WOYWW - 140 - Stamp storage Part 2

This week has been busy here in Pixies Workshop, stamping images and carrying on with the cataloguing and setting up stamp storage. The wooden ones were pretty quick to do - they're now mainly in numbered boxes with a little pile of ready stamped cards in ready for the time that the card index box itself is finally set up. I saved almost a whole storage box purely by being able to do a 'best fit' of the wooden stamps rather than categorising them too much - that's the object of the little index card system :)

The unmounted rubber ones (ie. non-cling) had caused the most head scratching here until I had a little Eureka moment and this is what's on my desk right now:

It's a postcard album with four pockets per page and (for me) a totally 'perfick' solution :)

Thankfully I'd made sure that, as I bought unmounted LOTV rubber stamps for example, the image got stamped onto a piece of paper or card with the name of the stamp on and that had already kept with each stamp. Some other stamps like these ones:

arrived with ready stamped slips in  - and even better, some of them were coloured images so I wasn't about to throw those away and start over either! So, each pocket has an unmounted rubber stamp behind the stamped image.

Behind the album you can see the box of index cards that I've been stamping as I went along. The front of the card has the image on and the back has the manufacturer and the name of the stamp - plus, in pencil, I've written the number of the plastic wallet sheet in pencil (so I can change things round if ever needed), on the front as wisely suggested by Sarn! Figure it's not too hard to spot which stamp is needed from a page of just four of them :)

So far none of the index cards has been sorted into subject - that's a job to be saved for the end of this mahoosive project once I truly know what the categories will be - and for a day when I can spread them all over our bed in little piles, like a croupier dealing the cards :)

So far it's just been images - the next job is wooden and rubber unmounted sentiments. Christmas stamps will follow - and only then will it be time to tackle all the clear and cling rubber stamps, which will be stored differently. So, it's taking some time but, so far, it's working well for me - apart from permanently black inked paws. Despite using Memento ink, although the stamps clean beautifully with baby wipes, it's at that point of playtime that the 'Black Hand Gang' comes out to play - more ink seems to end up on me than the baby wipes! Duh, just remembered the big box of disposable gloves lurking in the 'general cleaning' trolley downstairs :)

Some facts that might help if you like this idea:

The index box takes 6" x 4" white cards - perfect for most images. One or two so far have been bigger stamps but you don't need the whole image really.

I got the Photo Album online from here. Really fast service too.

I reckon that an album will hold 15 pocket pages of unmounted rubber stamps comfortably ie. 60 stamps per album. If you use foam backing then that's going to reduce the number of pages that will fit as they're much thicker of course.

Sadly the plastic pocket sheets are just a bit too big both in height and width to fit into a normal A4 file so you'd be best to buy the proper postcard albums.

And, oh dear, I might need a second Index Box to maintain 'flickability' - not sure if that's a real word but you know that I mean. I'm one of those quite sad people who just loves filing! Perhaps a second box could contain index cards for sentiments and (say) Christmas stamps - I need to see the size of the problem first and that's why I'm waiting to do the final sort of the index cards right at this end of this marathon.

Phew, if you're still here I'm amazed!

Time for me to make a cup of coffee and catch up on some blog hopping after a day out yesterday. To see what everyone else is up to on WOYWW - hop over to Julia's here. Best to make yourself a cuppa as well!

Happy WOYWW.

Di
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