Hi everyone..
Have you ever lost your "stamping muse"?
Have you ever placed a stamp on a card, only to find out after you stamped it, that it didn't fit, or it didn't look right?
Ever have the stamping blues and didn't know where to start?
Ever wanted to take your "stamps" with you, but didn't have the room or the time to stamp?
Here's a solution that won't cost you $19.95, or even $9.95... my solution is FREE
Ok, so here is what you do... and what you need.
Transparencies (not the laser printer ones, just the ones you draw on).
Stazon ink or any other permanant quick drying ink.
Your rubber stamps
Time (depends on how many stamps you have)
What you are going to need to do is index your stamps on the transparancies using the Stazon ink. This takes a while - especially if you have a lot of stamps. Once you've stamped the image on the transparancy, then you cut it out. You can use a black permanant marker to write the name of the stamp company or the stamp # on the same transparency.
When you have no muse, you can use the transparencies to "stamp" cards for you to come up with ideas, or to see if a stamp will actually fit onto your card w/o having to stamp on it, messing it up or finding out too late that it just doesn't look right.
You can also take your stamps "with" you - I put all my transparancies of my stamps in those never used card envelopes seperated by type (Hanukkah, Christmas, Easter, Fall, Spring, Hearts/Love, Flowers, etc - you could even do stampin up sets, etc. Bring a small notebook to write down your recipies of cards and sketch a small drawing of the card after laying the transparancies down to get an idea and feel for the kind of card you want to create...
This is also a great thing for actually having a listing of stamps you own. If you wanted to, all you would need to do is throw down the transparancies on any flat bed scanner or copy machine with a white background (cardstock etc) to make copies of the stamps to put in a binder so you have a listing of your stamps with images. This is an easy way to index by type, company, and image without having to stamp multiple times and allows you to index your stamps in multiple ways - easily.
I used to stamp them all on one full sheet of transparency and kept them in a 3 ring binder for indexing as well as functional to see what an image looked like on a card - but keeping them cut up small and able to be stored in envelops is much much easier and I think works better for many reasons.
I'd love to hear from you about what you think about this idea - and if you end up using it. Imagine using this idea for your SU demos for beginner stampers who just can't "see" their creations until they've stamped - or even if you are a beginner stamper.
For those who need a "visual", I've included a pic below - enjoy! This shows you the templates on transparencies placed on a card for visual, as well as a small stack of stamped transparancies to the right.
The answer to stamping blues...
