Happy Thanksgiving to all of those celebrating today. For everyone else – I hope you have a wonderful day. I intend to have a good one – I’m currently in Barcelona on vacation.

In the spirit of giving thanks, I decided to do a different kind of post today. It is inspired by ten minutes or so last week when I thought that I’d lost my stamp-a-ma-jig and realised that this pretty much made stamping impossible. So here’s my list of critical stamping supplies that I absolutely could not do without and why. I’m interested in your comments on this!

1. Stampin’ Up!’s Stamp-a-ma-jig.

It’s critical to get your stamps where you want them. It’s not foolproof – you still have to get the image on the acetate sheet lined up but as long as you do that, it’s perfect. I also find that using the stamp-a-ma-jig handle to slide your stamp down when stamping prevents you wobbling and removes any chance of extra ink onto your project.

2. Grid paper

I find this invaluable for helping me to line up sentiments or to get images centred. It’s also a good base to stamp on as well as useful to stamp off the excess ink before cleaning the rest on the stampin’ scrub.

3. Ruler

My ruler is also critical. I use it to hold under a sentiment and then see if it is in fact straight on the card by using the lines on the grid paper. I line the card up with the grid paper and then check that my ruler is also lined up.

4. Tombow glue

I started off using snail. And I like it a lot – I still use it for lining envelopes. But I like that I have a little bit of time to wiggle the card around if I haven’t got it quite right.

5. Adhesive Remover

Caro told me that I needed this but I wasn’t so sure. So I didn’t get it for a few months but now that I have it, I use it a lot. It’s obviously great for removing any excess glue (just let it dry before removing it) or sticky patches left by sticky fingers. But it’s also good at cleaning up any wisps caused by a not so sharp trimmer blade (or maybe a cutting mat was requiring a clean)

6. Trimmer

This one’s a no brainer. You can’t make cards if you can’t cut the card to size. I like my stampin’ trimmer – it’s accurate.

I compiled this list by thinking about what I could not stamp without. Could I stamp without my ruler? Probably but I wouldn’t like it. Same goes for the rest. There is another list of items that I like to have, but that’s for another day!