How I Store my Frantic Stamper Dies (Kathy Berger)

How I Store My Frantic Stamper Dies

by Kathy Berger


Yesterday Jen showed you how she cuts apart her dies, and the envelopes she uses to store her dies. I cut my dies apart pretty much the same way she does. But I am more OCD than Jen! I can't stand any little nub sticking out off my die. And though the wire cutter gets close, it isn't close enough for me. So I use a Dremel tool and grind my nubs right off. And then I put my dies and the paper insert into a standard A2 Clear envelope, like this one:



I even put my small dies that are packaged in smaller envelopes into these clear envelopes. I create my own packaging label and group the small dies 2 or 3 to an envelope. (I have all the images so for me this is extra simple, but you could just cut the images off the other labels and glue them to a half-sheet of paper folded in half.) The only dies I don't move to new envelopes are the ribbon and edger dies. Those I leave in their long, narrow packaging, but I do cut the hang-tag portion off the die.

But then I had a problem, but I bet it is one you wish you had! You see, I have ALL of the dies in the Frantic Stamper line. YUP, ALL of the nearly 700 die sets that have been released so far. So what was the problem? I had roughly 660 of the standard A2-sized envelopes, and a bunch of long narrow envelopes. How the heck could I STORE them all?

Well, I found a perfect box to store them in. This black Vaultz Locking Personal Security Box measures 7.75" x 7.25" x 10". (Disclaimer: Neither I nor Frantic Stamper have any affiliation with Vaultz; the box just happened to be a solution for me.)



The envelopes fit inside perfectly!



And as you can see in the top left of the photo, I store the long thin envelopes on the lid. The fabric that lines the box works great with Velcro, so the strips of Velcro hold those dies perfectly in place! And these boxes will hold a LOT of dies!

Using an envelope punch board I create simple little file markers to put in place between dies with the range of die numbers on the tab. I have mine marked every 25 dies, but there is no reason I couldn't make it every 10 or every 50. So far I have found 25 works well for me but you could definitely do whatever works for you. You might prefer to save them by category rather than by number, or you might decide to store them alphabetically by name. I say you should do what works for you!

I have three full boxes of dies now, and am nearly half-way through a fourth. I keep the boxes on a shelf, and have marked the range of die numbers in each box on its lid and side.

I have a master list of the dies by number and name on my iPad. It gets updated every time I get new dies. When I need to find a die, I search the list and get the die number, then I can go to the correct box and easily grab the die. It is also easy to put the dies back away since they are filed numerically.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my die solution. The team would love to hear about yours!

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