Organizing Stamps - Again! Downloadable List Posted

Table of Contents for My Stamp Catalog

I have been doing an 8 week organizational challenge with a bunch of other scrapbookers and stampers.  In a couple of weeks, we are going to have to catalog and organize our stamps and punches.  My stamps are fairly tidy because I have them put away.  However, they aren't really "organized".  I have no affiliation with thescraprack.com, other than as a customer and a participant in the challenge, but that is where I got the information about How to catalog the stamps once they are put away.

Stamp Catalog Table of Contents Page Two

Many years ago, I made a catalog of my wood mounted stamps.  I never used it and didn't keep up with it.  Finding the stamp I was looking for was always a time consuming endeavor and I often thought I should update the catalog.  About half my stamps are acrylic now.  It was time to get a handle on what I have.  It is important to me that I use my supplies, not just collect them!  So the first step was analyze what kinds of stamps I have and make a table of contents for the catalog.

First Page of Stamped Images In Stamp Inventory Catalog

The stamps will eventually all be stamped and cross-categoried into the catalog in their respective areas. I am very visual, so I decided to stamp each category/theme on a different color of paper.  I used a strip of that paper as part of my contents list so it would be easier to find in the Work In Progress album (CTMH) that will house my catalog.

Letters, Numbers, Punctuation Category

Some of the theme ideas came directly from Tiffany Spaulding of The Scraprack.  She suggests sorting things with the calendar in mind.  For example, any stamps related to Independence Day would be found under the July category. This eliminated my Patriotic category.

I revised my categories several times as I started stamping out the images.  There are people participating in the challenge who scan in their images instead of stamp them. This is a great idea and looks awesome!  Unfortunately, that doesn't really work for me because I do not have a large format printer and am using a 12 x 12 album. Also, I hate scanning.

12 x 12 Stamp Catalog - Words Page

Each stamp set is assigned a number based on where it is located.  It doesn't matter what theme or category it falls into.  This is good for a number of reasons. If you add to your collection, you don't need to rearrange everything to add in the new stamps.  Some stamp sets can fall into more than one category so you don't have to decide with which one to store it. If you have other people who use your stamps, they do not need to try to figure out where to return it to.  The system works for whatever storage system you use.  I have my wood mounted stamps on shelves so they will be labeled according to the shelf they are on.

Sticky Labels Indicate Stamp Location

Being organized makes me feel more in control of my workspace.  Consequently, it makes me more efficient in getting projects done.  This has been a BIG undertaking, and I am not done with it.  It is a good start though and I am loving my new Catalog! When the challenge for the week is to work on stamps and punches, I will have a plan already in place so I can meet my goals. :-)

4-Pocket Scraprack Pages Used to Store CTMH Stamps

Below is a downloadable list of themes that I used for the stamps that I own.  After working with the stamps, I consolidated several categories but I left them on this list in case anyone might find them to be useful.

http://www.mediafire.com/?by8jymu419n4c8k

Have an amazing day!

Beverly