Last time I posted, I shared three of my strategies for getting back into the craft room and then . . . over two months of . . . . nothing . . .
Without boring you with the details of my absence, I'm back with another two strategies! (and by the way I finally printed out some photos and there'll be some finished pages to share with you soon)
Tip 3: Make a card (or a dozen!) Even when the inspiration to scrapbook some photos isn't there, we can always pull out some of our scraps to make a card! And who doesn't need a few every now and then - and often when we're least prepared!
I loved playing with these beautiful Darkroom Door feather stamps on this first card. Here, I've used clear embossing powder on tone-one-tone cardstock, but I can't wait to play with them some more in lots of other ways!
I've already given a card like this one away before I had time to photograph it, using the hearts I made for my February Counterfeit Kit (and the left-over branding strips). The lovely scripty "happy birthday" stamp is also from Darkroom Door.
Tip 4: for want of a better term, I'm going to call this one a
craft room "spring clean", even though it's Autumn here. Mine looks something like this:
- Re-ink my stamp pads. I like to do this at least once a year, as they do seem to dry out, even if they haven't been used much. I give every re-inker a good shake, whether I use it or not, to prevent the ink from separating.
- In the same vein, I go through all my paints, mists and other wet media and give them a good shake as well. Anything that's gone hard might as well be thrown away.
- Update my catalogue. Many of us have some form of recording what items we own. Here, I've updated my new ink pads in the appropriate place. At the same time, I stamp the colour on a scrap of white cardstock to attach to the bottom of the stamp pad, which I store them in a drawer upside down.
In the same folder, I stamp out all my images. I have pages devoted to categories like flourishes, flowers, words and phrases, and so on. (Here's a page of font stamps, below) So stamping out my newer stamps is the next step of my process.
And while we're on the subject of stamps, here's how I store my unmounted ones, in these plastic file boxes. But some of the categories have become a bit unwieldy and some boxes aren't labelled at all, so re-organising these boxes is on my to-do list as well.
That's enough for me this time around. Even just glancing through my stamps is making me itch to start using them again!
What about you, what jobs will you be including in your next craft room clean up?
