Stamps are a lot of fun, but they also take up a lot of space. If you want to be serious about stamping, it means over time you will accumulate a lot of them- and then what? For me, "then what" consisted of tossing them into a drawer, and taking everything out to look for the stamp I needed every time I would work with them.
Well, I'm here to tell you- that sucks!
So, I went looking for non-sucky storage alternatives. Shell had her husband construct a little stamp shelf for her wood-mount stamps, and as it seemed to be a relatively low cost, efficient way to store those bulky wood stamps, I followed suit. Here are more pics of my stamp shelf:
ScrapStation Alpha had an awkward little wall that was just begging for something constructive to be done with it.
Close-up shot of the shelf. Now stamps are easy to find. I'm going to have fun filling this up ;-)
In all, the shelf cost was about $9, and it took about an hour and a half of labor to build. I bought furring strips from the local home improvement warehouse for less than $1 an 8 ft. piece, used some old paint that was left lying around, and sandpaper from an earlier project. I also bought some picture hanging hooks to mount it with, though nails probably would have worked. I also had to invest $4 in some 1 1/ in. nails for the nail gun, but I have a bunch left for other uses so I only count $.50 of the cost of the shelf to nails.
I obviously made the shelf to fit my awkward little space (56 in. long, 19 in. wide shelves) but you could really set this up in any configuration that suits you. I do really advocate using behind-the-door space, though. What else can you put there? If you have one of those little doorstop guards, you never have to worry about your door bumping the shelf, because the shelf won't stick out that far. I spaced the top shelves at 3 in. apart, as I mostly buy small-ish stamps for cardmaking. I made the bottom two shelves larger at 6 in. spacing for my few bigger stamps. I didn't run it all the way to the ceiling or floor because I thought it would be awkward to get stamps from very high/low shelves, but that's totally a personal preference thing. I also have cats, so I didn't want to tempt them with too much low-hanging fruit.
So, that's it. Easy as can be. And cheap. And efficient use of otherwise dead space (at least for me- I bet you've got some behind-the-door-space that would be perfect for stamp storage lurking somewhere in your house too). And a fun, quick little project you can do with someone (props to my husband for helping with the cutting and nailing) because it really does go more smoothly as a two-person job. Let's see- any more "ands" I can throw in there? Oh yeah- and a great excuse to buy more stamps!
Part II- unmounted and photopolymer stamp storage.
