Papercraft-o-rama

[mellicious]

I was going to clean house today, but my back is really stiff and sore so that is probably not going to happen, much. I am going to do some continuing education stuff later (because even though I don't have a job doing coding, I feel like I shouldn't waste all that training entirely!) and I might work some in my crafting area - which in other people's houses would be the dining nook, but here it doesn't get used for that much. My crafting area is a disaster, so working there might be a good start on the cleaning and is probably less strenuous because it's less actual cleaning and more just organizing. (And of course there will be games mixed in there somewhere. More on that later.)

It appears that my problem there is that I hoard craft supplies, and I keep changing crafts, so I have tons of supplies for several different ones, and only a small apartment to put it all in. When we first moved back into an apartment with two bedrooms a few years ago, I thought that that would fix the issue - the 2nd bedroom would be the craft (and storage) room! but it didn't work there and it's not working here either. In both apartments the dining area got annexed very quickly. The quilting stuff has stayed in the bedroom because I'm not actively working on that, but the jewelry and then the papercrafting stuff ran all over. I guess I'm doing good to keep it mostly to those two areas, and consider that I'm doing well not to let it take over the whole house!

Part of the reason the papercrafting supplies are running wild is because I bought a Stampin' Up demonstrator kit. It really is a good deal. (I got the deal that had a free Big Shot with it - which is a die-cutting and embossing machine - and that deal is over, but I think I saw that they were having another special on them - $125. The normal price is $175. So if anybody else wants to join in this craziness let me know! It's supposed to be over $300 worth of stuff, and you can substitute items, which I did like crazy.) So I have - let's see - four or five new stamp sets, as well as one single stamp and one rolling stamp - which I haven't actually figured out how to make work yet - and four new colors of ink pads, and a big pad of designer paper, which the SU devotees refer to as "DSP", constantly confusing everybody else. Aaand, um, a bunch more odds and ends that I can't remember now. Card stock and various adhesives and envelopes and a couple of different kinds of stamp-cleaners, although I have always cleaned my stamps with baby-wipes and it seems to work just fine.

And I've made a few Christmas cards already, and I am going to a class week after next where we're going to make more, but since I signed up for yet another card exchange (Weetabix's) I guess I should try to make even more. I'm still not promising that everybody who gets a card from me is getting a handmade one, by any means. I bought a bunch of funny cards on sale after Christmas last year so it probably will either be one or the other. Part of the problem with making the handmade cards is that you tend to want to hoard them too, after you are done. It's hard to send them away! I usually can bring myself to send away the plainer ones, but the really fancy ones, that are a lot of work? Mostly all of those are still right here. (Some of them can be seen in this Flickr set. But not all. I really need to take pictures of more of them, since I'm so fond of them!)