i recently found myself in a rather touchy predicament: in archivers (my local paper store), with coupons, with money, without recent sleep. for those christians or friends of christians among you, dear readers, you will know that holy week has long been called Hell Week by those of us required by service/devotion/whateverthehellwouldpossessapersontohaveelevenservicesinoneweek (gasp) and for a good reason. we had an early choir practice on wednesday, service on thursday, service on friday, service on saturday, and, oh wait!, two services on sunday. so i arrived at archivers late (as in five minutes to nine) friday night. luckily, they have a soccermom/scrapbooking session on fridays, so the store stays pretty loose about what constitutes “closing time” on those nights. i browse the store, trying to hurry up and decide what to buy w/ my 30% coupon, and finally alight upon a clock. it’s pretty much a blank piece of MDF with clock parts, so you can decorate it as you see fit. (incidentally, my mother’s suggestion was to do a doctor who montage on it. the design’s still open for suggestions.) so we get to the register, and the check out lady (who turns out also to be the store manager) rings up the goods and says, “You know, if you spend eleven more dollars, you can get the free paper pack.”
yes, loyal readers, there was no further point in her trying to convince me, i was, at this point, duty bound to spend eleven more dollars at the paper store. so i wander off to the velveteen paper section and come back with no less than eight sheets of the most expensive paper in the store. the lady makes fun of me, but rewards me with a SHEAF of chipboard. (she was hysterical, by the way. i love that store.) the moral of this story is never to go into a paper store with a coupon AND cash in hand.
unless you want to end up making something awesome like this. after a two-hour Service Recovery nap this afternoon, i rose ready to Book, and Book i did. i made five different books of various types this afternoon, two of them utilizing the results of my previous coupons to the archivers, a bind-it-all. for those of you who are not aquainted w/ its fancy-ness, it is a spiral binding machine. it cuts the holes and shapes the wire for you, all with you shunking down one lever. it’s pretty nice. requires a little finess to get the holes exactly proper, and a few tries with the smooshing of the wires, but after a try or two, i had it down pat, and i’ve been looking for things to bind w/ it ever since. i’ve got a pair of web password books hanging around this house waiting to be listed, but in the meanwhile, i made this. the die cut paper and the green polka dots came from the fated Free Paper Pack, and there’s even a couple of sheets of the Reward Chipboard in there to make sure you can write on it w/out it bending all over the darn place. the binding, actually, i saw at the archivers, too, the double style there. there were a couple mass-produced notebooks in a little turnstile thing with bindings in that style, and i thought, i’ve got extra little o-wires hanging out, i could do that with ’em. so i did. and now it’s for sale. enjoy~
