Organising stamps, again.

I think this organising stamps into a workable system is going to be a lifetime project. When I did all my unmounting, in the main I organised by theme. Apart from a few companies who's stamps I have a lot of, Lavinia, Crafty Individuals, Tim Holtz etc.
 The trouble with this is deciding what goes into what theme, and what if they cross over into another theme as well? Some stamps just seem to defy fitting into any category.


 And do I keep any word stamps with the images, or file them with words/definitions etc?
I bought a couple of new Chocolate Baroque stamps last week, the Serenity & Tranquillity sheets. I thought about putting them into the Oriental section, which does work, but then decided to make a new folder up and store all my Chocolate Baroque/Graphicus/Elusive Images sets together.




Note to self: Do not buy any more, the folder is full!
 
So I pulled all the images from the various folders they were in, except for the Christmas ones. They will stay with Christmas stamps. Which explains the stamp mountain on my desk.
 I sorted them back out into complete sets.
During the course of this, I realised I have lost a stamp, The Rose Stem Script. I can guess where it is- somewhere at the back of the Expedit unit! This is one reason I have been trying to unmount from the foam backing where possible. I have realised over the years that in a lot of cases, it seems like the foam has shrunk, giving a concave surface to the back of the stamp, which means they don't want to lie flat on the storage sheets, and sometimes drop off.
Of course, this now means I have to re-organise the Expedit while I try to find it.
 What I did do was to get images of all the stamp sets, and print them out onto A5 paper. In one or two cases, I had to stamp the images onto sheets and scan them in, as the stamp sets are now retired and I couldn't find images anywhere.
 It does mean I can print more than one copy, so I can file one with the CB stamps, and one within the theme(s) it fits, in A5 binders, which will be easier to flick through than the stamp binders. I'm hoping this will work better than previous systems.

Edit: Two hours later, stamp found- along with two others I hadn't missed yet! And the Expedit is clean & tidy again.

WOYWW #242- A bit of a fishy story

Morning deskers- how are we all today? Our regular Wednesday link up around the world, courtesy of our Desker Extrordinaire, Julia at The Stamping Ground.Complete cheat, this post, nothing to do with my desk at all. Apart from why I spent almost no time at it over the weekend. We have had an aquarium in our dining room (doesn't that sound posh! its just that these old Victorian houses have two downstairs rooms, lol) for about 13 years, and over Christmas Beloved Hubby commented that the central heating seemed to be evaporating the water, and he needed to top it up. Turns out, it wasn't evaporating, one of the seams had developed a (thankfully) slow leak, about halfway up the side. So, to try and minimise the risk of the water pressure splitting it even further, Hubby gaffer-taped it during the week when he realised what was happening, thats the old tank, complete with plant selection bought to go in the new tank.And the gaffer tape.
 This journey involved a visit to an aquarium supplier  near Birmingham, which should have been 15 minutes down the M42. Satnav decided she fancied a scenic tour of Birmingham, took us just over an hour Friday afternoon, so by the time we finally got there it was closed. Return on Saturday, this time completely ignoring the sat nav. Looked at tanks ( HOW MUCH?), went to another place, we spotted almost next door. Then decided to go have a look at Webbs in Hagley. We'd already been to Webbs in Wychbold, who didn't have much, and their aquarium centre website showed a nice big showroom full of various makes of tank.  Complete waste of a 40 mile round trip- the fancy centre turned out to be a garden shed with four fishtanks! So back up the M42 to Shirley Aquatics, where we'd started.
 We also decided to swap the wall it was against, which did make it easier to do the swap over. Don't even ask how it long it took to get the backing in place, straight with no creases! Good old DST.

Planted, gravelled and with the fish transferred. All the cables you can see are actually the old light fitting from the other tank, waiting to go into storage. Just in case.

Hasn't got any shoals of fish yet, mainly Plecostamus, a type of catfish. And one Ropefish.

 
This is the Ropefish, and why there are no shoals of little fish. If it can go in his mouth, it will. So the fish we get will have to be bigger than snack-size, lol.
 The fish below is a Plecostamus, a Snakeskin Plec.They can look quite fearsome, and get very big, but eat only algae.And Cucumber. They love cucumber!  The stripy snail at the front is a Ninja, or Assassin snail- they eat other snails, which breed like wildfire & infest a tank.

 So the only time I actually spent at my desk was during Sunday night, when I played around with the white inkpads in the previous post.
Have a good Wednesday all, I'll be scheduling the post, and will link up before I go to bed.
 As a result of doing the re- wiring of stuff into the tank, Hubby came across this on the net, and I thought I'd post it here for anyone who may have purchased electrical goods with plug attached, or new electric plugs.  And not just off dodgy market traders- these in the story are on products purchased through traders on Amazon and E-Bay. Dangerous/Illegal Electrical plugs. Its quite a longish read, but check it out when you have 5 minutes, save the link for later. Its quite frightening.

A return to the White Inkpad question

Quite a while ago, I did a post on white inkpads- I wanted to make some white on black cards at the time. It came down to having to stamp in Versamark, then heat emboss with white embossing powder to get a nice white image.

My original project

I tried a couple of white inks I have, including white Staz-on, which I have to say I hate. Even the Brilliance Moonlight white didn't give me a  very good image. Original post here.
 So, a few weeks before Christmas, the subject of white inkpads came up on SCS (Splitcoast Stampers) in a forum thread. People were raving about a newish inkpad,by Studio G. One very lovely and generous contributor offered to send me one in the mail, as I couldn't find it available over here. It arrived this week, along with a second one, by Hampton Art, the rubber stamp people.
 I've given them both a tryout, both embossed and unembossed, and heres what they look like.

 The first one I tried was the Hampton Art pad. Both are a pigment ink, by the way. I tried them out on black card, and I used a sentiment stamp for the first tryout. It gives a lovely thick coating on the stamp, and really looks white.

Then the Studio G inkpad- again a nice coating on the stamp, and it also looks really white.


 So here they are stamped on black card, side by side for comparison:

 Neither one is heat set or embossed here, just as is. I think the Studio G just has the edge here, but only just.






Now I thought I'd try a more detailed image, and heat emboss with clear powder.

I'd be happy with either image, but in this one, I think the Hampton Art inkpad just takes it.
 Strange. Both on the same piece of black card, both using red rubber stamps, it seems the heat embossing just gives the Hampton Art one a little edge.
 So now, I had to see what I would get with white embossing powder.

And what you get depends a great deal on your embossing powder- the top two are embossed with Stamp'N'Stuff Detail white, and its not as white as you'd expect. More a creamy buttermilk sort of colour. The middle one is using Heat It Up Seafoam White, and again, not very white.
 The best result came with WOW! Bright White Super Fine embossing powder.
All in all, they both give a nice white image on dark cardstock, either embossed or not. They both dry without heat setting- by the time I'd done the others, the original un-heat embossed were both dry. Also, the ink wipes off the stamps easily just with a baby wipe. Having had another search, there are still no signs of either pad being available over here- seems they are both only available in the USA.

WOYWW #241

 Goooood Morning everyone! Wednesday again, time to get your linking hat on and pop over to our favourite Head Desker, Julia at The Stamping Ground, for this weeks Desk Parade. Great news from Julia last week about the next crop- on my calendar for definite. So enjoyed meeting everyone last year, wouldn't miss it for the world. Had not booked our holiday last week when she gave us the date- holiday now booked for before then, lol.
 I had some extra images from the two cards in the previous post, and with a bit of creative cutting, got four squares from them. And some leftover bits.

 


Which I decided I could maybe jazz up a bit, with some glass microbeads and  Glossy Accents, or some ink & Glossy Accents on top.

Microbeads- bought from e-bay, way cheaper than buying a branded jar, and arrived the day after I ordered them! 300gr of beads, and 5x A4 double sided adhesive sheets-£8, and free postage.






Distress Inks, Salty Ocean & Dusty Concord with Glossy Accents.

 Just Glossy Accents on these four.
 Which will all hopefully come together on a card at some point in the near future.

Giving the Documented Life a miss for this weeks, Use something from your mail! Probably 95% of my mail goes in the recycling, what is it with junk mail? I swear, half my bin is junk mail. Not inspiring at all. Janet, Fairythoughts, I am with you completely on this, the weekly thing just takes over, which is why I am only doing the ideas that grab me. Or that I remember to check out. So two weeks in my diary may be it, we shall see. Enjoy your week everyone, will catch up with you later.

Quick Birthday cards

So, I finished last weeks Documented life pages, in the post below.  Giving this weeks a miss- use something from your mailbox. As mine will be mainly junk mail- isn't it always?- I can't say the idea inspires me. And I'm not getting hung up on doing each week, just the ones that grab me. So I had some stamping time yesterday, and the stamps that came out I was reminded of in a roundabout way. I saw a post on Facebook, where someone was commenting about a bunch of the new release stamp sets from Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz Classics, and how they did not credit the original artists- SA seem to claim they don't know who the original artists were.Tim does make it clear he is not the original designer,just that he has chosen his favourite 'classic' images from SA's back catalogue. Having looked at the images, I realised I had a few of the originals, which were red rubber on wood mount. The artist who puts her name to these is Michelle Ward, by the way.

 The first image is called Artful Mosaic, and I love it because you can stamp it then colour it, stamp it onto an inked background, or as I have, stamp & heat emboss and it always looks great.
 Guess you can see why its called a classic!
 Anyway, stamped in black onto White pearl card, then heat embossed with clear powder.

 

 Trimmed the image down, then matted onto black.I cut and folded a card blank from White pearl card, to roughly 8 x 4 1/4".



Decided I would 'frame ' the image with an embossed line on the front. To do this I opened out the card, and on the inside I drew lightly in pencil around the corners of the image. Then I drew a box all around where the image would be, about a 1/4" out from the original size.



 Lined this up on my Hougie board, and embossed the four sides,being very careful at the corners.
I didn't put it exactly central, as I wanted room at the bottom for the sentiment.

 DST on the back of the image, and mounted it into the 'frame'.






 The Birthday sentiment is a clear stamp from one of Debbie Moores stamp sets.

Stamped in black onto a scrap of the white pearl card.






















The second card I made was pretty much identical, except this time used a stamp called Moon Collage.
I also used a black base card this time. All the techniques were the same though.

Supplies:
Stamps: Moon Collage,Artful Mosaic, now released as SA Classics. Moon Collage is on the newest sheets released this year at CHA.
Black inkpad
Clear embossing powder.
White pearl card.
Black card
Embossing board & stylus
Sentiment- Debbie Moore Twilight Stamp 1
Heat Gun