The Remains of the Day

This is how I feel after a full day of the Day Job followed by an evening Stamp Camp:

By the way, I LOVE MY CUSTOMERS! I don't think I can say that enough. I am so lucky, I might have to gush a little bit. These Ladies, who did not know each other before they got here, just sit down and start up conversations. I only need to show one person something, then they show the next person. Some good friendships have even developed, and field trips are planned! I still find the whole thing amazing.

I think it has to do with the nature of the craft, and that may be what attracts us to it, and why it is so addicting. I've heard from several people that this same phenomenon is not present at scrapbook crops, or at least not to the same extent. At the end of the evening last night, more than one person said they felt badly leaving me with the mess to clean up. How can you not love these people?!?!?

By the way, while the whole Mis En Place might take me many hours, it takes me about 10 minutes (okay, maybe 12) to break everything down and get it mostly put away. But before I get to that part of the process, let's take a peek at a few of the change-ups people did this month.

Here we have someone who took this box project and added a little something-something to the inside:

CUUUUTE!

Oh, this was inevitable last night:

She leads such a tough life, can you tell?

Then Miss Perfect Bow-tier (and I mean that in the nicest way!) did this:

Isn't that a cute kick-it-up?

Here is an example of "there are no mistakes in stamping; only opportunities for embellishment":


She wanted to stamp the tiny heart from the "I {Heart} Hearts" set in Craft White, and it did not come out right. NO PROBLEM! She just punched out a heart from a scrap of the DSP and covered it up. It looks like she meant to do that! And this was only her second workshop! She is so cute. When she left, she was on her way to deliver this to her fiancee. So cute! (Did you notice every one of her bows is perfect? Her future MIL said her gift-wrapping skills are to-die-for, too. )

Okay, so after everyone left, I put mostly everything away and took down the big table. See:

Aside from the red sticky tape carcasses stuck to EVERYTHING, it looks almost normal again. A quick vacuum should take care of this.

Here is the main table:

That pile in the back is all my 'supplies' I use for each class: wipes, cutting and adhesive schtuff, stamping mats (hey, they need to live somewhere). All that's left out are a few card stock scraps, some homeless glue sticks, the serving suggestion cards, some markers, a punch I forgot about, some clean acrylic blocks, too much chocolate, and a filthy stamp. I worked on that last night, and again today for several hours and I still cannot get all the StazOn ink OFF of it. Grrrr...

After several applications of StazOn cleaner, I moved on to Kiss-Off, but it's still not happenin' for me. Kiss-Off? I did not make that up:

BR #2 introduced me to this marvelous cleaning product a few years ago, but neither of us has been able to find any more of it. Guess what? Angela's now carries it, and I bought 3 of them the last time I was there! I DID! So BR #2, make a note and, when you return to the frozen north, we'll go on a little field trip, k? ;-)

In other news, I got this card in the mail yesterday:

Yes, that is German, and it is from ... Germany! But LOOK AT THE CARD! This is a STORE-BOUGHT card, and she told me they are all like that. Seriously? Look at this detail:

Holy Tamole! Niiice, huh? Color me impressed!

So today is my Stamp Camp recovery day, where I get myself back on track with the rest of my life. So far I've totaled up my farmer's market sales from Jul-Dec so I could pay my state sales tax (still gotta do that part); I've placed the workshop order; I've had coffee, but no food; um ... I still need to triage all the stuff from under the kitchen sink so I can put back only what I think I'll actually use in the next year or so; I also need to make several phone calls, so I'd best get a move-on.

Thanks for stopping by!