Julie's Stamp Art: File Cabinet Project

This was a great find! After my friend Phyllis told me about her purchasing a file cabinet to house her unmounted stamps, I just knew I had to follow suit. Her and I have been working on a way to store our vast collection for years now. I know that I have 1,000's of unmounteds. To store them is a problem. I've tried envelopes stored in those photo boxes and videocassette tape boxes. I didn't like either way. The envelopes became too cramed in the photo boxes and there was just too many boxes to go through. The VCR tape boxes are good except that I had to dump and find the one I wanted. However, I will say that Red Castle has a great program for making a cover with the stamps on there. But, again, my collection is too large for this storage method to be effective.

So...I am currently converting those VCR boxes to file folders. You know, the good ol' manilla folders. I am stamping on the outside and placing the stamps on the inside. I don't mount my unmounteds. I use naked rubber attached to the block with 3M Poster Tape. Works great. So, inside the file folder, I have just used double sided tape to hold the stamp in place. Seems to be working well except that you do need to be a bit careful when you remove the stamp. It wants to take the tape with it. Some of my UMs are mounted with Halos hook 'n loop tape so I have cut a piece of loop and attached it inside the folder. I'll post a few pics later on how this really works.

For now, here is the file cabinet that I got off of Craigslist for a mere $25. It is a 5-drawer vertical file; however, it is deep. About 3 feet deep! It's a nice, heavy Steelcase model. Can't beat that for the price. It did need a makeover because the color was ugly. It was painted by someone a lighter tan with the sides being the original dark tan/brown.

I started by washing the inside and outside with some Dawn dishsoap. We took the handles and label holders off and then sanded it.

Next, we painted the cabinet with cheap White Enamel paint and the drawer fronts with Pink Enamel. It took two coats.

While that was drying, I went to work on cleaning up the handles and label holders. I used Dawn dish soap, a steel wool pad, and some light sandpaper. Some of the handles had old paint on them that needed the sandpaper to take off. They look great now!