New SU! and Stamp Indexing

Bright and early this morning, my new courier (who is already surprised how often he has to come to my house!) bought me two big boxes, jammed packed full of Stampin' Up! goodies! I still have a couple of things on back order, but today I'll have lots of sorting and arranging to do. Included in my parcels are lots of brand new products from the upcoming Mini Catalogue so expect to see lots of sneak peaks starting from today!

I have 17 new sets to mount (12 of them I got for FREE from Stampin' Up! email me if you'd like info on how you could get freebies too!) which you might think would take forever....but here's the GREAT news....all the sets in the new mini catalogue are DIE-CUT! That means Stampin' Up! have cut them out for us, all you have to do is pop them on the blocks and you're ready to stamp!

Regular readers will know I have a lot of sets. So many that I haven't even counted (I think it would be a scary number!) With so many stamps, it's vital to have a good index of what you have. So I thought I'd show you mine. It's not pretty, but it's very functional.

I have a plain lever arch file (I've been meaning to pretty it up for awhile now!) and every time I get a new stamp set, I photocopy the sticker sheet before I do anything else. I also usually update my spreadsheet at this time.

It's very important for my system that I photocopy only one stamp set per page and that each and every set has it's own page protector for this reason: At the moment my sets are organised alphabetically, that means that every time a new one comes in (which is often) I need to be able to quickly slot it in to the correct position. It also means that if I ever decide to use a different method of organising my index, perhaps by subject or theme, I can easily do so because I don't have to separate sets from the same page.

If I don't know what set I want to use when I sit down to create, I can easily flick through until something inspires me. The stamp set shown is a new one, available August 1st, called Always. Isn't it gorgeous?!? I can't wait to use it. If you don't have a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and would like to order this beautiful set (or anything else you see on my site for that matter!) please email me.

Usually, it only takes me a second to photocopy each sticker sheet - but this morning was a bit different! I decided to use Shanan's laser printer as it's faster than mine, but forgot to allow for the "cat curiosity" factor!

This is Gabriel, he's a Lilac Point Balinese and is three years old. Balinese (a longer coat Siamese) are very well known for being mischievous, playful and above all curious. Gabriel loves my printer, and always wants to watch when I use it, but the laser printer seems to hold a special fascination. I think it's because the paper shoots out all of a sudden, unlike my ink jet which does it bit by bit. So every time I wanted to do a new sticker sheet this morning, it meant lifting him down and trying to get it positioned on the scanner before he wanted to jump back up! Of course, I could have just locked him out of the room - but there's one other thing Balinese are known for...their meow!

I'll be back later today with a few wee sneak peeks and will also update the UStamp class kit page with photos of the kit. Until then, Happy Stampin'!