Bookmark Central

As an avid reader and a general lover of books, there are two things I cannot ever see myself doing: (1) altering a book, even (especially) an old one, and (2) using a bookmark that is not flat. So when I see beautiful bookmarks that have brads and layers and embellishments - NOT! Those huge paper clips that people make into bookmarks? Nope! One of the vendors at my market has some lovely hand-made cross-stitched bookmarks, but they are also not flat, so I have not bought one.

With this as my going-in position, last year I set out to make a flat bookmark. And since last year SU had some scrumptious wide satin ribbon in both Chocolate Chip and Pomegranate, I made this for one of my workshop projects:

It is flat, and it is good. It was a hit on Splitcoast ("hit" meaning I got more than 3 comments.) It was also a hit at my workshops, except for that cutting-out part. There was much whining that day!

Because of all the cutting, I did not make any more than my serving-suggestion sample for the workshops.

Fast-forward to this year, and my new personal challenge to use up stuff I already have. Enter: this year's bookmark. I went through the hoarded ribbon and pulled out not only the open spools of the Chocolate Chip and Pomegranate satin ribbons (yes, I have un-opened spools of the stuff, too), but also a few of the other wide ribbons I have in the Retired SU Ribbon Box in The Other Room. Let's take a look at what I whipped up yesterday:

Here is the whole sampling. I made two of each, for no particular reason. I think they all came out a little boring, but I did not claim to be 100% finished. Yet.

On to some more detail...
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This is what's on the end of the blue ribbon pieces. The ribbon is from one of the now-retired Ribbon Original packs. After some squinting, and failing to even attempt to look it up anywhere, I decide this was Brocade Blue. Or maybe Ballet Blue; I forget now. Hey, that was yesterday.

The blue die-cut is one of my new Nestabilities (yes, June, you would love these!) I stamped the A Muse image on Whisper White, colored it, then punched it out with my SU Curvy Label punch. I made a sandwich on both ends of the ribbon with one of these paired with another plain blue Nestie die-cut, and I used red sticky tape to hold the whole thing together. LOTS of red sticky tape. I tell you, I have never seen anything with more static cling than that red sticky tape! Between last weekend's workshops and these bookmarks, there is serious competition between the red sticky-tape things and the cat hair. Serious competition...there are red pieces floating around everywhere.

Yeah, these bookmarks are a little plain (read: boring), but very usable! A perfect stocking stuffer!

These are the brown versions. I found the piece of patterned paper in my embarrassingly-large stash of un-touched 12x12 papers, and I think it looks rather manly with the brown, don't you?

The die cuts on the right ribbon are my other new Nesties. I think I may be done buying Nesties for a while. I did briefly covet the new curly rectangles, but.I.resisted...

This is actually the first one I made on Sunday. I used a retired piece of SU DS paper from a year or two ago, and you will notice it looks like Cranberry, even though the ribbon and card stock are Pomegranate. But only you know that, right? I think it will pass muster.

The stamped image is from an SU Hostess set (retired, of course), which I stamped in Versamark and embossed with gold EP. That there thing in the center is a gold brad, in case you were wondering. ;-) I only put it through DS paper layer so the back of the brad is between the sandwich and does not show.

Then I thought about the bag of beads I have in my stash and how they might dress up the ends of the bookmarks. (Caution: Rambling brain alert!) Remember the premise of the movie Catch-22? Someone tried to get out of the Army by being crazy, but because he knew he could get out of the Army by being crazy, he had proven himself not crazy. Just think about Klinger in M*A*S*H and you'll get it. He did not qualify for a Section 8 (discharge because you are loony toons) because he was knowingly trying to get out of the Army by acting crazy. See: Catch-22.

Back to our program ... my personal Catch-22 was (were?) these beads. I wanted to use the Natural Hemp Twine with them because I knew it would be strong and it would make large-enough knots above and below the bead to hold it in place. But the twine was too fat to fit through the hole in the bead when I doubled it up, so I had to resort to using the Linen Thread, which is thin enough to fit through the hole in the bead, even doubled over, but I found it is too thin to make a knot that will hold the bead in place. Ugh. So I am still playing with that, and I may not add any beads to the remaining bookmarks. We'll see. I'll test-drive them at my last market this weekend and then I'll decide if I'll make any more of them.

That was yesterday. Tonight in The Crooked Stamper household, it was a real rip-roaring fun-filled evening! I am one of those people that starts the day with only paper money in my pocket...no change. So when I get home, I empty my pocket of all the loose change and put it into a receptical I have just for this purpose. When the receptical is full, I must take action. Since my bank is in Texas (not real convenient), and my Credit Union no longer has a coin machine, and since I refuse to pay the Safeway 9-cents-on-the-dollar price to use their machine (if it is even working when I get there), I do not have a lot of options. Turns out my Credit Union at work will take rolled coins if you put your name and account number on the side of each roll. This I can do! So tonight I dumped out my loose change, counted it, rolled it in the rolls I have on hand, made piles of the remaining coins all measured out by what fits in the various coin rolls (is the word anal-retentive hyphenated?), and made note of how many more rolls I need to finish the task. Yep, I lead a real, living-on-the-edge kind of life here. Yessiree! I am really looking forward to tomorrow night. It looks to be another crazy-good time.

But you know what? I counted up all that change, and it pays for my last two trips to Angela's, so it is soooo worth it! I did grab a UFO (Un-Finished Object) from The Other Room which I hope to get to tomorrow, so you can see some stampin'!

Thanks for stopping by!