both.

Quantum Background by Deep Red Stamps

But since the catalog pages are just for me, even with the stamping flubs, they still do the job.

And for me, the added bonus of working on this project is that I remember what stamps I have, and where to find them so I can get some inspiration for some actual card-making!

Sentiment:  Viva Las Vegastamps

What projects are you working on this January?

Stamp Organization: Part 1 - Stamp Drawer Maps

Every crafter who uses rubber stamps has their own way of storing and keeping track of them.  I found that as my collection grew, I needed both a place to store my stamps, and an organization system so I would know what stamps I had, and where they were.

Back in the day, Ikea used to sell boxes like this:

They came in various sizes and drawer combinations and widths.  First they were ready-made units.  Then the sizes changed slightly as the wood shell and drawers became thinner and slightly more flimsy.  Then Ikea went back to the sturdier version of the wood, but flat-packed the unit so you had to construct both the shell and the drawers yourself.  I have all three types in my craft room.  My only regret is that I only have one more unused flat-packed unit stashed away...

Each drawer in each unit is mostly full of stamps, with a few drawers dedicated to paper or supplies.  In all, I have about 65 stamp drawers, each numbered. 

Each drawer has 2-3 layers of stamps.  

When I first started storing stamps in these drawers, I made a small attempt at grouping stamps by category:  sentiments, tea, moose stamps, etc., but I quickly found that a category didn't fit neatly in a drawer.  I either had wasted space in a drawer, or not enough.  And if I used multiple stamps in a project, I didn't always remember what drawer they had been in, or how they fit in the drawers.  As a result, stamp clean-up from a project took forever.  And when I had friends over for craft parties and pulled out lots of stamps from many drawers, it would take me over an hour to put them all back.  Hence the stamp drawer map project was born...

Focusing on one drawer at a time, I pull out all of the stamps and make sure they are arranged in a way that maximizes the drawer space.  If there's a gap, I sort through the newer stamps in my collection that haven't yet found a home to see if they fit better.  Once I've settled on the arrangement, it's time to document.

For each layer of stamps, I draw a pencil outline, and then stamp each stamp in its place.  Each layer has its own page.

 

Once the maps are complete, I cross-reference them against my full stamp catalog to make sure each image has a drawer number next to it.

In some ways, this mapping process, which has been going on for quite some time, seems like overkill.  But as tedious as it all seems, my maps make stamp clean-up easy.  And the mapping process has given me a chance to look at all of my stamps and think about how I want to use them. In some distant future, after the mapping project is complete, I want to challenge myself to use each of my stamps for a card or somesuch.  If I can't figure out how to use it, maybe I don't need it.

65 stamp drawers.  41 mapped.  24 to go...  Summer project???

In my next Organization post, I'll show you my stamp catalog.

 How do you keep track of your rubber stamps?

Just what we need, another blog...

I came up with the harebrained notion of starting another blog this week.  If I'm very lucky, the three of you who read Festive Yet Tasteful will have found your way over here.  If I'm even luckier, a few of you will have found your way here from other places.

Why another blog?  Is anyone reading blogs anymore?  I am.  I do.  And, like any other blog reader out there, I'm always on the lookout for blogs that resonate with me, make me think, entertain me, and give me ideas.  One category of blogs I'm always searching for involves one of my favorite hobbies:  card-making and rubber stamping.

Don't get me wrong - there is no shortage of blogs on this topic.  And no doubt there are some blogs out there that match my interests, learning goals, style, etc., but I can't seem to find many of them.  It seems like the craft bloggers out there all represent craft products or companies (which makes me slightly jealous), and while these bloggers make lovely things, they always use the latest products and are demonstrating the newest tool or the current fad.  I don't live in that world.

I've been playing with rubber stamps for over twenty years now, and it's long since I've purchased any kind of greeting card at a store.  I make all of my own birthday cards, thank-you cards, holiday cards (75 is a lot of holiday cards to make!), and have even sold sets of blank cards on a very small scale.  This is all well and good, but I also work full time, have a house and a garden to care for, a hobby of dancing and dance calling/teaching that often takes me away from home, not to mention a set of people I love spending time with.  But amidst all of the craziness, I value the time I spend in my craft room, and miss it when I don't make time for it.

So what is this blog all about anyway?  This space is the reports and the musings of a reality-based crafter.  There will be lots of pictures, and no doubt at the edges of all of them you will see my very messy work table, and far from pristine, and not even a little bit styled-for-photos craft room.    I love and purchase new craft products like anyone, but the truth is that I have a huge collection of rubber stamps and supplies that I love and want to return to and use over and over again.  And, unlike my perception of the field, there are styles and tools and techniques that have been out there for a long time that I haven't even gotten to yet.

So, read on.  I'll talk about my never-ending quest for product organization, show you cards I made and how I made them, talk about new things I bought, and report on outings to stamp shows and stores, and on, and on. 

With this blog, I hope to fill my own gap, and in doing so, connect with like-minded others out there.