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I have accumulated a fair amount of photopolymer stamps, which I love! They are so easy to use, they stick great to my blocks and they're easy to clean, too.
I have about 26 packs. With the exception of tags, flowers and Christmas, many of the packs I have, have a variety of sentiments.
I am thinking about organizing these. I have the shiny stamp board, where you can stick them on.
Does anyone else break up your sets like this? I really want to be able to reach for certain things.
Please let me know if you break you sets up as well. I hate doing that, but I think it will be easier to reach for things.
I have my retired sets broken up into categories (I'm a Stampin' Up! demo, so I like to keep my current sets together). Unless it makes sense to leave it as a set. I have used the stamp storage cling boards that I have cut down to fit into my bins. I love this method!! It makes it so easy to find what I'm looking for!!
Thanks for sharing your method. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to find a certain sentiment and you have so many different places to have to look. I think I am going to just try separating them.
Lamborghini Gal, since you're not sure if you'll like separating sentiments, as you remove them from their sets you might consider listing them along with which set each belongs to. Then if you change your mind, or ever want to give away or sell a complete set, it won't be difficult to match everything up.
To make it easier, you could code each set's package and jot down the code with the sentiment name, instead of writing out the stamp set name and/or company. Just a removable sticker (in case you change your mind) and hand written code could work.
Just a thought; I don't separate sets but I'd want a back-up plan if I made such a life-changing decision. ; )
Separating sets is a BIG decision. Especially if you own mostly sets. In my case, about a third of my stamps were singles to begin with. Still, I hesitated a long time before I broke up my sets and arranged my stamps by category.
Personally, I have never regretted it. But that's me. And I did it in a very agressive way - while I was doing it I purged my collection of every stamp I didn't really love, regardless of whether it was part of a set or not. (That was really, really hard.)
You might find you'd be happier starting out by setting up a paper or digital index by category, noting what set to look in to find each stamp. That was my very first step. It gave me a chance to see if I preferred to view my collection that way. I just used a binder to hold the indexes of all my stamped images because my collection was not all that big at the time. But lots of people use a program like Evernote for large collections.
__________________ I have come to the conclusion that buying craft supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies. RachelRose Designs by Robin... GALLERY
Save all your packaging/cases, in case you change your mind up the road and want to put the sets back together. ;)!
__________________ I have come to the conclusion that buying craft supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies. RachelRose Designs by Robin... GALLERY
Hi Rachelrose, I definitely saved that. A lot of them have stamps on them, that I didn't want to pull. Who knows, with the way my mind changes, I may put them all back tomorrow. NOT! LOL! :-)
I have no issue breaking up stamp sets. I have all sentiments/ quotes/sayings in my Sentiment & Quotes binder. I do keep the original packaging/backing sheet with the image part of the stamp set. I found I would forget totally about sentiments in sets,and many times I didn't think I had a stamp for a particular sentiment. I wanted all my sentiments together- I tend to interchange anyway, it's rare I will use a stamp set 'as is'. I'm not an SU buyer, btw, but I'd still go down the same route.
Have you thought about using Evernote to organize your stamps? You'd be able to search easily and know exactly the set you need. I organize my sets by company and then name so its easy to find.
Hi marymoilanen, I had never heard of Evernote before now. I think for the time being, I'm going to just stay with what I have done. Maybe in the future, if I get a lot more stamps.... Thank you for recommending that though. I'm going to at least look into it. Never hurts to check something out. :-)
I don't use Evernote, but if you look at it and it appeals to you, you should think of starting out with it soon, before your collection gets very large. Lots easier to do it now, when you have fewer stamps. And lots of folks here on the forum who use it and can help you.
It's not something I need myself. My collection is quite small by most standards and will stay that way. I'm not good with too much choice. I've learned that over the years. ;)!
__________________ I have come to the conclusion that buying craft supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies. RachelRose Designs by Robin... GALLERY
Rachelrosse, my collection is quite small too! I think I counted 26 packs of stamps and I have about 80 dies. I have quite a bit of other stuff, but I think what I have is pretty small in comparison to most folks. I like keeping it that way, because for me, it's easier to know where everything is. The "card room" is not big, but everything has it's place and if I had a chance to have a room 3 or 4 times bigger, I wouldn't know what to do! LOL :-)
One of the benefits of Evernote is searching. Rather than flipping through your sets, you search in Evernote. You can narrow down your search rather quickly (based on your tags). Its so easy searching for sentiments this way. And, you wouldn't have to split up your sets. (I cringe just thinking about breaking up my sets, but that's just me.)
Evernote is more than an inventory system. There's a lot of different discussions on SCS about how people use it.
I actually created an inventory so as not to break up the sets, such as if the set(s) have happy birthday in them, they are all stamped in the Happy birthday section in a 3 ring notebook, with the name of the set written. that way you have all the different lettering fonts all in one place. We like variety, and being able to go to the happy birthday section and further customize the card by changing the font...that is great! I did this with random images also say farm themed-barn, silo, tractor (also in vehicle) etc. Good luck with your project!
I actually created an inventory so as not to break up the sets, such as if the set(s) have happy birthday in them, they are all stamped in the Happy birthday section in a 3 ring notebook, with the name of the set written. that way you have all the different lettering fonts all in one place. We like variety, and being able to go to the happy birthday section and further customize the card by changing the font...that is great! I did this with random images also say farm themed-barn, silo, tractor (also in vehicle) etc. Good luck with your project!
This is what I do - and I started doing this over 25 years ago and it has worked perfectly for me all these years. I now have two 3 ring binders: one just for holiday stamps like Valentine's, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and the other for everything else.
Photopolymer stamp storage question.
