I Need Thank You Notes and to Get Some Things off My Chest

In cleaning my craft area yesterday (and no, it's not organized yet, just surface clean), I discovered that I had very few thank you notes in my stash. So I went to work by pulling out Hero Arts' Antique Engravings (a clear set), Papertrey's Text Style, and a Thank You sentiment from Clear and Simple Stamps.

Same layout, different card stock and colors, and completely different looks....









Which do you like better...the soft and natural one or the happy orange one? I vote orange, myself, but there are situations when the softer one might be more appropriate.

Either way, I LOVE stamp sets that have at least three images in different sizes so making visual triangles is as easy as 1-2-3. Antique Engravings has five butterflies and three shells...but only two hummingbirds, both oriented to the right and the same except for size. I'm always annoyed by this hummingbird shortcoming when I pull out this set, but I suppose they can only put so many stamps in one set.

Yesterday after my stamping time, both my recent orders arrived. I placed both orders on Friday, so that was amazing service from Creative Play Stamps and Papertrey. Yay!!!

The order from Creative Play Stamps contained eight of the new Memento dew drop inks and a free dauber. Yay!!! I'd already picked up four of the inks at Michael's a few weeks ago. Here's my Memento storage drawer, all stocked up.

Aren't these so tidy and pretty lined up like this?

I'm not sure about some of these new colors, though. They are so...dark. The olive grove and northern pine are particularly dark, as are the new blues and the purple. Pistachio is nice, and so is the gray flannel, a good alternative to black for sentiments on some cards as it's darker than London fog and more substantial. Morocco is a bright, clean reddish orange. There's now a good medium brown, too.

But there's still no medium blue or pink, and no aqua shade at all. Espresso truffle looks like a dull black and I'm not exactly sure I'll ever find a use for it. I'm also not sure I'll be buying the markers for most of these as the markers are generally a few shades darker than the pads anyway.

My second order was from Papertrey Ink...and my first order with the new packaging for the stamps. Which is to say no packaging. Which brings me to a deeply personal rant about clear stamp storage.

When you're mildly obsessive, standardization in industries is a delight. I love Microsoft products not because they work well (sometimes they don't) but I can find my way around MS programs no problem. I never feel lost or disorganized with them. Clear stamp storage has no industry standard, and that drives me nuts.

I have an extra stash of jewel cases for storing stamps, so it's not a problem for me that PTI is no longer including storage with sets, but I want to go on record and say I HATE CHANGING STORAGE SYSTEMS MIDSTREAM. I have dozens and dozens of PTI sets in jewel cases. In January I bought some pretty green boxes to store them in...boxes that fit the jewel cases perfectly and still have a little room to grow my collection.

I DON'T LIKE jewel cases for storing clear stamps because the stamps stick together, little ones fall out of the opening in the case, and the case hinges break or pop apart annoyingly.

BUT changing now to DVD cases (which I also don't like for different reasons) would be horrifyingly expensive and time-consuming. Plus, it would take way more space and render my cute green boxes obsolete. I invested in jewel-case storage, not because I like jewel cases but because that's what PTI gave out and I would rather buy stamps, not storage, thank you very much.

I kinda prefer the Hero Arts clear folders, but not by much. They have images on them, so you know where to put the stamps and can see at a glance if one is missing. I never could get the PTI image stickers on neatly, nor would stamps fit in the larger sets where their image was. The Hero Arts's system is also delightfully simple and compact...it doesn't take much space to store them. I throw them in the drawers with my wood-mounted stamps and can always find them.

But stamps can fall out (especially small ones). And Hero keeps coming out with different sizes of folders...very annoying to store in an obsessive-compulsive fashion.

I feel better for having said all this, and really, I know this is completely a First World Problem not worthy of anyone's time or whining. PTI is free to improve whatever they want whenever they want, and no doubt the new storage system is vastly superior to the jewel-case system. But for now, I'm going to make do with my cheapo jewel cases and pray for patience.

Because the PTI sets I ordered are drop-dead fabulous and I can't wait to ink them up!