Unmounted stamps

[Maryann]

Am I the only one around who dislikes unmounted stamps? I know they are easier to store, but my mounted ones are up and visible (not in a drawer)and therefore serve as inspiration - I bought a big display hutch from a place going out of business. I really dislike having to mount the unmounted ones and am too lazy to go through a folder to find one a want. Having said that, I bet vendors like hauling boxes of envelopes in rather than all those wooden blocks!!!

[CatStamper]

Boy, I am with you on this! I bought some unmounteds at a convention years ago (thinking how great it was that they were less expensive, would save space, etc) and put the Halos backing on them and got the Halos acrylic mounts. The Halos system works fine, but I never seem to pull those unmounteds out to use them. So now I am back to buying mounted stamps if at all possible. I actually have gone back and wood mounted some of those images that I put on the Halos system years ago.

If an image I really want is only available unmounted, then I end up putting it on a wood mount myself. But it sure is a pain to make sure I have (or go buy) the right size block, cut the cushion, try to index it myself (never looks as good as the professionally mounted ones). I just like the look and feel of the wood mounted stamps better. And some of those unmounted purchases sit around forever before I ever mount them, too. :(

I sure hope the whole stamp world doesn't go unmounted on us! Seems that more and more companies are offering only unmounted stamps now, and often in sets (e.g. on the storage pages).

Kate

[stampin stacy]

I have quite a few unmounted and when I stored them in notebooks you're right, I never used them. Hated dragging out the note book and having to look through to find something.

I changed to cd cases this year and got a desk top cd holder and now use them all the time. I just finger walk through the cd's until I find what I want. Best part, I didn't even have to buy the plastic cases. I had bought a zipper case for my actual cd's for convenience in the car so then popped the middle out of the plastic cases and put my stamps in those.

[Inky Whiskers]

I agree that wood mounted stamps are very user friendly, but for me they became a BIG problem to store.

After buying the same image twice & doing this more than once <LOL> I started a binder to keep track of all my images. I had around 1500 images when I started & it indeed took more than a day or 2 to get them all stamped by catagory and in organized page protectors, but it was worth it! I add new images as I buy them & my rule is that I can't put new stamps away until they're in the book. With my stamp collection now over 7500, I know I can't possibly remember every image I own everytime I want to, so having the binder to flip thru' when I need an idea or when I'm prepping to go to a stamp convention saves me time & brain strain. Having all my images at my finger tips is handy when I go thru' the show vendor lists & visit the sites of companies planning on attending to see if they carry anything I might want & then make a shopping wishlist to take with me. This way I usually avoid buying duplicates. <LOL>

I keep my SU! sets mounted & in their boxes (current sets are on a shelf, but retired sets are in the drawers), but 90% of my other images are HALOS mounted. I store them in catagory labeled drawers, in labeled zip bags that have all the images from the same binder page in one bag. Finding any image is a matter of looking in the binder by catagory to see what else is in the bag with the image I want, going to the labeled drawer & pulling out the bag with the right images. :D The drawers aren't so big that I can't find what I want quickly.

My storage method might not work for everybody, but a binder of all your images is one way to know what you have & where you keep it if you don't have room for a gazzilion wood mounted stamps on display. I also have a smaller binder I keep track of all my inks & whether I have the refills, punches, paints, pens, powders, cutting system templates etc.

[Maryann]

Holy cow - 7500!!!! And I thought I was bad!!!

[Inky Whiskers]

Holy cow - 7500!!!! And I thought I was bad!!!

There might be a few less than that. I haven't counted since last year & I just pulled around 30 SU! sets that are retiring to sell. It might be closer to 6500. I guess I'll just have to pull out the binder & start counting! :))

[Elli]

Holy cow - 7500!!!! And I thought I was bad!!!
A lady on another group said she "stopped counting after her eighteen thousandth stamp". Wow!

[Inky Whiskers]

18,000? As in THREE ZEROS?

And I thought I had a bad case of rubber addiction! :))

Just for the heck of it I'm going to do my annual count tonight.

Will I break 5 digits?

Stay tuned to find out. :D

[alsmouse]

Do stampers count stamps instead of sheep to fall asleep?

[XrayAmy]

Wow....anything in quadruple digits is a lot. Fess up Inky....

[gunvor]

I think I'm going to show DH this thread! ;)

I stopped cpunting after 1 year and then I had 450 stamps. That was 6 years ago and I guess I've added "some" stamps but I'm not sure I want to know ...

I prefer UMs to mounted. One reason is the storage problem - I only have part of our home office for my stamping so I cannot have the stamps "out and about". Another reason is the cost for shipping: I buy most of my UMs from the US and those wooden blocks weigh a lot - I rather pay for rubber than wood in my packages :D

[piecesandpom]

I prefer unmounted because we are storage challenged in this house. It
also helps the budget since I can buy twice as many stamps!

[inkieroo]

We are waiting for the drum roll! I know you have a couple from our company! :))

[Inky Whiskers]

We are waiting for the drum roll! I know you have a couple from our company! :))

The final tally for 2007 ('cause I only do this once a year) is:

LIWP ~ 1500
SU! ~ 1915
All other stamp companies ~ 3915

for an approximate grand total of: 7330 rubber stamps in my collection!

Even tho' I thinned the herd last summer, I guess I bought more than I thought I had since then. :laugh: It's inkieroo's fault! She keeps offering those awesome grab bags & sales that she knows I can't resist!!! :))

[inkieroo]

The final tally for 2007 ('cause I only do this once a year) is:

LIWP ~ 1500
SU! ~ 1915
All other stamp companies ~ 3915

for an approximate grand total of: 7330 rubber stamps in my collection!

Even tho' I thinned the herd last summer, I guess I bought more than I thought I had since then. :laugh: It's inkieroo's fault! She keeps offering those awesome grab bags & sales that she knows I can't resist!!! :))

That is worse than I thought--I thought you only had about 900 of ours--LOL :)) This is going to be T at me soon:argue:

[Inky Whiskers]

1) I would NEVER tell T how many stamps I own. He'd have a heart attack & then I wouldn't be able to buy any more stamps! :noway:

2) I do own 26 different alphabets (6 of them are yours) and with uppers, lowers, numbers & punctuation all of them have at least 26 stamps per set some of them have 50+ stamps per set, so the #s add up fast.

3) I counted retired stamps from all companies. The #s I've told you before were for current images in your line. (I have about 1000 of those now counting alphabets as one stamp.) :eek:

If it sounds like I'm burried in rubber, I'm not! All my LIWP fit in a large 3 drawer unit with room to spare; my current SU! all fit on one 3' long shelf; and all my retired SU! & other stamps fit in the 4 Iris units designated for them and they aren't overflowing at this time. (This could easily change, but not for a few months anyway.) Plus, other than the SU! & a few others, most of my stamps are HALOS mounted and don't take up that much room. :p

I can post the pix I took right after cleaning/rearranging my craft room if anybody would like ideas for how to fit tons of crafting supplies into a 12 x 10.5' room so your DHs don't know how much you really have. :D

[Taniwolf]

Thats alot of stamps.
I prefer un mounted stamps.
but i love wood mounted but have alot of room
for storage.

I like unmounted because i can get deals and mixed them around.

[Nancyt]

I prefer the unmounted stamps. The mounted stamps take up to much room and I have the majority of the mounted stamps in the basement. I keep my unmounted stamps in notebooks with the binders marked for specific companies and those singletons in a binder of their own. Also the singletons are grouped together by size in separate notebooks. My plates are also kept together by either the plate or the company. I have 9 drawers of mounted in my work area. My work area is jammed packed as it is. We haven't even stated anything about our storage of ink, embossing supplies, paper, clay, beads, embellishments, etc. My DH has no idea what all I have and that is the way it sounds like the majority of you also or is it?
Nancy T

[Elli]

The final tally for 2007 ('cause I only do this once a year) is:

LIWP ~ 1500
SU! ~ 1915
All other stamp companies ~ 3915

for an approximate grand total of: 7330 rubber stamps in my collection!


Wow! Well done, collecting so many. Who else knows how many they have? I've never counted mine, but now I'm kind of curious to see just how many I do have.

[XrayAmy]

How many of you have a binder filled with pages of all of your images stamped out? I always love it when someone brings one of those to a show. I like to look through them....too cool!

[stampin stacy]

I have a couple of pocket organizers that were for cd's hanging on the wall and a bulletin board that I put all my completed art into. This way I am surrounded by my own inspiration when I go in there. Something new I decided to try this year and I really love it.

I also have a plastic "shoe" box with a lid for completed small items or misc. small things I saved in case I need :p , that I love to dig through also.

Only problem with having stuff out in plain sight is other see it when they go by and want a closer look and sometimes that room isn't ummmmmm presentable.;) I have got to get better about remembering to close that door on the way to answering the door bell.:noway:

I've never even thought about putting my stuff in a notebook to take with to a convention with me. Since I'm not so good at keeping up with my inventory notebook, maybe this would help with avoiding dups :eyeroll: .

[XrayAmy]

I've never even thought about putting my stuff in a notebook to take with to a convention with me. Since I'm not so good at keeping up with my inventory notebook, maybe this would help with avoiding dups :eyeroll: .

That's why a lot of people do it. Also to try and find other images size wise that go with stamps they already have. I'm soooo not that organized!
Amy

[stampin stacy]

:eyeroll: I'm so disorganized that I bought 2 stamps at the last convention that were very, very similar. Amy's lady sitting on a log over water, and Stampland's large photo stamp of a lady sitting on a log over water. How does one manage to get the same stamp twice in the same day, I am so pitiful, lol :noway:

Although once I got over being mad at myself and thought about it, I decided it wasn't so bad because I can use the images together to coordinate the outside, inside and the envelope. I meant to do it that way all along...;) .

[alsmouse]

I guess I just hate to waste money with duplicates so I have a book of almost all my stamps stamped by catagory, almost all my inks, glitter, embossing powder, stencils, punches, ribbon & yarn. The only reason I state almost is I have recently finished mounting & trimming the haul I did at the Portland show along with two months worth of bulk buys from my LSS. I love a good discount sale. I still have to stamp & log them. Plus the local M's relocated to a bigger, better building and did a grand opening drawing. I ended up with the GP of GC for merch which added a lot of new inks and replenished some very loved tools that have lost their zip (dulled blades, cutting edges). Yes, I'll admit I'm gloating but I ADORE the word FREE. Please feel free to dislike me temporarily, but I never win a door prize at all the functions I attend so this was really appreciated. It kinda makes up for the last door prize I won, when I was in Jr hi, eons ago. Somehow when you're that age, winning a summer sausage just isn't exciting. :lol:

[Nancyt]

Stacy, I love your idea of a pocket organizers and a bulletin board to post my art. I usually keep my cards in the plastic shoebox and the kitten just knocked them off the top of my scrapbooks a little while ago and crawled into the box for another nap.
Nancy

[alsmouse]

Stacy, how do you limit yourself to only one box for "misc."? I must have 5+ just for the oddities that don't fit in a catagory box. :laugh:
As for closing the door to guests, I figure that if they don't like the way my craftroom( the clean spelling);) looks, then they don't appreciate creativity. Sometimes my "creativity" spills into the living room and they have to walk carefully or sit carefully just to not disturb it. A true friend dosen't mind a expressive home as long as it is a welcoming home.

[XrayAmy]

Somehow when you're that age, winning a summer sausage just isn't exciting. :lol:

Seriously....is that exciting at any age? :noway:

[Inky Whiskers]

I don't think I could handle counting my stamps if I didn't have them all stamped in a binder! :lol: I have a binder for my supplies too with all inks, paints, powders, punches, cutting templates, pens, pencils etc. listed with samples or thumbnails.

I started the stamp binder after buying dups for a third time. Usually my mom gets my ooops dups, but what to do with 3 of anything? (except cats!) I have my stamps sorted into labeled drawers by catagory & sub grouped into labeled zip bags. (i.e. I have an "animals" drawer with "birds" in one bag & "bugs" in another.) In my binder what shows on a page or 2 is a direct list of what's in a bag in a drawer. So I use my binder not only for ideas, but as an index for my collection so I can find the image I want w/o having to dig thru' several drawers to locate it.

Setting one up can take awhile since you have to figure out how best to organize it to work for you then you have to stamp every image you own onto the pages. (I use recycled copy paper as one side is usually blank.)

I also pull out my stamp index when making up my shopping list for conventions. Hauling that 4" binder to shows just isn't practical, so I sometimes take out the pages that have images I want to add to (for sizing & style comparison) and put them in a thinner binder along with any supply pages for inks etc. I want to add to. It takes a few hours to go thru' every vendor web site before a show and make a list & check it against the book, but it does save me $ 'cause I rarely buy dups. (I did buy a dup in Puyallup in May, but it wasn't one my mom had, so that was ok.)

Keeping you binder up to date is a bit time consuming (especially after a convention or really really good sale), but worth the effort as far as I'm concerned. I'd have no idea what I have if I didn't keep a record! :p

I did hear of one lady that scanned her whole collection onto her computer & kept track that way. The point is to use a method that works for you.

[CatStamper]

Wow, I barely find time to stamp (I always seem to find time to shop for stamps, though, hmmmm....), let alone be organized enough to make and keep up with an index book. Sounds like a neat system, though. I just settle for keeping my stamps and supplies semi-organized by categories, so if I'm looking for a cat stamp or a saying stamp or a pigment ink pad, at least I know what bin/tray/drawer to hunt through. :)

No idea how many stamps I have, I stopped counting early on when I hit a hundred or so, and never looked back. (Knowing how much each stamp costs on average, and even knowing that I already had a hundred was scary enough... this hobby is more fun if I can't easily calculate the approximate total I've spent through the years!)

I do buy the occasional duplicate image, and it always makes me laugh when I go to file it with the others in that category and see that I already have it. (Guess I REALLY liked that stamp, since I decided to buy it two separate times, LOL!) For a truly favorite image, I don't mind having a "spare", and for the others I find them a home with another stamper. ;-)

I have finally learned when shopping on eBay or online stamp stores to at least turn around and look in my trays of stamps before placing a bid. More than once it has stopped me from bidding on or buysing a stamp that I had to have, that I already had! At least the computer is in the craft room so it's easy enough to check. For conventions or other shopping excursions I just try to take a look through the categories that I'm interested in adding to before I go, so hopefully I will have a pretty good idea of what I have.

:)
Kate

[alsmouse]

First of all, if I get too wordy, please send me a private message to remind me to make these shorter. Thank you.
Second, I started my book shortly after my first & only "my goof" purchase. Any dups I have now are gifts from friends & family. So far they haven't really done bad. I'll admit setting up the book takes a while and as you get into new areas & styles you have to keep adding dividers but it does help the sanity & wallet. :D
I do appreciate it, getting ready for a show or convention. I can sit in the comfort of my home pre-shopping the vendors. Which makes it easier to power shop the booths. I know that helped me at the last show. I'd have my list for each vendor preprinted & if the booth was busy, try to locate as much as I could until the crowd thinned. Then for what ever I hadn't found by then, asked the vendor to help me locate.
I know the vendors like it since I wait until they are less busy and they still get the sales. And while waiting sometimes, find something that wasn't on the website. Plus if the vendor has run out, they will place an order, shipping it when they get home from the shows. OOOHHH, goodies in the mail. :P And if you let the vendors know before hand that you will be at a certian show & presend the list, some of them will sometimes have it ready for you to review, pay for & pick up. Power shopping at its finest. More time for M&T, demos & classes. :clap: x3

[XrayAmy]

I do appreciate it, getting ready for a show or convention. I can sit in the comfort of my home pre-shopping the vendors. Which makes it easier to power shop the booths. I know that helped me at the last show. I'd have my list for each vendor preprinted & if the booth was busy, try to locate as much as I could until the crowd thinned. Then for what ever I hadn't found by then, asked the vendor to help me locate.
I know the vendors like it since I wait until they are less busy and they still get the sales. And while waiting sometimes, find something that wasn't on the website. Plus if the vendor has run out, they will place an order, shipping it when they get home from the shows. OOOHHH, goodies in the mail. :P And if you let the vendors know before hand that you will be at a certian show & presend the list, some of them will sometimes have it ready for you to review, pay for & pick up. Power shopping at its finest. More time for M&T, demos & classes. :clap: x3

That really is the smart way to do a show...pre shopping and showing up with a list. I usually only have one or two people do that per show. Any time I see someone with a list and I have a moment I always ask them if they would like me to pull it for them.

[alsmouse]

Well, I know when I stopped at the Beeswax booth, the gentleman that was there, was most happy to see an organized list. He really helped me locate my stamps very fast & to mark the ones he had sold out of. They will either be picked up at the next show or done by mailorder. The only reason I haven't sent in the order by now is my poor Visa card is bruised, bleeding in a corner and begging me to let it rest between orders. :evil: me. Plus Amy has added some new images that I am drooling for, so hope there will be more by the next show. I love no tax & shipping fees. More money for stamps.

[stampin stacy]

Stacy, how do you limit yourself to only one box for "misc."? I must have 5+ just for the oddities that don't fit in a category box

Lol, that is just for the stuff most "ready to be used" I have junk and bits all over! Notebooks, shelves, jars, tins, drawers, you name it. :eyeroll:

I did get curious as to my Stamp collection count, so decided to take inventory. I am a rookie compared to many here but here it is:

Wood mounted: 169 unmounted: 131 peg stamps: 20
acrylic mounted: 19 acrylic unmounted: 2 Foam:190

Misc wheels, carved, sponge, etc: 42
Plus one alpha set and lots of antique typeset.

[piecesandpom]

I'm afraid to count. I have two 1 inch binders of unmounted and keep adding
to them. They are both beginning to bulge. I try to keep them grouped by
company, not by category. I really want to be able to give credit to the
appropriate artists/companies.

I've got too many retired Stamping Up sets, buying for what I thought folks
would like at craft fairs. I just sold one set so that helped me justify buying
a few stamps at the Manchester show but it's going to take a while to get
some of the sets I no longer use off my shelves so I can buy more of what I
like. Amy has a couple of stamps I have to have but I gotta get real work
before I can get them.:swear:

I also have about 20 TAC sets and at least 10 Rubber Stamp Tapestry sets
plus some additions that I purchase individually for some projects. Hum,
purchased some lovely paper in Manchester that would be gorgeous with
the RST stamps. . .too bad my friend with the camera is taking so long
figuring out how to download the pics to a CD for me!

[DemoDiva]

:clap: I'm new here and boy did I pick a good thread of conversation to join. A year ago my DH (darlin hubby) & I sold our home and moved into the motorhome to go full-time travelling for a couple of years. I've been a stamper since 1990 and have a large collection of stamps which were mainly all mounted. Several thousand mounted stamps weigh a ton, and we are limited with weight we can carry in the motorhome. I spent several days removing my stamps from their wood mounts and putting them in CD cases. I have a big selection with me, and the other half are in storage. At least once a year I switch them around. I gave up some of my supplies like the clays (will use air dry from now on), but I carry almost all of the rest with me...the papers, ephemera, inks, EP, paints, etc. I had to give up some other things, like several pairs of shoes and all my dressy clothing. LOL My only problem now is, I was pushed to get it all done as the house had sold, and I neglected to record the name of the company the individual stamps came from. Anyway I am happy with my UM's and am adapting to a better way of inventoring my large supply. At present time they aren't filed very efficiently. :-( But we have had a wonderful first year on the road.

[stampin stacy]

Lol, only fellow stampers would understand giving up clothing and shoes in order to keep their stamps.:noway:

You'll have to share some of your travels with us, I for one would love to hear about it.

[XrayAmy]

You'll have to share some of your travels with us, I for one would love to hear about it.

Me too!