WOYWW #363

Wednesday again, that week flew past! Time for another wander round the desks courtesy of Julia, over at The Stamping Ground. Sending you love & hugs, Julia.Not a lot happened on my desk, to be honest with you. It saw no action over the weekend, as the weather was nice, and we had some fencing needing to be finished. We now have a load of decking to rip up and replace, so hoping the weather stays dry this weekend.
 I was putting away my stamp purchases, and managed to get sidetracked. Not very far, just in organising my stamps a bit better, and in a number of cases stripping off the dreaded foam on the backs.

 A long time ago, 10 or more years, when I started collecting stamps, I started buying bare rubber, and mounting it onto foam backing myself. Seemed like a good idea at the time. However, as time went on, I started to get problems with stamps cupping- forming a concave shape, which meant they wouldn't stick well to the storage sheets, or the acrylic blocks. Then, a few years ago,I discovered in some cases the foam just peeled straight off the stamps.So I started to defoam a load of my stamps,but left the ones where the foam was quite secure.

 Now I find those are starting to peel, so I'm stripping off a load more.
Here's a typical example from this weeks batch. So, one thing I'd say to anyone about to go down this route, is think very carefully about using mounting foam. For starters, you can store more stamps without the foam, and secondly, it's not a once and forever job. Eventually the glue will break down, it will start to peel off, or it will start to cup. And it's not a humidity problem, here in the UK, we don't have humidity, lol.
 So now, all my stamps are getting repo glue on the backs. Right now, I'm using Tombow Mono Multi- it's a permanent glue if you stick something down whilst it's wet, but wait for it to dry and you have a removable item. I was using Aileenes Tack it Over & Over, but  it needs to be diluted, and everyone seems to prefer a different dilution, and I couldn't find one that really worked for me.
All this organising required some more storage sheets, and for these I just laminate odd sheets of card. The laminator I got cheap in a sale at Tesco a couple of years back, and I had been buying my pouches from Poundland, in packs of ten. Did a quick E-bay search the other day, and got 100 for £5.49, which is effectively half what I was paying. Bonus. I started laminating my own sheets after I purchased some storage sheets online, and when they turned up, I realised that's exactly what they were-just laminated cardstock.
The upside of getting sidetracked is finding stamps I'd forgotten about, so I'm trying to make a printed out catalogue, which I will be able to flick through in future.

WOYWW #350

Good Morning folks, and here we are with yet another Wednesday prowl around the worlds desktops.Click on the WOYWW badge in my sidebar to be whisked off to our leaders home, The Stamping Ground. Nothing particularly exciting here, just a sheet of Ryns texture/background stamps being coated with glue. I've swapped my glue this time round, I'm trying out the Tombow Multi. Previously I've used Aileenes Tack it Over & Over, but I'm having mixed results, to be honest. I've so far tried 3 different dilutions, 50:50, 60:40 and finally 70:30. At 50:50 I've had some stamps that stayed quite happily on their carrier sheets, others just kept dropping off. So tried 60:40, and it's better, but still not totally reliable. The 70:30 is too strong, they are hard to peel of the carrier sheet, and leave a residue. So I'm giving the Tombow a try. So far, seems good. I will let you know how this pans out.
 The Ryn sheet, you may notice, has another of the raindrops backgrounds on it. It is similar to the others, but on this one the raindrops are going in the opposite direction, so it's not exactly the same. Cards I've been working on are in the two posts below this, a Valentines for Beloved Hubby, and a Birthday card for Youngest Son, whose birthday is also Valentines Day. So thats me for today, I hope everyone is having some decent weather wherever you are, and I'll be round to visit shortly.
 We will be having a holiday at the end of April. Hubby has been keen to organise one for us, as he thinks we deserve a break, and I can't say I disagree. Anyway, he thought a cruise would be ideal, so I get plenty of lazing around time, and we have a 7 day one booked, which sails from Tenerife, visiting Portugal, then Gibraltar, then two ports in Spain, before we fly home from Majorca. It also includes two days at sea. We fly out to Tenerife on the 26th April, and fly home on the 3rd of May.