Stamp Wheel Storage!

I am a collector of stamp wheels…you know like the Rollagraph and Stampin’ Around Wheels. I am lured into buying them imagining all of the lovely borders and backgrounds I will make and of course all the handmade wrapping paper I will stamp. Yeah right! I had all of my wheel stamps in a drawer and, well, out of sight-out of mind. So, now I am going from “Stamp Wheel Collector” to “Stamp Wheel User!” with this nifty {and thrifty} stamp wheel holder:

I got my inspiration for a sewing spool holder I saw in Martha Stewart’s Good Things for Organizing book. It was basically a board with dowels drilled into it and it looked fairly simple to make. Hubby said he would make it for me. Then I got looking at this old calendar holder (it is basically like a wooden frame with a Maronite backing board made to stick calendars in) and I started laying out my wheels on it. I showed my honey the frame and he screwed a piece of 3/4″  thick plywood to the backing board and pounded nails in from the back, we got 9 rows of 5 so that is storage for 45 stamp wheels! OR I can consolidate and put 3 builder wheels to a nail. I think I will make sure I actually use these a few dozen times before I let myself buy any more though!  😉

The best thing is that the frame was FREE! my MIL did not want it and we put it in our yard sale and it did not sell (priced at $1) and I kept it…I sent all the other leftovers to goodwill so how lucky is that!?!

I have been on an organizing kick lately…Saturday morning I wandered into my craftroom bound and determined to squeeze a little more storage into my stamp wall. I got this fab shelf at a yard sale for $5 (no kidding and the lady had quite a few of these shelves, I kick myself every day that I did not buy another one) and it held about 300 stamps. It is roughly 4′ wide x 6′ high. I had a shelf full of SU! stamps in their clamshell boxes that I was (Surprise!!!) not using because I could not see them. So I raided hubby’s scrap wood bin, my son’s box of building blocks and a box in the garage full of leftover ballasts from out new porch project this summer that were headed for the dump. Score one for planet Earth! And I used the mish-mash of 1″x1″ ballasts, blocks and wood scraps to make risers on some of the shelves literally doubling my storage for smaller stamps. Notice the arrow on the top of the pic, this shelf is so  skinny I had to tie it to the ceiling beam t be sure it would not fall over if one of my kids ran into it on a scooter (it’s happened.)

I even got all of my Christmas wood mounted stamps on the shelves. I put them on the bottom shelves because I don’t use them everyday. I loosely organized my stamps ont he shelf by theme: Occasion, nature, vintage, background, Christmas etc. I still have some room to grow too but I do not buy many wood mount stamps these days. I usually prefer unmounted rubber and I store them mainly in 3-ring binders. I have about 15 binders that sit on a shelf over my workbench and on the shelf above my binders is this:

Remember the printer’s tray I found at a yard sale last month in my “Jenga block stamp mount” post? Well, I found two more trays just like them and I put all (well almost all) of my alphabet and sentiment stamps in there. Then I cut some of the Jenga blocks in thirds and mounted some tiny postage and postmark stamps that I gout years ago and never used (cuz I couldn’t see them!) and popped them in the trays as well. There are a few miscellaneous small stamps in there that I was afraid would get lost on the big shelf. Here is a close up.

Sorry the pictures are not the best, I had to use a flash but you get the idea. Now that I feel properly organized I feel ready to stamp up  a storm! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!