Stamp of the Month Blog Hop - Wild About Love

Welcome to the February Stamp of the Month Blog Hop!!!

If you came from Sarita's blog, then you are going the right direction, if you are starting here, 

that's ok, keep hopping and you will make a complete circle.

This month's stamp set is:

Wild About Love

Sooo perfect for Valentine's Day Cards! I made 2!!!

Ok, now some of these stamps I can't just put on anyone's card/envelope 

- so I saved the best for the hubby!

The Wild Thing is raised with foam squares and 

the hearts were stamped with textured stamp set and sponged.

I put this in the inside and that on the envelope!

THIS IS MY DAUGHTER'S CARD!!! Do ya get it????

Bling on the flower!

TIP:  When cutting out things with your cricut to go with our stamps CUT MORE THAN ONE!!!

(my sister consultant Kathy B reminded me of this)

Why? Not just for mistakes, but for using later! I did a bunch of sizes and shapes and filled a whole page.

I put them into a drawer for use later - some of these shapes will be used in future SOTM stamp sets!!

Thanks for looking, leave a comment and please keep hopping! Next is Lucy's Blog!

Organized the Paper

I used to have labels that were taped onto the front of these so I decided to dress them up and update the names with our new colors!

 Each Group has its own container and they are in order like we have them in our catalogs.

 Here's the other half of the seasons - I didn't photograph the Basic Collection, but it's done too.

I went on to reorganize my stamps.  I had 3 of these three drawer plastic shelving units that the hubby took apart and created wood shelves to slide the drawers into.  The plastic unit couldn't hold the weight of anything so the wood works wonderfully! 5 of the drawers are for stamps, they are grouped by color and in alphabetical order!  Some day I'll put photos of the whole room on here.

Storage for Paper

 These Cropper Hoppers are great for paper.  It hold like 200 sheets of cardstock.  I have 2 boxes for each season.  I have a tab for each color.  Then I save the ziplock bags that our Paper Packs come in and put a label on the outside corner for scraps.

 This way I know which box they go in and what paper is in the bag.  With 60 colors to work with, there is no way one can remember is which blue is which (without a swatch book in hand).

I also label the front of the box showing what order the colors are in the box so that finding them are easy too.

I'm Bad - Cleaning up the Mess - Tip

OOPS - I've got a few stamps that I have been forgetting to put away.

Currently, I've been in a cleaning mode, organizing and putting everything away! My counters in my craft office are almost completely cleaned off! If you've seen my office in the past you wouldn't believe that last statement, but it's true!
I have a book that I keep all my stamps in. So that I don't have to search for an image this is what I do. I have them in Microsoft Excel, I can sort by name, number, contents. I also cut out the picture of the stamp and have it behind the list. I have them grouped by color on the package.

Here's a page with the stamp photos on it.

So instead of searching thru the stamps, I look thru the book for the images I want.

These 4 stamps I can't find a home for.

Got any ideas as to which stamp set they belong to?

Email if you do!

Crafty Clean Up Tip #1

I'm all for getting my work area organized and finding new ways to make the most of my supplies. Now this idea isn't an original idea, but when I saw this I had to come up with a way to make it my own.

So, does your sponges look like this? 5 colors on each sponge?

Mine did up to today!

I hate opening up my drawer with all the dozen or so sponge pieces in it and trying to find a few sponges with a clean spot on them so I can still recycle them. I keep thinking I can still hold on to them because this one looks red, and that one could be blue - but no more! Another crafty lady took a Round Tab Punch (contraband item - another company's punch) and punched out tabs for her sponges (zoom down to last photos to understand that last sentence). So I searched "their" site to see prices of punches and shipping costs, all the while trying to justify spending money on another punch - then it hit me - MAKE IT MYSELF!

So I opened up one of my software programs for my Cricut and hand drew the shape above. (actual screen shot above) As you can see that little piece on the far left will be added to the rest to create the correct shape as shown below:

Looks just like "their" punch - but I didn't have to wait or pay for it!!!
Now, when I imported it into the program for cutting - it looked like this:

I assumed it wasn't going to cut right because of where the "green" is - that's suppose to be the end shape - the green is what it should look like when it's done cutting, (after trying to adjust the image a dozen times via software) I thought I'd try it anyways .

AND IT WORKED!!!
And when you fold it in half - a perfect Round Tab!

(Why yes, those are my real finger nails!)

Then staple it to the sponge, write the color of the ink on the tab and I'll never have to search for a clean spot on a sponge again!!

Now, we have 60 different colors for CTMH, I don't usually sponge every color, mainly browns & black, so I'll add as I need to. I don't plan on making 60 of them right away. I'll order a cardstock swatch sample pack (our company has 3x3 swatches on a metal ring we can purchase for around $2) and cut each tab out of the coordinating cardstock so that it's easy to see in the drawer.
Hope you liked this idea - I figured I just saved myself $15+ and 10 days of waiting!

Do you want to know the best part about this?? I can stretch the image on the screen and I can make these any size!! I don't have to buy one in all the different sizes!! I think that's priceless!!!