Stamp Mounting and a Health Update

This afternoon I mounted some unmounted rubber stamps I’ve had for a while. I got these from Chocolate Baroque – 2 A4 sheets named “Harlequin Fragments” and “Lace Fragments.”

Chocolate Baroque stamps are gorgeous – I have a few different ones. It’s always worth checking for “broken biscuits” on their site. I’ve never come across this idea anywhere else but it’s brilliant. Sometimes when they manufacture a sheet of stamps, it comes out faulty, but maybe all but one, or most of the stamps on the sheet, are perfectly fine, so it would be silly to ditch the whole sheet. They cut out the OK ones and when they’ve got all the stamps that would be on a perfect sheet, they sell them as “broken biscuits” – perfect stamps making up a complete set, but just not all in one piece! They are going to be cut up anyway, so who cares if some of them are already separate? There’s a significant price reduction and well worth getting. Of course it’s unpredictable which sets will be available as a “broken biscuits” set but if you’re prepared to wait, the set you want may come up eventually. A great idea, for both the manufacturer (no waste) and the customer (good value)!

Today the EZ Mount Foam I ordered arrived. This is a foam rubber sheet with an extremely sticky surface on one side, and a cling-mount surface on the other. You peel back the backing sheet and arrange your unmounted stamps onto the sticky side and then cut them out. There’s another backing sheet protecting the cling-mount surface, and once you peel this off you’ve got your stamps mounted and ready for use with an acrylic block.

This is a job I loathe doing. Even with my Tim Holtz scissors that have non-stick blades, the scissors and your fingers get extremely sticky and it’s pretty hard work! I recently discovered a Youtube video on cutting them with a hot knife, so I gave this a try today. I didn’t do quite such a good job as on the video but it did make pretty short work of a horrible job, and it also made the most horrendous smell! Here’s the equipment I used.

I used a glass heat proof kitchen cutting mat. You can see the sheet of EZ Mount Foam, some adhesive remover wipes, Tim Holtz scissors and talcum powder, and my hot knife – this has interchangeable blades.

When I’d finished, I dipped the scissors in talcum powder and trimmed off the excess around the stamps, and cleaned up with an adhesive remover wipe. Great results all round.

Here are the two sets of stamps, cut out and mounted, and ready to use.

I was interested to read yesterday that it isn’t a good idea to store EZ Mount Foam mounted stamps on an acrylic sheet because there’s a chemical reaction that happens between these two surfaces and your stamps can end up permanently fused to the acrylic! Time to sort my stamp storage, I think! They ae perfectly fine loose in the bags like these ones. I keep the original packaging and/or leaflet so I know the name and manufacturer of my stamps, and they are hung on my little rail above my work desk. I got the split rings and the conference badge clips from Ebay, and used a piece of wooden dowel slotted through the ornamental shelf brackets to hang them from. It works brilliantly and my stamps take up very little room.

 

Health Update

This morning we went to the hospital for my pre-chemo bloods to be taken, and for my oncology appointment. I have to go to the hospital for this, rather than the surgery because extracting blood from a port requires special training that the surgery nurses have not had. This morning it was pretty horrendous because although they were able to insert the needle and flush the port-a-cath, the blood simply would not flow! On the third attempt she got a reasonable sample.

We then went down to Oncology and I saw Dr. Dyke, Dr. Lo’s registrar. I reported to her how poorly I have felt throughout the three weeks since my last treatment, with all the side effects being more severe and longer lasting than after my first treatment, and after consulting with Dr. Lo, she said they would reduce tomorrow’s dose by 10 percent. The amount is calculated on body weight but every individual is different and not everybody responds in the same way, and sometimes adjustments need to be made. I also asked if she knew exactly how many treatments I would require, because all I’d been told was that it would go on for six months, and I’d worked it out at 9 or 10, depending on when they stopped, and she said it would only be 8! I am very pleased indeed to hear this, because three weeks from tomorrow, I shall be half way through!! Yaaayyy! Full details on my Cancer Diary page.