A Card and a Cabinet, A Short Story

Once upon a time, in a teeny tiny condo just outside of our Nation's Capital City, there lived a very busy little stamper known to most of her customers and faithful three (maybe four) blog readers as The Crooked Stamper. She had high hopes to one day take a day off from work and freaking have a day off! Ahem.

On any given day, I tend to get all my whining out of the way, then I show you that I actually made something. Tonight I decided to show you my card first, since I made it last, then tell you about my crooked day off. I never claimed to be predictable.

Ta-da! This card was made with some new papers that arrived today with my SU Holiday Mini pre-order goodies. There is a pack of black & white papers called Night & Day Specialty. M-m-m-m-m! B&W are so much fun to use. Traditionally you see red as the third color, so I thought I'd use turquoise tonight - Tempting Turquoise, to be specific.

The two patterns you see are the opposite sides of the same piece of paper. I layered both of them with Tempting Turquoise; stamped the bird from Of The Earth (Level 1 Hostess Set) in Tempting Turquoise on Whisper White, punched it out with the 1 1/4" square punch, and put dimensionals under it; added two brads (Hint: Use a white gel pen or better yet, a red marker, to mark the spots you plan to punch for the brads. Pencil marks are reeeeeally difficult to see in the pattern.); decided the bird piece needed a blue layer, too; then put it together. The more-horizontal piece is also popped up on dimensionals because of the brads, so this was getting pretty thick. And heavy. (What is it with me and layers?!) I was itching to add a ribbon, so I used white taffeta.

Oh, I almost forgot - the black layer was run through my Big Shot with a Polka Dot texture plate so it is not just a plain piece of black - can't have that, now, can we?!

I am pretty happy with this as my out-of-the-gate first try.

Now for the rest of my day... you can stop reading now if you just came for the card.

The Plan was to go to IKEA to buy cabinets for the now-open wall in The Other Room. On my list were: 4 cabinet sections, 2 bases, 4 sets of doors for the 4 cabinets, and some of the Bygel rods for storing my punches, which overfloweth their current storage area.

The plan kicked in, but not until after 11 am. First I had to unload all the boxes of cards out of the car to make room for my purchases.

These are the 6 boxes of cards that live full-time in the back of my car. They get a reprieve this week and get to come inside for a while.

So I get to IKEA and find the stuff I need to order. The last 3 times I've done this, you had to order it and pay for it at the station, then go to Pick-up. Not any more. I asked for help, and well, I got clueless and attitude. Turns out I am supposed to go to Self Service and pick it all up, THEN pay for it. FINE! I finally got everything I needed and checked out.

It is now 432 degrees out, and I was wearing blue jeans because my shorts were in the dryer, not yet dry. By the time I loaded these babies into my vehicle, one at a time, the helper guy came over to help (I thought) but he just took my now-empty cart. Hey, thanks!!! Then I realized, much to my chagrin, that I only bought 2 sets of doors, not 4. I actually contemplated leaving without them, but noooooooo, I parked the car AGAIN and went in AGAIN to pick up the other two sets of doors.

By this time I had sweat running down the sides of my face and the back of my neck, and I was HUN-GRY. I got 2 hot dogs, a soft pretzel and an ice-cold water. Total: $3.00. I am not kidding! All that food for $3.00!!! I sat at a table inside to let my heart rate slow down, consumed my lunch, then headed back out to the car. Hothothot!

Then the car started to complain, but I risked it blowing up cuz I refused to NOT run the a/c. I made it home, and started the unload process. One box at a time I bought all that stuff into the condo. No room for it all in one place, so ...

... the 4 boxes of doors are next to the chair in the Dining Room ...



... the 4 boxes of main cabinet sections sit just inside the front door next to this cabinet filled with about 300+ CDs that I never listen to but refuse to sell ...

... and the 2 boxes with bases are propped up just inside the front door. I TOLD you this place was small!

Oh, and I got 8 of these Bygel racks. Did you know they come with no hardware for attaching them to the wall? Carp. Now I need to make a trip to the hardware store and figure that out.

I also bought 4 doors for my bookcases, but they stayed in the car. I'll worry about them later, like Saturday, and only then if my boxes will not fit back into the car, which I think they will.

I had to rest after all of that loading and unloading, but I finally put together one base and one cabinet frame. See:

Yes, I even vacuumed the spot before I covered it for all eternity with what will be an unmovable cabinet. This is one-high; there will be another section on top of this tomorrow, maybe, then I'll do the doors. THEN I'll start moving some paper around so I free up some floor space around here.

Baby steps. It's all about baby steps.

That's it for my day off. I did not get to Chloe's to check on my card inventory, but that's okay cuz I had nothing new to drop off, anyway. I hope to work on that this week. One cabinet and one card per night is my plan. Wish me luck!

Thanks for stopping by!