#NotfortheFainthearted........

Hi there folks.

Right, viewers of a sensitive disposition; this is your warning....this post contains scenes of violence against stamps. If you are a member of the "Pristine Stamp Society" then you may find these images "distressing"

Okay, warnings dispensed with, shall we get on with the fun?
I'll be honest, I am not part of the #hashtag crowd, I don't do Twitter, Instagram etc which I think is where these are used.
So, when Tim's new stamps came out I looked at them in the shops and thought to myself; Yes, I like them but I'll not get the use out of them and left them there. But, I just couldn't get them out of my mind so I went back for another look a little while later. Still, no, I thought..... This process went on for a few months until I just HAD to get them last week. Why, because I had an IDEA. So, this is the tale of what happened when #hashtag met Neil.

 The first job was to separate them out. Do yourselves a favour, don't toss the waste away. (If you have already then I apologise in advance for the regret you may feel later.)

 Now we needed to some pre-surgery preparation. Take as many different colour Sharpie Markers as you have (I had 24) or other permanent marker and colour along the top edge of all the stamps like this. It is important that each stamp is coloured differently.

If you run out of markers before you run out of stamps then you need to think of a different way to differentiate. I used dots like this, again using a different colour for each stamp.

 Now we are ready for the next stage. Scalpel, ink, acrylic block, cutting mat and scrap paper at the ready.....
Stamp your stamp with black ink and stamp it onto the paper (The ink shows up the letters on the stamp clearly.) and

CAREFULLY and SLOWLY slice the words apart...... Repeat this for all the stamps and you end up with a lot of wonderful words

 Each word can be stamped together as per the original by just re assembling as per the colour coding or used separately.

 Then, look, doesn't the "waste" make a cool stamp too? I think it does. So, just to show you I made a quick little tag.

 I stamped the tag with layers of Archival ink in Black, Fern and Dandelion using the waste element. The black is kind of faded and I offset the other colours which I think gives a lovely faded screenprint feel.

Then, I selected my words from the set and stamped each one individually in the light areas. I am really pleased with the way it came out and just know I am going to use this set loads!

So, why did I do this? One of the things I love is Tim's Chit Chat Stickers, and this stamp set reminded me of this in some ways. However, because the words were all close together you could not easily stamp the words and cut them out with proper spacing. By cutting the stamps instead, I now have that option too as well as being able to stamp directly onto my project. A win win all round in my mind that really opens up the possibilities of this stamp set.
What do you think?