A NEW YEAR. . .A NEW START

Hey All! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I hope your holidays were wonderful! Before I forget, my new year was started off right! I won a set of Copic Ciao markers! Retail is $139.00!!! I won them over at Gina K. "A day in the Life". I couldn't believe it. Many of you sent me emails telling me I had won. When I left my comment to enter the blog give away, there were already 690 comments. I thought I didn't even have a chance, and boom I won! I'm so excited.

Gosh I have missed you and blogging. So many of you have sent me emails wondering where the heck I've been. Well. . . . I'M BACK!!! LOL I was just simply taking a breather. I was so burned out from all of the Christmas stuff that I just took a break. There was also another reason which brings me to the "theme" of this post.

My room was a DISASTER AREA! And quite honestly, I didn't have the energy to go up there and clean it up. I knew that it was going to be more than just "cleaning". It needed to be totally re-organized and re-done. It was getting to the point that I didn't know were anything was, and it was a chore to even create in that mess. So, in hopes of inspiring you if you are in the same boat, I'm going to embarrass myself by posting pictures of the way the room was. I'm also going to share with you some organizing ideas I've done to help you organize your wooden stamps, clear stamps and punches.

If you are faint of heart, please go past these horrifying images right on to the "after" shots. I did a makeover on my room. So, the next series of pictures will be the "before" of the area followed by the "after". I tell ya, it looks like an HGTV makeover! LOL OK, you ready? Here is the first "Before" picture:



YIKES! I told you it was bad! And now for the "After":



That's my little stamping buddy Gunther lying by the desk. That's generally where he always lays while I'm doing my thing. . .

BEFORE:



AFTER:



BEFORE:



AFTER:



BEFORE:



AFTER:



It took me hours to finish this project. I read this along time ago on someones blog that a comedian once said "Glitter is like the craft worlds version of Herpes. Once you have it you can never get rid of it." LOL I had glitter everywhere! The carpeting still glitters in places after two vacuumings! Oh well. . .

On to a couple of things I did to help me organize my clear stamps and my wood stamps and punches. This may be old news to some of you but I came up with it out of necessity. I didn't know half of what I had when it came to my punches and my wooden stamps. They were tossed in several different drawers. So the first thing I did was to organize my clear stamps. Here's what I did:



When you buy clear stamps, they usually come on clear acetate that has the image on it as well so that you know where to put the stamp back when you are done using it. I took those from each set, and taped them to a piece of card stock, put it into a clear sheet protector, and put it into a 3 ring binder. I then took the actual stamps and put them in a clear CD case. I numbered each page with a number (see red arrow above) and then taped the same number to the CD case. Now when I'm looking for an image, I simply browse through my "catalog" find the image I want, and then pull the corresponding CD from the stand on my desk (pic below).



As you can see, I have 44 complete sets of clear stamps now in this very small space and I know exactly where they are!



This is what the stamps look like in the CD case. You take that "inner round thingy" out before using it for the stamps.

Now, how I solved the problem with my wooden stamps. Although I can't find a convenient way to store them (like in a CD case) I can organize the images so that I know what I have. I decided to do another "catalog" in the same binder. I took out all of my wood mounted stamps, and stamped the images on sheets of card stock. I tried to keep them in the same family, theme, or holiday. I then put them in sheet protectors and put them in the same binder. Now, I can flip through the pages and see all of the images and make a better choice from ALL stamps instead of just grabbing what is "on top". Below is a sample of how it looks in the binder:



This is not only a great way to see all the images you've got, but you can see how they actually look when stamped. I've now sorted the wooden stamps into 3 drawers and kept them by theme so that if I want the pine branches I know they are all together in one drawer as opposed to possibly being scattered between five drawers.

And finally, I did the same thing with my punches. I took dark paper and punched the shape into it, then put that onto white card stock so the shape would show clearly. I then put that into a sheet protector and put that into the same binder. Now I have a "catalog" of all of my punches. I also punched them by theme so they are easier to see what I have for each group. Here are a couple of pages to show you what they look like:



There you have it. My organizational tips. I hope they help.

Finally, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who sent me wonderful Christmas cards! They were all so beautiful! I wanted to also say a special thanks to a couple of people that sent me some "extra". Cheryl Bambach of "Cheryls Stamping Corner" sent me some great stuff. She had a link on her web page about taking a Christmas Carol quiz. So I went and took it and came back to leave a comment about what my score was. I didn't realize that it was for blog candy. It was very nice of her to send me the great prizes she did. Thanks so much Cheryl! Also, my blogging buddy Marie Pavitt at Marie-Aloha and Mabuhay sent me a beautiful card and a jar of Shimmerz. I can't wait to try it! Thanks so much Marie! It was so appreciated!

OK, that's enough. I'm sure you saying "geez, can he make this any longer?" LOL And the answer to that would be yes. But I'll save it for next time. I'm working on new cards and a new worthwhile project that I'll share with you next post. It involves some blog candy just so ya know!

Again, I've missed you all so much! I hope you haven't forgotten me! I'll be seeing you on your posts! It's really good to be back! Don't forget the pic of the week below!


Best,

Curt O'Brien

"God help me be the person my dogs think I am."