Hello friends and Happy New Year! (A bit late I know…)

I took the rest of December off from blogging for a Christmas Mexico vacation and some much needed personal time, but I’m back and excited to share more crafty projects with you all!

This week I wanted to share my organization system for my acrylic and cling stamps- my simple and inexpensive DIY stamp binder! I’ve broken down my materials and process, so you can make your crafty life a bit easier!

I’ve seen other products like this on the market, or other DIY binder systems on Pinterest, so I combined ideas from both to make my stamps easily seen and accessible.

The first thing I did was choose a binder. I picked up an 8×8″ black three-ring scrapbook binder at my local craft store. It was the perfect fit for the shelves under my work desk!

With other stamp binder systems people used acrylic dividers or sheet protectors to store their collections, usually with the stamps grouped with their original acetate sheets. Call me crazy, but I don’t care to keep my stamps with their collections- I arrange them to my liking with visually similar designs, like holidays, borders and backgrounds, or similar sentiments. I also didn’t like the idea of reaching in a sheet protector to fish a single stamp out of an entire set.

My solution?- Lamination sheets! 

 

I bought lamination sheets from my local office supply store on sale. I chose to purchase thicker sheets for more stability. I took those to my workplace and borrowed the laminator. I laminated 10-15 pouches with nothing in them, and created my own transparent dividers for my binder. (Now I have a Minc machine, so I use that.)

Back at home I used my paper trimmer to cut the sheets down to fit my chosen binder. Because the binder came with a few starter sleeves, I used those as a template to trace the location of the holes onto each clear page and hand punched them. Then came the fun part- arranging my stamps!

I stick each stamp on the back of the page to keep them in place and I can see the design from the front.

I also learned quite quickly that the acrylic stamps wanted to adhere to each page underneath.I created separating pages with black card stock cut to size and hole punched. This made the stamps on each page stand out so they were easily readable. It also prevented the pages from clinging together.

Once I began arranging I found that smaller collections, or tiny stamps, worked better on smaller dividers. So I cut some of the pages down to a third of the size. This worked especially well for my number and alphabet sets, and border stamps.

For really small stamps, I also created a cute 4×4″ binder in the same way!

What did I do with each set’s accompanying acetate sheets? I kept them of course! The sheets with the printed designs I keep in a page protector in the very back of the binder. I can pull these out when I’m designing projects and estimating placement or size.

I also scanned all these sheets into my computer and imported them into my Silhouette software as digital stamps!

Although my stamp binders are simple and unadorned, this project can easily be customized. Imagine your own binder with a fun patterned or embellished exterior, or colorful tabbed dividers. The greatest part of this stamp system is the flexibility. If I start to run out of room I just create another binder, and I can rearrange my collection at any time!

Thanks for reading! I hope you are inspired by my DIY stamp binder to create your own creative system! Be sure to follow me on Pinterest for more crafty ideas! And if January is your month to get organized, be sure to check out my Clean it and Put it Away board on Pinterest for more tips and ideas for craft spaces and the entire home!