Tuesday Morning Sketches #379

Good Morning friends.  Thank you so much for stopping by.  The sketch is up at Tuesday Morning Sketches and it's a nice and easy one.  Great for this holiday week.  It's inspired by Jessi and I know you're going to love it and use it again and again.

Our sponsor is DRS Designs.  I'm featuring the Large Filigree Snowflake and the Joy of Christmas Greeting.

So before I get to a lot of details about this card, I want to tell you a background story.  I broke down and bought a MISTI.  I'm still trying to convince myself this wasn't a waste of money.  I'm not sold on it completely but I got one - it's the Mini MISTI and at $44 on Amazon - well lets just say I know what the saying "don't spend your money all on one place" really means.  Ouch!  High price point.  But I got it because I was making 70 Christmas cards for my Mom and the homemade stamping tool I created just wasn't cutting it.

So now I'm on a quest to use this tool often to make it worth it to me.  If you're really interested in what I have I have to say about this, please read on.  If not.... feel free to head on over to the TMS blog now to see some beautiful Christmas cards by the team and join in the fun.

Back to my "article."  With my DIY stamping tool, I spent under $10 and that was with shipping.  Not bad.  Pro - it was cheap... Con - there is no way to hold your card stock in the same place.  No magnets.  With my DIY version for measurements I bought a Little B's Perfect Positioner and cut it up to position my stamps so it was straight.

Now, I'm ready to make my DRS Designs card and their stamps are available in 3 versions:  Wood Mounted Stamps, Trimmed on Cling Cushion and Unmounted, Rubber Only.  Just to do a price comparison on that - the snowflake stamp I used is $13.20 which is pretty good but the rubber only version is only $6.60.  That's even better.  So how do you stamp with them?  Well, I've used acrylic blocks and double sided tape before.  But now I have this Mini MISTI.  I guess you could use double sided tape again and that's fine for a few stampings but what if you're mass producing?  I guess you could use Tack and Peel and honestly I tried it and instantly regretted it.  I was so afraid I was going break this $40 tool taking it off.

Solution!  I had a few strips of the Little B's Perfect Positioner left over from the DIY project, I simply put that on the lid of the MISTI and stuck my rubber only stamps to that and stamped.  Down side - do you see the black panel?  I had to move the card stock itself and left the stamp where it was at.  It worked okay but it's not very precise (if that's what you're going for).  But it worked beautifully on the sentiment.  The stamp didn't move and neither did my card stock. So I think an improvement to the MISTI will be to purchase another Little B's Perfect Positioner and cut that one up to fit the entire door the of MISTI so that I can move the stamps around.  It's less than $4.00 and I think would last a long time.  I don't have a lot of unmounted rubber stamps, but I have enough that it would make this totally worth it.

So that's my 2 cents on a how to get the most out of a $44 tool.  Trust me, I'm not trying to be negative Nancy here, but I am still trying to tell myself this was okay to buy.

Now I'd love to see you over at TMS to play along with us.  And Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.