stamp organization

Over the long winter season, I did some spring cleaning and re-organized my stamps.  I had been reading a lot on stamp organization ideas and came across this method using Tim Holtz (TH) pocket folders.  I was drawn to it since it takes up so little space and makes flipping through my stash a breeze.  

Here is how I used to store my stamps.... I had most of them on CD cases...

Some were on the original packaging the Papertrey stamps came in and the newer ones on the TH folder... 

I bought a couple of packages of the TH  to test it out but did not commit right away since it was quite a big investment to convert all my stamps to this method.

But the OCD in me bugged me with the fact that they were in different methods. Plus,  I was running out of space for new stamps since the CD cases took up so much space.

So one day, I bit the bullet and bought the TH folder for all my big stamps (I will also explain later how I store my small stamps) 

And, here they are now...

I divided my stamps into categories and put my stamps per category alphabetically. The categories I used were:  Floral/Nature, Tags/Labels/Frames, Alphabets, Sentiments, Backgrounds, Holidays and Objects (for stamps like Pedal Pusher (bike images), On My Couch).

Here is how the individual folder looks like... I simply adhered the stamp packaging in front of a white cardstock. If there is a coordinating die, I just put it in the same folder.

The back looks like this...I adhered the sticker sheet on a piece of acetate and placed the stamps on the corresponding image. This goes on the other side of the cardstock.

For my older stamps that do not have the sticker sheet and packaging with the stamp images, I just printed out the stamp image from Papertrey's website like this...

 
Here is how the back looks like... It is just the acetate sheet.  Most of the stamps are pretty easy to figure out so I do not mind not having the sticker sheet.  I also tried to arrange it in the same order as the website image.

Now, for my small $5 stamps, I wanted to put them on individual folders but felt that the TH folder was too expensive for just one small stamp.  So I looked for a smaller folder that will do the same job.  And my choice for now is an inexpensive photo album from the dollar store.  I like this method because I still have my sets stored individually and can arrange my stamps alphabetically.  I do not have to decide which 3 or 4 sets will go together had I used a TH folder.

I put the stamps in a larger acetate sheet (acetate from my $15 stamps, cut to size) and stapled it to the paper packaging. This makes it easy for me to pull it out and put back.

It had a divider per page so I put any coordinating die at the back...

Hope it gives you some ideas you can use for yourself.  I am loving this system better.  So much easier to find what I am looking for and requires less space.

Thanks for stopping by!