Stamping and Stamp Room

I recently took a few days away from the computer so I could tend to other matters around the house.  #1 on the list was cleaning, tidying, and reorganizing my stamp room.  How many times have I done that?  Many!  This time I didn’t discard anything or give anything away (except a hot glue gun).  I figured I bought this stuff, I’m going to use it.  My room wasn’t what you’d call a “mess”.  I keep it relatively clean and tidy.  However, I found myself digging through embellishment drawers and being surprised by what I found there.  Once it had been cleaned and reorganized (a process that took place over several days) well, what do you know, I felt like stamping.
So… I inked up a new Flourishes set which I picked up from their latest release.  I would love to have them all, but I chose just one that I fell head over heels in love with – Summer Blossom.  I haven’t used the largest main image yet, but I love every stamp in the set and I think it’s very versatile as to the style of card you can create with it.  My first card is soft and feminine, a teensy touch vintage.  I used the smallest floral image in the set, as well as my new possibly favorite designer paper – My Mind’s Eye Howdy Doody – also from Flourishes.  I made the card from Flourishes’ Classic Ivory cardstock and colored the image with Copic markers.  The curved borders were cut with Spellbinders Curved Rectangle Nestabilities (S5-006).  The scalloped border is a Stampin’ Up! punch.



The next card is bright and flirty feminine, on Classic White cardstock, also colored with Copic markers.  The resin sticker frame is one of those items I unearthed in my stamp room.  It may be old by the standards of today’s fast moving market, but it got a face lift with a little color coordination and some new stamps.  Am I having fun yet?  You bet!



About my stamp room…  The first thing I organized was the ribbon.  It’s still the same Ribbon Central I’ve had for years.  However, it had become piled high with ribbon that had no place else to go.  No home of its own.  No slot to slip into.  That’s what comes of a ribbon obsession and several years on a design team.  I should have taken a “before” picture, but I wasn’t thinking about blogging at the time.  This is the cabinet top “after”.  The jars are scraps.  The cards of old Stampin’ Up! ribbon collections are in letter holders from Staples.



This is a partial view of the cabinet drawer.  Oh, there’s more – much more.  This is organized by type – printed, novelty, taffeta, organdy, satin, etc.  Some of these ribbons go back many years.



This is the overflow.  Good grief, can you imagine how disorganized this was?  I cleaned out these drawers specifically to house the ribbon.



These are just brads.  Nothing but brads.  They were here, there and everywhere, but now they’re all in one place.  The jar holds buttons, but that’s another story.



Thought I’d show you how I store my 6 x 6 pads.  It’s not genius, but it works in the allotted space.  I keep the scraps inside the pad and store the pads upside down so the scraps won’t fall out.  I have to thumb through to make my selections, but it’s surprisingly not that difficult to find what I’m looking for.



Everything else has its own designated space, too, which makes stamping easier and much more fun for me.  I just don’t function well in disarray.  Naturally, even the creation of a single card makes the room look like an explosion occurred (come on, you know what I’m saying), but so far I've been picking it up afterward.  We’ll see how long I can keep this up.  Looking forward to more stamping.  Have a great day!