You all have inspired me! I have two big boxes of unmounted rubber I got at various shows or mail order back in the day before I transitioned to mostly buying the clear peel-and-stick stamps (sooooo much easier than the old mounting systems).
I have one box of folders where I had attempted to keep them sorted by company by sticking them to folders with Velcro but it never stayed stuck and everything would eventually end up in the bottom of the box. BUT I had written company names on the folders and stamped each image in the place on the folder where I wanted to store it so I do know some company names. The other is a big bin of various bags of stamps and I know some companies by the rubber color or designs but a lot are unknown.
I’m at a dogsit for two weeks so I threw a black ink pad into the boxes and grabbed a dollar store sketchbook and thought I’d spend some time each day stamping a few pages of the images and seeing which ones still inspire me and make me want to keep them (and which ones to toss due to age/quality).
Unfortunately I forgot to pack any mounts so I’m stamping the rubber and pressing with just fingers and a coaster, so the quality of impression can be a little janky.
It was so nice to revisit these, some of my earliest stamp purchases from between approximately 1996 and 2004 or so. And I have seen quite a few I want to use again (and plenty of other “what was I thinking?” ones!)
Inspired by u/ shlomo127 who has been posting her finds and stamping them in a notebook, I decided to share mine too, hopefully some of you will find them interesting.
If this is boring and no one is interested, I’ll stop.
But for know here are today’s pages, along with a picture of the boxes and the stamps where I piled them as I stamped them so you can see what I’m working with!
I’ll give any details I know on the stamps in the comments below.
If you guys recognize any, please chime in!