Use Your Stash Blog Hop - If You Stamp It They Will Love It

Welcome to the May Use Your Stash Blog Hop!  If you've come here from Shelia's Blog you are on the right track!

Today I am sharing a project I made for my son's music teacher. He plays in the jazz bands at his middle school so he spends about 2 hours a day with her.  I heard through the grapevine that she was out of her personal stationary so I purchased the Delightful Ditty stamp set so I could make her some note cards with instruments to reflect what she does.  I bought this set several months ago and have been meaning to get around to making the gift for her and since the last concert of the school year is next week I thought I'd better get cracking at making them! 

I wanted a clean and simple look for these cards so I stamped one image per card plus her name using The Works Alphabet in Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I stamped a set of music notes on the inside of the card as well as on the envelopes.

I made 20 cards with matching stamped envelopes and needed a box to put them in. My trusty Cricut helped me cut this custom sized box from Bags, Tags, Boxes and More which I random stamped to match the notecards.

Back of the box.

Confession time - I am a huge stamp addict which is why I named this blog Stampologist.  Okay, maybe it should be Stampologist/Cricutologist - LOL!  The long and short is that after being a CTMH consultant for 7.5 years I have a HUGE stamp collection - as in about 780 sets last count.  That is a LOT of stamp sets to try and remember which one has a specific phrase or image that I want to use. A couple of months ago I took the plunge and created a One Note searchable database with an image of the set along with any words on the stamps, what the images on it are and any tags I could think of - so like Father's Day, Guy Cards, Male, etc.  I pulled the pictures from my online shopping site if the set was current or from googled images online and then went to town creating an entry for each set.  If I couldn't find an image I took a quick picture and uploaded it to my computer.

Now I can look up Birthday and every single set I own with a Birthday tag or Birthday as one of the words in the set will come up for me to scroll through and pick out which stamp I want to use!  This has been a GREAT tool for me to use in my crafting.  It took me about 4 days to complete the database but doing new entries is a snap as I purchase new sets.  Anything in a tag is searchable so if I want to see all stamps with balloons or clouds, this is one of the sets that will pop up. Here is a sample page of one of my stamp sets so you can see how I am using it.

Benefits of using One Note - it is free, stores in the cloud, no charge for large database storage (I knew my database would grow over the years), it has OCR technology meaning it can read them via typing), you can share your database, you can access via you computer OR via the IPad app, and it was very easy to learn how to use.

How do I physically store all those sets?  Currently I have three large stamp towers that holds about a third of my collection and holds only retired sets.  These drawers have labels I created like Animals (sets with birds, critters, bugs, etc.) Nature (trees, rainbows, etc.) Alphabet, Sentiments, Background and Texture, Inchie, Birthday, Holidays, etc.  They were all categories that made sense to me.  I have some stand alone stamp boxes (our smaller totes and the new large stamp totes) that hold the rest of my collection.  I have three or four boxes with only Christmas sets in them, a box for our old Alphabet and Number solos, the stamps that focused on each of the 12 months, etc.  I also have large totes that hold my current non-retired stamps so I can browse through the boxes and find recent sets that I want to use.  Eventually I'll number each of the boxes and put the assigned number into the One Note database so I can find exactly where each stamp is located and then put that number on the stamp envelope as well.  Right now I'm pretty good at knowing where each of the sets are generally located but eventually I'll need to organize and number the physical sets as well.  I do like to keep current separated from retired product but that may change in the future.

Retired Stamp Sets sorted by Category (I slip silica packets from purchases into my drawers - I heard that tip years ago for keeping down moisture in long term storage of stamps.  No idea if it helps but all my stamps are in great shape!)

 Current Sets stored in large organizers - LOVE these!

Now hop on over to Michelle's Blog and see what she has created for us!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Paige