Panic Sets In

The first Farmers Market of the season is this Saturday, and that's not very far away, seeing as it is Thursday night right now. Every year I plan to be stocked with a good selection of new cards by this time, and every year I fail. The Winter months seem to get overbooked. I want to work on my South Dakota scrapbook. I want to clear out the wanna-be craft room so I can walk in there. I want to finish painting the Craft Room. I want to repaint my Dining Room and Kitchen, and all the ceilings. I want to do a lot of things, and here it is May again, and I am behind, with almost none of the above accomplished.

Sunday evening, as I lay immobile on my couch, contemplating how early I could go to bed and not look like a wimp, I realized I had only 5 days this week to get my act together, so I needed A Plan. Here is The Plan I devised:

Do you remember these:

Do ya? They are called Quick Strips, and Stampin' Up! used to offer them in the catalogs. They are 12" sticker strips that match long-ago-retired Designer papers. I bought a ton of these once I discovered them in the Accessories section, and I've used most of them. Each package contains 6 sheets, 2 sheets of each set of patterns at 3 to a sheet. That's 9 different patterns of sticker strips, or 18 strips, which equals a lot of possibilities.

I decided use these to make a bunch of quick cards for this weekend, so it looks like I was prepared. I cut each strip into two lengths of 5 1/2". In short, I got 4 cards out of each pattern. If I have not lost you, or even if I have, just check out some of the quick-and-easy cards I've made this week.

First up is the green strip that coordinates with the now-retired Paper Pieces punch. All by itself it makes a really nice border. As is my mode of operation, I stuck on the strip, found some matching ribbon, and looked at it.

Eventually I opted to stamp the Happy Birthday sentiment in Craft White and white-emboss it. Done!

Does this one look a little different to you? This is a perfect example of a "save" of a really ugly mistake. I initially embossed the white craft ink with clear embossing powder, thinking the white Craft ink would be white enough. It wasn't.

In desperation, I thought I'd reheat the EP and re-emboss it with white EP. This would be one of those "it seemed like a good idea at the time" moments. Let's just say the next thing I did was cut off the part of the front that had not been destroyed and stuck it on a lighter green card base. I actually like this one a little better than the other. Oh, well. So I got 4 of these done, then moved on.

Here is a pattern many of you might remember. I love the Navy and Olive combination, but I did not want a Navy card base, so I trimmed it and layered the Navy on a white card base.

I originally wanted to put three Olive eyelets on the card front, and except for the fact that these are not straight (surprise!), I think it was a good idea.

What was not a good idea was working on one of the other cards at the same time. On the other card I was using little flowers with the brads, then laying the flowers on the card front to line them up.

I got distracted, as I often do, and managed to put the three brads on the front of this card too far apart - as if I was planning to put the flowers on, which I was not. That far apart they looked really stupid, so I had to recover. Check out the bottom corner of this puppy - you can see the three eyelets across the middle of the group; I went with the "more is more" theme and just added more eyelets until it looked like "I meant to do that". With all the uneven circles in the sticker pattern, I think I might just get away with it, too.

Here is a really close look at my screw-up. I dunno - it kinda grows on you, don't you think?

The really sad part is I did it on another card, too, so I have two of each with this pattern. Time to move on to the next one.

More pink! Gotta use it up and get it outta here! This is for all the people who go with the current fashion and know the 'In' colors of the season. That would not be me. And if these colors are no longer in vogue, oh well.

Those measle-looking blobs are stickles. I thought the front of the card looked boring, and not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I stickled it up. It is glittery in real life; just poorly photographed.

Here is our old friend, the Mother's Day stamp. I thought the flowery borders could be used for Mother's Day, so I did. I opted to go with Eggplant ribbon, because once again, in all that ribbon in my stash, not one of them went with the purples in this sticker strip. Sigh. The sentiment was done with Eggplant Craft ink and clear EP. It really is closer in color to the ribbon than it looks in this photo.

I blew the dust off my Three Flower punch and punched some white flowers. They are small and come in threes! Perfect!

My order from Pink Hedgehog Paper Crafts was waiting for me when I got home tonight, so I felt compelled to use some of the purple brads here. More on that order in a moment.

This is the same pattern in blues and greens, and it is absolutely my favorite of all of them color-wise. Again, I went through all my blue non-SU ribbons, and not one matched this blue. I ended up using the now-retired French Blue from SU. There is something to be said for all the color coordinating SU has built-in to their product line. :-)

This card is the culprit for all my screw-ups with the Navy ones. I was lining up the flowers for this card and mistakenly spaced the brads (sans flowers) on the Navy Blue card the same way. Sigh .....

This card also demonstrates I am capable of making a Mother's Day card that is not pink.

So all in all, I've made 20 cards this week, just from this one Quick Strips kit. Not too shabby, since I also managed to use up most of this item from my stash. All I have left to do is stamp the backs of the cards, put them with an envelope into plastic sleeves, and put an inventory number on the back of each one.

Oh, about that Pink Hedgehog order. I was weak and got over 20 different colors of brads, three bags of eyelets, a huge bag of Antique Brass brads, some Dew Drops, and, um, some ribbon. Striped ribbon. Hey, I was enabled! They had a "click here to buy them all" button, so what was I to do!?!?!? But you know what? I deserve these moments of weakness. No, really, I do! I am not a clothes horse, I do not have a weakness for shoes, I do not go out to eat, I am saving regularly for my retirement (which will not be soon enough!), I do not drink or smoke or anything else that costs money, so if I buy myself some stampin' supplies once in a while, I have NO GUILT! So there! Man, do I lead a boring life, or what ....

Well, I've got to go put the stuff from the washer into the dryer so I have dry blue jeans so I can go to work in the morning. I love Casual Fridays!