In todays post I wanted to share with you an amazing way - in my opinion - to sort out all your scraps and stamps.
I've struggled with stamps being neglected, a very messy scrap box and stress of trying to find a particular stamp with no luck (then finding it an hour later because that's always fun!) Me and one of my daughters came up with a way to solve my solution so over a few evenings we spent hours sorting everything out and I'm very happy with the result!
Even if you are just a beginner or you don't have a large collection of stamps or scraps I still think it is very helpful to have a system. This way in the future when you add to it you won't be overwhelmed with mess!
I'm going to keep this intro sort and sweet and this is a fairly 'chatty' post so grab a snack and keep reading!
Tips to sort out your scraps!
As you can see by the pictures below I have acculmated a considerable amount of scraps and whilst this is extremely useful I just found myself spending a huge amount of time searching to see what I had. I wanted a way that I could just pull out certain colour pieces at the same time and not have a problem at all!
So me and daughter went through all my pieces of scraps and organised them by colour. This may seem reasonably time consuming but I actually found the most difficult part was when it was harder to tell what colour the scrap was. For instance I had pieces that I thought were yellow but when I added them to the yellow pile they actually looked green!
After we finished that we seperated the plains from the patterns and just simply gathered them together and put a bulldog clip on them - you could even put them into a pouches or folder! Simple. I highly suggest spending the time to do this, especially if you don't have too much.
Now when I'm working on a project I pull out the corresponding colours and I can very easily grab any little bits I need. Also when I gain more scraps I just see what group they belong in and add them to the clip!
Unfortunately I didn't take any after pictures but if you like see them I will be putting up a picture on my Instagram this week which you can find linked at the end of this post!!
Tips for sorting out your stamps
As much as I found it difficult to gain proper access to my scraps my stamps were becoming extremely difficult. I had them organised in these folders - not exactly in categories but when I would buy a pack I would put them in there. Every time I needed a stamp I would have to flip through all three of these to find the stamp I would need and very often I would either miss the stamps I was looking for or I would end up using something when there was something else that would have suited it better.
In the folder I had a page on one side that had stamps stamped on the page and on the other side the corresponding stamps stuck on a small piece of acetate on page dividers.
So again me and my daughter came up with a way to sort out all my stamps, make it easier for me to find a particular one and just get a better system for them. This definitely look a some time but I'm extremely happy with how they are now!!
The first thing we did was organise all my stamps by categories. We just put piece of page dividers on the floor and grouped stamps together on top as you can see by the picture below. If there was a stamp that could fit into a number of categories we just put it to one side and sort them out at the end. You would just want them to put them in categories that suit you. Think about what can work for you and when we initially thought about the groups we would put them in we actually ended up changing them to make it easier. For example we had all the 'mum', 'dad', 'auntie', 'grandad' etc stamps together but we decided to split them into male and female.
With decorative stamps we just looked at the kind of pattern it had and group them together accordingly. We had corner stamps, flower patterns, square patterns, frame patterns - but again think about what would suit yourself.
Once we had sorted out all my stamps into their groups we took a piece of cardboard that had a shiny side and a matt side, a piece of acetate and a pouch that was the same size as the cardboard. My local comic book shop sold a huge pack of this card which was very inexpensive but you could find a similar product your local craft supplier or even try any comic book stores close to you.
We then stamped on the matt side of the card leaving enough room under or next to it to for the actual stamp. A small tip is if you stamp the top row smallest to biggest then the next row do the opposite as it makes it easier to use up space and I actually think it looks a lot neater. As you can see in the picture below we have stamps on the card and we made sure there is enough room for the corresponding stamps.
Hopefully it is clear enough in the picture below but the next thing we did was put some clear double sided tape around the edges of the card and stuck a piece of acetate on top that we had cut down to the same size as the card. Then all you need to do is stick your stamps on top! Another tip is if you find your stamps have lost their stickiness, have a bowl of warm soapy water and a bowl of water with you. Clean the stamp in the soapy water then rinse off in the plain water. Leave to dry and your stamp should gain it's stickiness back!
Then all you need to do is slip it into your pouch and you are done!
At the moment I have them in a container and the next thing on my list to do is number them and put a sheet at the front stating what stamps are on each number so I can very easily pull out the pack I need. But for the moment it is a lot easier to see what stamps I have. During the process I could really tell what stamps I hadn't used and what one's were my favourite. Or even sometimes I found multiples of the same stamps. Do I really need six 'Best Wishes' stamps? Apparently so! Anyone else have the same problem?
Another benefit from doing this is that I can see what stamps I plan to purchase in the future. I have an extremely small 'new baby' related stamps so when I go craft shopping I can quickly scan my stamps and it gives me a very good idea of what I want to buy.
Hopefully this post has been helpful to some of you and give you ideas of how you can organise some of your crafting supplies. The good thing about these systems is once you have done it, it's very easy to up keep. I have easily been able to add stamps to my pages if they aren't full and I can very quickly create new ones to add on.
Let me know your crafting tips below I would love to hear. And if you like more posts like this in the future then be sure to let me know.
I also wanted to tell you I will be having a bonus post on Friday. Not entirely a crafting post but I thought I would share a little bit of British culture as the majority of my reader are from the US. I will also be sharing something else with you which I'm looking forward too.
Don't forget you can tag me on twitter or Instagram to show me your organised stamps and scraps or you can use the hashtag #sukilucrafts.
Happy crafting!
Susan x
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