The Back Page – Little Monkeys

I love stamps. I have lots of stamps. There’s always new stamps coming out that I want (make that, need!) – big stamps, teeny stamps, always something new! After several years of stamps, stamps, and more stamps, I hit a point that I had to start being creative in how I stored all these stamps. I mean, it was either get creative or not get any new ones because space available to store my stamps was becoming scarce. It was just me and my husband, Chris, when I visited that store in Santa Fe. Those same several years I spent building my collection also brought little bundles of joy to our lives. One, then another, then two more (twins!) Space for my stuff was dwindling, but the love of stamps and scrapbooking was not. The need to capture our memories, celebrate each moment, etc. was growing, too.

The majority of my stamps were mounted on wooden blocks. Great for stamping, not so much for storage. I was next introduced to unmounted stamps – wonderful, love them so much! Thank you to the Internet for helping expose us to so many more possibilities. And, now, I get to love all the acrylic stamps coming out. It just gets better and better!!

In order to store all my stamps, I was having to store them in ways that were oh, so neatly organized, but oh, so neatly out of sight. I have a pretty good idea of what stamps I’ve purchased, but I couldn’t get to them to use them. This is where the stamp collecting really comes in. I’m not of the mind set to get rid of any of my stamps, but with the storage situation I was in, it was getting harder to think about buying more. And that’s the goal, right? Oh, yeah, and to use the ones we’ve got! ;o)

Hello, my name is Susan and I collect stamps.

Collecting is the keyword there – notice there is no USING of said collection. To put it simply, I love stamps. Have since Sunday School when Carrie and I would stamp our way through lessons with Mrs. Walker.

Didn’t really have many of my own other than the ones that were popular growing up that came with a little ink cover, like Hello Kitty, Smurfs, etc. They’re still out there, too. My boys have some now that are Bugs Bunny! ha! The ones we used in Sunday School, though were wood-mounted rubber stamps and we even got to use ink pads. What a concept – what fun!

I got my first set of stamps as a ‘grown-up’ in Santa Fe in 1999. There’s a great store there that reintroduced me to rubber stamps and I was excited that this was something I could get into, a hobby. And so, my stamp collection/collecting habit began. From there, I bought individual stamps here and there as they caught my eye, but didn’t really do anything more with them. As I was getting started scrapbooking, I went to a workshop with a friend and bought my first “real” stamp set. Talk about love! Once I got started, I really became a serious collector – rubber stamps, both mounted and unmounted, and, now, acrylic stamps that so many scrapbook companies are releasing these days.

I’m sure everyone’s got a story pretty close to this on how they got started stamping, or stamp collecting. I’d love to hear your story!

Time to start letting everyone know about the new stamp storage system we’ve been working so hard to produce! This is when the butterflies are really starting to flutter – hoping others will see the overall idea driving this new system, rethinking each decision. I’m talking major butterflies! It’s exciting, too, though. The idea that it can help others in the same way it has helped us with our storage frustrations is the driving motivator for us working to get the system “out there.”