Stamping Station

This is my favorite part of my new room.... a dedicated stamping space! :)
From the overview post, my stamping station is in the center of the wall that is against the garage. I have a center counter space with the Ikea cabinets on each side. Above my counter, I hung some Elfa shelving.

At the top of the elfa shelves are some sterilite white plastic drawers. Most of these are empty right now, but a few of them do have some stamping items in them. I store my embossing powders, flock and heat tool in one drawer.

Another couple of drawers hold my mini wooden alphabet stamp sets:

These green cases fit 4 to a drawer and they are actually ammunition cases from the hunting section. It's much easier to grab the little stamps when they are separated out in these cases. I also keep track of the alphabets by coloring the tops of the wood with a permanent marker. This makes it easy to see which alphabet goes where when I'm using the letters.Here's the details from these ammunition boxes. These fit 3 of the little wooden $1 sets from Michaels by Studio G.

These large wooden stamps are all background stamps and are the only ones I haven't unmounted and stored with all my other stamps. I like how well they stamp when they are left on their original blocks. The clear acrylic holder is another freebie from my friend Barb. :) Works perfectly for stacking these items so they are easily visible and accessible. When it comes to the woodmount stamps, I use what I can see. I also have my 7 gyspies self-inking stamps here too.On my countertop, I have my inkpads stored in an antique coke crate from the area where my mom grew up. I actually have it screwed into the wall so it doesn't fall off, and the inkpads are stacked inside according to color/type of ink.Next to the coke crate, I have a shelf that I found at Goodwill. Not sure what it was originally used for, but it fits these little white containers perfectly (from Dollar Tree). I store reinkers and small inkpads in here along with my alcohol inks.These are in the base cabinet just below my counter surface. I like to keep everything I'd need handy so I don't have to search for anything when I'm stamping. One drawer stores my blocks and some often used tools.The other drawer stores my blending supplies and more reinkers, along with other misc stamping stuff. The red box in the back of this drawer is another ammo box with another wooden alphabet stamp set.The majority of my stamps are stored in the pink and black baskets just to the right of my counter in the open space in this cabinet:They are broken up into categories and I store them on transparencies inside of page protectors. For the details on how the stamps are stored, see this post. And to see how I unmount my stamps and use them on my acrylic blocks, see this post.

I am a rebel I guess and I LOVE my stamps when the sets are broken up...I'm able to see what I have in one glance and if I need to know what stamps came in what set, I have binders that have either scanned images of each stamp set or stamped images of each stamp set. All of these are sorted by manufacturer.

I made tabs with scrap cardstock and the McGill tab punch. These tabs have each manufacturer in alphabetical order and they are glued onto 8 1/2 x 11" cardstock and hole punched to create the divider pages.

The individual pages are made from regular printer paper which is hole punched, then I scan and cut out the images of the stamps and glue them under the correct manufacturer.These binders sit on the shelf right next to my stamp baskets, so it's really easy to keep track of what I have and where it is. I also mark where the stamps are located in their separate categories, so it's easy to find a single stamp. And on the back of my stamp transparencies, I have a stamped image with the manufacturer listed there, so it's an easy cross reference that way too.

I think that's about it for my stamps....

Next post will be my paper storage. :)