Unmounting Done!

Well, almost all done, to be truthful. It's taken almost the whole week, and apart from a few very large stamps which  I am leaving on their blocks, I'm done. I admit, I haven't done the Christmas stamps either, but they're packed away in a box, so out of sight, out of mind.

All in ring binders, sorted into categories, or manufacturer- Paper Artsy, Lavinia, Crafty Individuals, Tim Holtz,as there are a quite a few of theirs. I split up sets if they had words/sentiments etc, and there are folders for words/sentiment,and Quotes/definitions. I didn't buy all black folders by the way, I had loads in all sorts of colours (whatever was on offer somewhere!), I bought a couple of rolls of black Fablon from Wilkinsons (cheapest place I could find it), and covered the spines of all the folders.

All stamped onto a sheet, which I am going to scan in sometime in the future. For two reasons, one so I can re-print the sheets A5 size, and put in A5 folders so I can just flick through the pages, rather than get each folder out, and secondly, because what we have done is take photographs of each room/ hubbys power tools/computers etc, so we can see (and prove) what we have should we ever be in the unfortunate position of needing to make an insurance claim. I realised. looking at the binders, I could never actually prove what was in them like this, and can you imagine the difficulty I'd have trying to claim?

Where I know who made the stamp, I've recorded that with the image. I like to try & put that info in my posts, if I can. I know how often I've seen a stamped image, and wondered about the stamp- who made it/ where I can get it.
 A few people asked how I was doing this on last weeks WOYWW, so here's what I found in the process.

  Some stamps came away from the woodblock intact with rubber foam- Penny Black were good for this, and Stampendous. I like my stamps with the foam cushion, and all my u/m's are on it, so this saved me quite a bit of remounting. The foam clings well to the acrylic blocks too. Here is a Penny Black, fresh off the wood block, and on an acrylic block.

With Hero Arts, Stamps Happen and Judikins I found the rubber peeled away from the foam cleanly, so these I could re-mount on Kling-on.


 I had some stamps with no manufacturer name on the blocks, that were backed with a not very good quality foam, and these sort of peeled off ok, but did leave a bit of a residue on the stamp. But, as it wasn't too bad, and I was putting it onto Kling-on, I tried one to see whether or not it would affect the stamp. It stuck ok, and the image came out clean, so it seems a little isn't a problem, but obviously only if you are putting them onto foam. If you were going to use bare rubber, you'd have to get it all off.

The ones that seemed like I might get the whole thing off in one go, but was a bit too well stuck to the block, I microwaved. Depending on the size of the stamp, they took 8 -15 seconds to loosen the glue enough to peel the stamp off. I used the microwave on med high, and its an 800 watt oven. Mine has a dial, rather than digital, so you can't set it for seconds. I just put it on for a couple of minutes and watched the main oven clock to count the seconds.I started with 8, if it was still stuck I tried another 4 and so on. I think my microwave has had more use this week doing stamps than it had all last year, lol.

This rack used to be pretty much filled with my wood mounted stamps, lay on end like the large ones still on the top. This is the rubble sack full of the discarded wood mounts! So a definite space saver.


 Oh, and one final amusing bit. I was in WHSmiths the other day, and saw the Creativity magazine, with a set of free stamps on the front. What attracted me was the Globe stamp-always looking for good 'male' images. Didn't notice at the time(!), but what is on it? Yes, another blasted Thank You stamp!