Extra stamps!

I hate putting exclamation points in my post titles -- it's the editor in me -- but I was so excited about my latest discovery that I couldn't help it. Let me back up a bit. Normally I buy stamps in wood-mount style rather than clear-mount because I prefer to have them permanently mounted on wood blocks. But when it comes to Christmas stamps, I've been buying more clear-mount stamps because A) I only use them for a limited time each year, B) they're cheaper, and C) they take up less space.

So this afternoon I was going to use my new Bright & Beautiful and Nature's Peace stamp sets (from the soon-to-be-released 2014 Holiday Catalog from Stampin' Up!) for the first time. As I was pulling the die-cut stamps out of the piece of rubber, I realized that there was a lot of extra rubber with these sets, and several places that would be big enough for another stamp. Light bulb!

I looked through my Big Shot dies for ones that had smaller shapes, and two of them -- Autumn Accents and the retired Stocking Accents -- were perfect. I cut apart some of the bigger pieces of extra rubber, placed them over the die on the shape I wanted to cut and ran them through my Big Shot as usual.

And just like that I have a few "new" stamps. And because the rubber was from a clear-mount set, I can just peel off the paper, stick them on a clear block and stamp away. This also would work with the extra rubber from wood-mount sets, but you would need to either have extra wood blocks on which to mount the stamps or add the cling foam so they could be used with clear blocks.

I know this isn't a huge discovery, but I was excited to find a way to use something I otherwise would have thrown out -- and to get a few extra stamps, too. (Note: To see a couple of cards I made using some of these stamps, check out the "Holly and trees" blog post dated Aug. 30, 2014.) Thanks for stopping by!