The Crooked Stamper Expounds on the Benefits of Bling

As I have said at least once in the recent past, I feel part of my reason for being is to show others how good they really are in comparison to me. If only to make you feel a tiny bit better about yourselves. I think if I can come out and show you all my crooked stuff, then how bad can yours be? Really!

Today's topic is The Benefits of Bling. I like to think I can recover from almost any stamping-related mishap. Well, anything but that card I made Friday night and, um, threw out. Man, it was not worth saving ....

If you stamp crooked, or schmear something, or generally have an opportunity to embellish (we have no mistakes in stamping, remember? Tragedies, maybe, like that card I buried, but other than that, no actual "mistakes") ... then you know Bling can be your friend. I cannot tell you how many times I have saved a card by adding a little something and telling myself "I meant to do that".

A little aside on not being perfect out of the gate: When I was in college, oh so many moons ago, I took one of the required classes for my then-relatively-new Computer Science major. I was such a screw-up that one of my fellow students gave up helping me. Everything came easily to him, and I seemed to have to work very hard to get to the same point, so I think he just lost patience with me. I would have lost patience with me, too. Now, anyone who has coded long enough to remember green-bar paper remembers dumps. A dump is what the computer does when you mess up...it actually dumps its memory and all its innards in hexidecimal codes, and you have to know how to follow it like the complex road map that it is to figure out what your error is so you can fix it. Nothing like today's in-your-face here's-your-error messages you get. We had to work at it ... uphill ... barefoot ... in the snow ... both directions ...

Fast forward to the final exam. One of the things we had to do was debug a dump. Well guess what?! I knew exactly what to do, because that is all I ever did the whole semester! Guess who struggled with that part of the exam? Mr. My-stuff-is-always-perfect-the-first-time-you-are-a-screw-up. HAHAHA!

Ahem ... So you see I am used to not being perfect, and I just do my best to recover, and sometimes I think I am pretty good at it. Okay, let's move on to today's patient...

I made a bunch of these cards in an attempt to use some of the embarrassingly-large stockpile of SAB rub-ons I still have. I made some black-on-white, green-on-white, brown-on-white, plus some white-on-brown and white-on-black that I layered on white card bases. They all got a piece of ribbon from my stash, too, and let me tell you, brown is not an easy color to match!

I had a few spare moments this afternoon, so I took these out of the Clean Sweep pile and started to put them with envelopes into clear sleeves for sale at next week's market.

Here is one of the black-on-white cards:


It's plain. It's simple. Maybe a little too much of both. Then I spied that schmear on the right side of the rub-on and I knew it had to be covered up somehow. But how?

Then I remembered this:

I have had this for several years, probably from when I first discovered 'gems' and I thought this was them. It wasn't. This is one of those self-contained sticky things you can stick onto an object. Cell phone, maybe? Back pack? I dunno. But I thought they were individual 'gems', so I bought the thing.

Notice how I have been ripping the buggers off the sticky backing...these will go far! I just stick them onto my projects with some two-way glue.

Now, when you add something like this gem to a card, you cannot add only one. Nope - think about the Rule Of Three. I do, a lot, so I had to add three of these gems. One was going on the schmear, and I found places for two more. Here is a shot of the card post-bling:

I used the green gems ('gems', right, but you know what I mean) and they look pretty cool in real life, even though it is hard to see in the picture I took.

This is a closeup of one of the gems so you can see it is really green. And I got to do a close-up. ;-)

They all turned out pretty good, and I think that added bling was just enough to take them from 'boring' to 'interesting'. And if I make about 50 more cards, I'll even use up this small card of faux gems. But for now, it's back into the bling drawer.

Change of subjects ... time for a little Farmers Market update. Saturday was Hazy, Hot and Humid, just like it was billed to be. I went out to my car early in the morning to put my large rotating fan into the back of the car to take with me, and it was so humid you could see the air, and the air was so heavy it took my breath away. Ugh, it was going to be a long day.

Turned out we had no power at the pavilion, so we could not use our fans. We were all dripping within a few minutes. Fortunately for me, I did not make coffee at home to take with me, and opted instead to stop at Starbucks on the way to get a Mocha Frappachino. Icy and cold and caffeinated. Aaaah, bliss. It really hit the spot. Well, except for the brain freeze I had. I hate when that happens.

Overall, the day could have been worse, and thinking back to last summer, is has been worse. It was oppressively hot, but we did have an occasional breeze that felt sooo good, and I had packed a cooler of not food, but frozen towels. From my years of long, summer bicycle rides, I know the value of an ice-cold towel on an overheated body, especially on the temples and around the neck. I brought several, so I shared. ;-)

Most of us were in shorts and sleeveless shirts, except for Farmer Mike. Farmer Mike was wearing long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt...he did not want to get chilled. He just sat there and shook his head at all us (we) citified folk and listened to us whine about how hot it was. He actually suggested I try wearing long sleeves next week to see if I stay cooler. Not gonna do it - I am hot just thinking about it!

I got my first CSA share, too. It consisted of lettuce, radishes, kale, spring onions, strawberries, garlic scapes (the green tops of the garlic plants that get cut off so the garlic bulb will grow larger), two herb plants and a few other things. I also bought some taters, raspberries, and both sweet and sour cherries from Farmer Mike (even though he was still laughing at me.)

When I got home I had a marathon of washing and putting away all that produce. Knowing I would not get to the fruit this week before it got fuzzy, I opted to make another Mountain Dew blender drink. This week it had not only strawberries and raspberries, but I also added in some of the cherries!

This is a very yellow shot of the cherries. I was stupid and dumped both the sweet and sour into the collander together, so it will be a total surprise when they get consumed.

I actually pitted all of them, but I saved this pair, because they were too perfect. This shot also shows you how poor the previous photo was. Too yellow. I tried to fix it, but alas, I failed. This is how red they really are. And they are yummy, too!

About the kale. Let's just say I learned a bit about kale last night. I cooked it as instructed: sauteed some onion and garlic, cut up the kale, added it to the skillet with a little water, covered it and let it steam for about 10-15 minutes. It was like slow-cooking spinach. Unfortunately for me, I was not aware of how much fiber is in kale, so I ate it like spinach - a whole plate full. Can you say "intestinal distress"? This was all explained to me by one of my more alert (and kale-wise) customers this afternoon. Her first comment was, "You did not eat a whole lot of it, did you?" Uh-huh. Kale is good for me, maybe, but fun? Not. I may give the vile stuff away next week. I am such a Yankee. And a pansy-arsed citified Yankee, at that!

That's all for today. I am mid-workshops (got another one tomorrow night) so I cannot get too creative this evening, as I'd just have to clean up after myself, and that sounds like work. I think I'll take it easy and do some laundry (how fun!) and watch my latest Netflix movie, "Mrs. Brown". It's about Queen Victoria, post-Albert. I love good historical fiction!