A Metal Stamp Storage Tip and New Cutters

I'm a beginner at metal stamping. And I'm not rich. So when I bought my stamp set, they came in a nice red case, but the stamps get out of order easily. I needed a stamp holder.

Like this one:

But with shipping, the holder would cost more than my metal stamps! And then there's the wait and well, sometimes, I'm not very patient.

So, I went to Michaels. And for less than $5 (I want to say only $2, but I'm not sure), I purchased a square piece of floral foam and...

Made it look like a porcupine! :P I could have measured our the foam and made the stamps all equidistant and pretty in the foam but.. eh... I'm lazy. The container for the stamps was square so I bought square foam and eyeballed it. Works great!

I was ready to stamp... But first...

How on earth was I to cut this flat wire???

My regular snippers were to small and my other cutters... well, I once used them to cut memory wire and they haven't forgiven me since. So. For Rod and my anniversary, I asked for a pair of cutters. We went to Lowe's and looked around. I couldn't remember the gauge of my flat wire and all I remember reading about with cutters was to get something called "heavy duty wire cutters."

Well, let me tell you. Couldn't find anything that said "heavy duty wire cutters." So. Well. We bought a $9 pair of bolt cutters. I figured, hey, if it can cut through a friggin' BOLT, it can cut through some flat wire.

Look at the size of these things! 8 inch bolt cutters. Could have gotten the 14 inch version for like $3 more but I decided against it.

And they work great. Of course, you still have to file down the edges, but what was I expecting? Magic cutters? For the price, this thing is pretty magical, let me tell you.

Now, I need something to make holes. I have a coupon for Hobby Lobby and I think their hole punch thingy is only $7.99... maybe $9.99. Michaels has theirs for over $20 now. So I will be heading over to Hobby Lobby sometime this week. I'm very excited. It's coming together... slowly, but surely.

Happy Monday, all!

A Handy Tip

RH bought me some glass beads and they came in a plastic tub. At first, I didn't think too much of them. They were made in India which you would think would have me all goo-goo eyed, but most of them were chipped and they had a funny residue on them (which smelled like oil so I suppose it was oil). But, there seemed to be a few treasures in the bunch.

I knew I had to get the residue off but wasn't sure how to go about it. We'd just bought some hand wipes and I snatched up a few and decided to give them a try. You know what? It worked like a charm. I picked through the bunch looking for beads that weren't chipped. I ended up with a beautiful batch of shiny glass beads.

It was interesting. The dark blue bead in the middle and the one off on the upper right corner seemed black at first but they're blue! And the pretty round blue bead in the lower left corner? I saw a tutorial in the latest Bead Style that would be PERFECT for that bead.

Ahh... Happiness.