March Stamp Give-Away

Once a month, on the first day of the month, I post a couple of new or gently used stamps to give away. They usually relate to an upcoming holiday. If you want them, leave me a comment and let me know. But you have to be quick! I'll pick the winner in the next 24 hours. The sentiment stamp is from Club Scrap. The shamrock is from Inkadinkado.
Let me know if you want the pair.
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Updated to add: Congratulations to Beverly on winning these St. Patty's stamps! 

February Stamp Give-Away

Once a month, on the first day of the month, I post a couple of new or gently used stamps to give away. They usually relate to an upcoming holiday. If you want them, leave me a comment and let me know. But you have to be quick! I'll pick in winner in the next 24 hours. The top sentiment stamp is from Club Scrap. The heart is from Stampin' Up.
Let me know if you want the pair.
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Edited to Add: Congrats to Deb Turtle on winning the stamps. Check back on March 1 for my next give-away.

A simple altered project

I've had this Bazzill "Memory Mug" gathering dust on my desk for, um, maybe two years! This weekend, I decided to complete the project, spurred on by the current Stampotique challenge to produce an altered item.  I kept it really simple - I started with a fun piece of patterned paper from Club Scrap and lined up my favorite Stampotique girls:

I love it! I don't know if I'm more happy about having the completed mug available to use or about completing another project and getting it off my desk - LOL!
I really do love the entire line of stamps offered by Stampotique, and, once I pulled them out for this project, I found myself making a few other things.  You can look for them on my blog this week. 
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Edited to add this as my Monthly Make for January.  Check out other projects at this link.

Stamp Winners and a Peaceful Card

When organizing today, I worked on clearing out the bin I call my "art projects to work on." It contains all kinds of bits and bobs and kits that I started but never completed.  I came across a baggie of color copies I had made of some small collages. I'm sure my plan was to make some cards. So I did - I made nine quick cards simply by trimming the image, matting it and then putting it on a card base. I assume I'm not the only one with an "unfinished projects" bin, am I?
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And, I've drawn the stamp winners from Wednesday's give-away:
Cheri will be receiving the "happy stamps."
Melissa will be receiving the farm labels. 
I have your addresses from Ginger's mail art exchange, but email if it's changed since then. 
Congratulations girls! And everyone interested in stamps, please check back on the first of each month when I'll be giving away more new or gently used stamps.

Stamp Give-Away

I'm really not as crazy as my post yesterday might suggest  - LOL! I do have a lot of stamps, but I'm happy to hear that are others with a similar addiction.  In my defense, I have been collecting stamps for about 15 years, and I used to teach stamp classes (so got stamps for free or at a serious discount), and I have used almost all of the stamps I own at least once!  But I do have two sets to give away to anyone who wants them .  The first group, includes the image I used for the stamp above.  I'm calling the group "happy stamps."

The second group is a Stampin' Up set featuring farm crate labels:

If you want either (or both),  just let me know in the comments.  I'll draw a name this weekend.  Thanks for helping me get some room to buy more stamps. . . 
Updated to add:  Congratulations Cheri for winning the Happy Stamps and Melissa for winning the Farm Labels.

Confessions of a Stamp Hoarder

I fear that I have too many stamps.  The problem is that I love almost all of them and have trouble figuring out which ones I could give away. It started innocently enough.  I bought a few wood mounted stamps (the first one I bought was a swirly heart).  Then I joined Club Scrap, where I received two stamps a month and I bought others as well.  After a while, I bought these plastic chest of drawers and filled them up:

Each chest has six drawers and most are filled with a double layer of wood mounted stamps, arranged by subject. That wouldn't be so bad, but my wood mounted stamps won't all fit in there.  I've started to create bins arranged by subject, which I store on the top shelf of my clothes closet:

The two small plastic bins on the left have birthday stamps in one and Easter/4 Season sets in the other.  The large rectangular orangish box is full of halloween stamps. The larger circular box in the corner is full of "people" stamps. The two plastic bins on the right have "kids/sports" in one and "birds, fish and seashore" in the other. The small wood box has "mail art" stamps, and  the rectangular box with the rose print houses my Christmas stamps.  The brown leather-like binder and the plastic file have acrylic stamps and cling mounted rubber. Here's what these look like up close:

Because, yes, at some point, I started buying unmounted stamps.  These two containers wouldn't be too bad, but I have more:

I have five binders full of unmounted stamps! I store these in a cupboard in my bathroom. And, finally, for good measure, I have some wood mounted sentiment stamps:

I have three decent sized rectangular containers with stamps in a single layer.

So, there you have it. A full confession and accounting of my stamp collection (foam stamps not included; yes, I have those, too. Sigh). I didn't count my stamps, but, if I had to guess, I would think there's about 1500 wood mounted stamps (based on the fact that there's about 40 in each sentiment container and each row in the plastic drawers) and an equal number of unmounteds (based on about 20 stamps per page in a binder, ten pages per binder, five binders; plus the two storage continers in the closet).  Am I insane? Is this worse than my paper hoarding, described here? How many stamps do you think you have? And do you remember the very first stamp you purchased?

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Check back tomorrow for a few stamp give-aways!

Stamping on Text

I picked up some magazines off a RAK table over the weekend, and both the April/May 2010 Stamper's Sampler and the Spring 2010 Take Ten featured cards where the main image had been stamped on text.  I was so inspired that I made several cards.  Two of my favorite are above.  I think this design speaks to me because it's a way of incorporating ephemera into cards.  I will definitely try this technique in my art journals, too.  I also made this happy card, drawing inspiration from the May Inspiration Challenge at The Scrappy Tree:

What do you think of this design?  Definitely let me know if you give it a go!
Mel tagged me with some questions, and some of you have asked about my reaction to the Get Out of Auto Mode class.  Those are both on tap for tomorrow.