Lol, I'ma dork.

No, really.  It's true.

There I was, so organized through the last few weeks, pre-posting a number of blog posts, to get caught up with the last few things I had to show you and give you something fresh to read and look at on a more regular basis.  So organized, that I preset the post about my ever-loving-long-overdue-and-taking-waaaay-too-long project where I unmounted my old rubber stamps for new-and-improved storage reasons!!  With NO PHOTOS.  YAYYY.  How cool was that, right??  Lol.

Well, I'ma try and fix that today.  Here's a little more about the process.  With some pics.

Step 1, was to pull all the red rubber off old wood blocks like these.  Depending on their age and my dexterity, most of them peeled off ok, with the occasional one that took a LOT of glue with it. I didn't find that putting the stamps into either the freezer or microwaving them (as some have suggested) helped very much with removal.

Next, I laid out the various rubber shapes onto Sunday International EZ Mount foam and traced around the shapes.

The next step was to use (a variety of) adhesives to re-stick the rubber shapes onto a clear mounting block, and stamp the image, using Black Stazon Ink, onto the cling-mount side of the grey foam.

 

 (StazOn stamp cleaner).

Once that was done, I traced around the outline marks with a Walnut Hollow Hot Knife (my new best friend!) and mounted each rubber shape to its corresponding foam shape.  

Now, this grey mounting foam is sticky.  And no matter how exacting you are with cutting the rubber and the foam to be the same size, you are going to get irritatingly sticky edges on your newly mounted rubber stamps.  After asking Uncle Google what to do about that, I settled upon the brain numbing technique of brushing baby powder over all the edges of each stamp.  It wasn't too bad…I multi-tasked while I did it, and raised 2 adolescent boys to adulthood during the process.  

Actually, no, it was a good time to chat on the phone, or catch up on YouTube videos.  All of the Instructional Variety, of course!

And, some 22 sheets of EZMount foam later, I was done!  Nothing to it!  Easy Peasy!

 I had, at some point in the past, while late-night-on-line-shopping (almost never a good idea) purchased quite a few of these clear cd cases for other stamp storage, and while they aren't my favorite storage method, and I may yet switch them over to my most favorite method, this works for now, and uses up all those nice, empty cases that were "laying around".

This, however, is my storage method of choice.

 These are sheets of legal-sized laminated plastic sheets (with nothing laminated between the layers.  Try explaining that to the helpful Staples clerk.) and cut into approximately 5"x7" sizes.

 The point is to NOT adhere your foam mounted stamps to acetate for any extended period of time.  They don't play well together.  Apparently, laminate plastic is not acetate.  Several sources confirm this.

Why are the laminate sheets cut to 5"x7" exactly?  Well, to fit into these handy-dandy-as-recommended-by-the-inimitable-Jennifer McGuire-stamp-storage-pockets, of course! 

And then for the same (Avery Elle) stamp storage pockets to fit into these handy-dandy-also-recommended-by-JM-Fridge-Binz.

Here are some of the old wood blocks headed to the recycling bin.  You can't see how many layers deep they go, but there are a LOT.  

In the final analysis, I have happily reduced an entire closet full of stamps in awkward plastic storage drawers, to 3 Ikea unit drawers like this.  

And it is good.  

I feel like I should reward you with something I've made as a result of this massive re-do, but sadly, I got nuthin.  Stick with me though, and there's bound to be something coming down the pike!

Thanks for stopping by today!