Storage Galore!

Hi There,

Today I wanted to share with you my completely new, and scrummily gorgeous storage systems, made from items picked up from Charity Shops. I LOVE trawling charity shops for things I can use for crafty reasons, I just have to be patient, not look for anything in particular, and also look at EVERYTHING!

This was a Barbie display case, I covered the Barbie sign {to the right, near the Union Flag tile} with pink vinyl, then it was simply a case of placing my inks, brayers and powders.

Yum, I'm much more likely to use them now. All I need to do is add my alcohol inks to the collection then I'll have all my inks out.

Now, I showed you this not long ago for the storage of my Promarkers, but I'd been on the look out for a double DVD storage case ever since I saw a post by Paula Holifield regarding the way she stores hers. The DVD rack was a little grotty, so I covered with white Vinyl from Silhouette and it looks so much cleaner and inviting now.

Paula was also providing a print out of the tabs you need to put into the DVD cases {which act as shelves}, so why don't you drop her a line and see if it's still available. Don't you just want to dive in and splash around in those colours ?!

I'll be back tomorrow with maybe a little something for you! x

My New Ink Pad Storage Holder...

Good Afternoon!

Well I was hoping to post yesterday, but as I'm sure most of you will have experienced Blogger had some down time following some problems with corrupt data. Just one of those things, and I'm thankful that everyone worked really hard to get everyone's blog back online. It just shows how much we use and appreciate our blogs!

I wanted to show you my NEW Ink pad storage. Well, it stores about 20% of my total ink pads, but it's very nice. I picked it up from a local charity shop for £2.99 and it was crying out for me to take it home. So I did. It was a boring wood colour when I inheritied it, so I painted it white with about three coats of Acrylic Paint...

Then I thought it deserved some decoration, so I spread out fuschia acrylic paint onto an acrylic block, and used as an ink pad to ink up {or should that be 'paint up'?!} a gorgeous stamp from Stampendous...

I then 'randomly' stamped onto the surface of the wood/acrylic painted surface. Doesn't it look cool, and it's SO easy to do!

You can't really see the paint job on the folllowing photo but you CAN see my lovely inks, all labelled for easy use. I have the inks I use most often in here, sat on my desk.

I hope you enjoyed stopping by and looking at my lovely new ink storage!

Storing Clear and Unmounted Stamps...Answering a Question

Good Morning!
I had planned to do this post on Saturday, but you know how things are what with a Bank Holiday weekend!



I had a comment on my post here about the way I store my rubber and clear stamps in CD cases, as the person had heard that there is something in the CD plastic that can deteriorate the cling in both ezymount and the polymer. I had heard this also, so I decided to do a little research, both on the internet and of my own.

I made this video{which I would love your comments on, and you can also subscribe to the Clare Curd Crafts! Channel on You Tube, lots of videos to come! } so you can see the results of my own research, but I also mention that I have found some links with more information. You can find these here and here.

So, there you have it. I wanted to do this so that you were all fully informed as to all the information out there about whether storing stamps in CD cases is a safe idea. From what I've discovered I'm still happy to leave my stamps as they are, and I'd love to know your thoughts!

Storing Clear and Unmounted Rubber Stamps Tutorial

Good Evening!

I would like to say thanks for the lovely comments I've had about my newly refurbed craft room. It has always been a joy to work in there, and I know I'm very lucky to have a room of my own. I've often joked that if I had a gas hob and a shower in there I would never need to leave my room!

I'm going to be showing you how I did the lettering and vinyl decal over the next week or so, but I had a question as to exactly how I store my clear stamps after I posted a piccy of my CD's which you can see here, so I thought I would do a kind of tutorial to show you exactly how I do this.

 Here's my folder where I keep all my images of my clear and unmounted rubber stamps. I try and keep this {as much as I can} in occasion categories such as Christmas, girly, masculine, flowers, sentiments etc. The folder allows me to add new sheets within a category whenever I get new stamps. It was my aim once I'd got this system up and running to stamp and categorise them as soon as they were bought, and get them into the CD's , but with the best laid plans this hasn't happened, and at the moment I must have about 100 packs of clear stamps to sort categorise and store! So this is how my system works.

 I take my set of stamps, and decide which category it will fit most. In this case I'm storing the 'Born to Shop Go Green' stamp set, so in this case it will go in my girly section. I'm using the lid of an A5 storage box as an acrylic block, placing all my stamps onto this to stamp onto a piece of white card. I used to stamp them with an acrylic block, but found placing, inking stamping and cleaning took so long, it's much quicker this way and just as effective, after all you only need to make out the image, it doesn't have to be perfect. I use a dye based black ink so it dries quickly too.

When I use a lid instead of an acrylic block, I make sure that I press down within the lid to get the best impression possible.

If some of the images don't come out fully, it doesn't bother me, after all it's only as a reference point to remember what stamps I have. Can you imagine trying to find a particular stamp with all your CD's on a rack together - it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack!

I use CD cases to store all my stamps. I get my cases from a local printers for about 20p each, but you can also get them from Tesco {and other leading Supermarkets, I'm sure!} in packs of 10, I usually pay about £3.50 here. Please note: You need to get the normal size CD cases, not the jewel, slim CD cases as these are not thick enough to store even Clear stamps and therefore will not close. Remove the inner section where you normally would store the CD by prizing at the spine edge carefully. This can be discarded {unless you can find another use for it of course!}.

Once my stamping is complete, I 'stick' the clear stamps {or unmounted rubber on ezymount} onto the inside of the cases. This is why I have the stamped record of the image in an easy to find way. Both sides of the CD case can be covered with clear stamps, meaning that depending on the size of the set, you can group some together. Rubber stamps on ezymount can only cover one side because of their thickness.

The stamped sheet is then given a number, and I also make labels with my Brother label printer to stick on the spine of the CD case. The CD's will be in numerical order on the shelf, but not necessarily in the folder as they will be put in their particular category.

 If the CD case only contains a particular stamp set then I will also write the name on the spine too.

Now, I hear you ask, what do I do with the lovely images printed onto acetate that illustrates the stamp set? Well, sometimes I cut to size so it will fit into the CD case, but usually I make a card from it!

I made this card using the acetate image of the topiary tree from the packaging, and fixed it to white glitter cardstock using red glitter brads. In fact all of this card is made with scraps! I LOVE making cards from scraps and recycled items! I made the sentiment panel on my laptop, as can you believe I must have about 500 sets of clear stamps, and I've counted 547 woodmounted stamps, and I HAVEN'T GOT a new home stamp?!! The mind boggles!

Supplies: Image: Topiary Tree from packaging of 'Born to Shop Go Green' Papers & Cardstock: Born to Shop Go Green A5 Paper Pack; Papermania Glitter Cardstock; Core'dinations black & white cardstock; Greeting: Made with fonts Accord light SF and LD Charming Bold.

Well, I really hope you found that truly helpful! I enjoyed doing it, and at least it was another stamp set confined to a CD case!

More Storage Ideas - Love IKEA!

Now here's a little swishy idea for storing all your stickers, gems, decoupage and almost anything else that you can basically attach to a clip, and don't ask me how I came up with it, because I just don't know! I LOVE it, because I can see everything I have and therefore use it, before it was all hidden away in drawers and the like, and I forgot I even had it, so it never got used. Also it's all to hand just under my shelf near my desk, so I don't have to keep getting up (not that I'm lazy you understand), and the clips are really strong, so nothing falls off.

It's meant to be a net curtain wire and hooks from IKEA, but I soon changed that! You can also buy extra clips, which are a little bigger - great for bulkier items, or when you want to put a few things on a clip. For my docrafts goodies, I try and keep things from a collection on one clip, and other things I keep together such as letter stickers, rub ons, gems etc. The great things about this also is that the clips will detach from the wire and you can move them around.



The great thing about the clips though is that they are detachable so I can move them around on the wire. I would recommend though that if you are going to get something like this and you need to trim the wire, use some heavy duty wire cutters (proper DIY cutters), and not your lovely jewellery wire cutters as I did, or believe me - you will ruin them!


Finally, another obvious one, my best friend sheila bought me this cute little watering can and pail in aqua when I first decorated my room, and it's perfect for my pens! It's just the right size and allows me to see what I have. I have my watercolouring pencils and Papermania brush makers in the pail (not photographed). So cute!!!


That's all for now! Hope you're having a great weekend and making the most of the weather!

Love, Clare x

Storage Ideas

I can't believe it's nearly been a month since I last updated my blog. One day, I'll get the hang of keeping this thing up to date - I used to be so good at it, but I suppose over time I've become busier, and with that comes less time for things like this.

At the moment I'm having some time off work - next week I have some treatment at the hospital and docrafts have very kindly said that I can have some time off around the treatment - I really need it to be honest, life has been very hectic recently. Sometimes I feel that I never get time to look up and appreciate things around me - so the next few weeks will allow me to do just that.

So far this week I've cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards and restocked with food - goodness I can't remember the last time I went out for a good old food shop! Once, the cupboards were bare, now they are overflowing! I've also had my car serviced, and we';ve had the painters in and now have a fresh new hall, stairs and landing! I'm trying to catch up on all the things I never get the time to do. Next week I hope to have some chill time. I'm hopfully getting a swing sear (always wanted one of those!) to sit in the garden, but I think the weather is meant to get miserable next week again - I choose my moments!

Anyhoo, I DO have some cards to share with you (Pardon? I hear you scream) but tonight I want to show you some ideas for storage that now grace my room. I found these CD storage holders at Tesco, and I thought they would be perfect for my quickutz nesting dies and the like - and they were!

They are like a little filing cabinet, and I keep one set of dies in each CD pocket.

I also can fit in my Quickutz embossing folders ( and also other brands of embossing folders) so they are really handy to see what I have available. I also keep my Letterpress printing plates in the CD pockets too. Now I have three of these blue boxes, one for dies, one for embossing folders and one for my letterpress plates. I love them!

And now, these are quite obvious ideas, but I thought I would share the pictures anyway, becasue they are so yummy! I always buy Douwe Egberts coffee, and use the glass jars for storage as they have lovely glass lids with a vacuum lid (which I remove for the dishwasher), and they really don't look like coffee jars when used for someone else. I not too keen on using a glass jar with a plastic branded lid, as I think it takes away the beauty of what's inside - call me shallow, but there we are! The small er jars are from IKEA, as are the white stands, which allow me to layer my jars and get more on a shelf.

Anyhoo, that all for tonight, hopefully I'll be back before you know it with a couple more storage ideas!

Take Care,

Clare x