A warm welcome to all my visitors,

Thank you for taking the time to come and look at my blog, I really do appreciate it. I would love you to leave me a comment, even if it’s just to say Hi. It means I can come visit you!

All my designs are original, so copyrighted to me. If I have been inspired by someone elses work, I have named them in the post, and where able, I have provided a link.

Please feel free to use my designs for inspiration, I just ask you to credit me, and provide a link back to my blog.

Thanks, Shaz XX

Sunday 29 December 2013

The post Christmas clean up

I always find myself doing this at this time of year. While I'm putting all the Christmas crafting stuff away, I get into tidy & organise mode. Last year I unmounted almost all my wood mount stamps- the only ones not done are some really large ones, and my Christmas stamps, as they were still packed in their box.So doing the Christmas stamps was something I intended for this year.
Here they all are, off their mounts, and labelled with post-its, so I can add the info to the catalogue pages. Not something I bothered with years ago, before blogging, but I do like to be able to include that info when I use a stamp, although, to be truthful, many of these stamps I've had for years, and most are probably discontinued now.
 This time I have not added cushion foam to them, leaving them as bare rubber. I've bought  a few packs of Tack n Peel, which I've applied to some acrylic blocks, and I'm going down that route now. Takes up even less storage space. As the Tack n Peel only goes on one side, and is completely clear, I can still use the opposite side of the block for foam mounted stamps.Now theres a thing- I had a look at a few with foam on, and wondered how difficult it would be to strip them all back to bare rubber. I discovered that a number of my older stamps actually separated from the foam cleanly with complete ease.
Stamp on the right, mounting foam on the left. No residue at all. I also found any dried on sticky residue can be removed with a pan scourer- saves on the fingerprints, lol.
 Not all of the foam would come off easily, some was still well adhered, so I'm leaving those. Clearly, over the years the adhesive loses its stick, and I can live with unmounting from the foam as a gradual process.


So after this it was time for a bit of a clean up. Especially since Beloved Hubby has been renovating my old craft room for him to do all his computer repairs in, there is enough dust about to carve your name in, even with closed doors.Removed everything from my desk and gave it a good clean. Thats the last time it'll be that clean and tidy!















                                      Told you it wouldn't be long.

Anyway, while I was tidying, I set up my Silhouette for a couple of projects I had in mind. A few weeks ago, I saw some stencils in use that looked really useful- one was letters & numbers, another was circles.I considered browsing the net to see where they were on sale, when I saw my Silhouette out of the corner of my eye, and thought ' don't be daft, cut your own'. So I spent an hour or so making them up, and I stored the files till I got round to them. Today seemed the perfect opportunity.

 First one, the letters & numbers.With some patches of circles to break it up & fill up the spaces. Bonus is I also have all the letters & numbers it cut out to make little masks.







 Next one was some circles- just made this a half page size- I got bored making circles, lol.

 Final one I cut was some stencil font numbers.



7 comments:

Winnie said...

I am smiling as my craft room looks like Christmas exploded in it. The door is shut for that reason. I worked OT all Christmas week so no cleaning done in there. I plan to tackle it this week and pack it up for next year. I am drooling over your stencils. I don't have that machine but it is so intriguing to me. I am just not computer savvy. Wishing you a very Happy New Year!!

Julia Dunnit said...

Oh good for you shaz...'m not even in my craft room yet??let alone thinking of the tidy and clearing process (which I actually relish as the new year comes). You're very handy with that silhouette, and I really like the reasoning to cutting the stencils for yourself..haven't they turned put really well!

Kyla said...

Wow (or should I say WOYWW?!) that is a really clean desk-not even been in mine yet, planning that for tomorrow!

I love the idea of cutting your own stencils. I do mine by hand, but yours look fabulous and detailed.

looking forward to seeing what you make with them

kyla

Monica said...

Impressed Shaz.
Do you have a post some where on how you organize the stamps and how you removed wood? It is something I need to do. And also to organize stencils, how did you accomplish that?
Monica

Krisha said...

Well DONE Shaz!!
I kind of had things cleared away, then I made it to a couple of 70 & 80% off sales. Now there is a stack of stuff to get put away.......again. LOL

fairy thoughts said...

Wow you aren't letting the grass grow are you
I'm still in Christmas mode and will be for a couple of days while I get ahead for next year ..... I know mad or what but it takes me so long to get in the 'zone' there's no time to make 100 cards so I do it now. Love the stencils must investigate this silhouette thingy
Janet

Art Joy of Sharing with Peg and Shel said...

Thanks for stopping by to visit and happy new year. LOVE the new srencils. I my need to have a go at that. Peg R

An End of an era

An end of an era

I write this with a broken heart, that only time can heal My beautiful, wonderful wifelet Shaz (Silverwolf) passed away peacefully in the ea...