Wednesday-11:15am

Here's a picture of the new additions to my eclectic plate collection--including the broken one.

And here are the rest of the plates from Pfaltzgraff. Variety is the spice of life, eh?
Caroline came to clean. Wasn't her day. Dropping things--and then she walked into the scrub bucket and tipped it over on the kitchen floor--in front of the door--and then the UPS delivery man arrived. Poor thing! We all have those days.

[Note: I forgot to mention yesterday that I henna-ed my hair on Monday, too. Has a slight reddish tint to it--for a while, anyways--hehe!]

Okay--yesterday Leah told me she wanted to switch to Thursday for Crafts Day. I told her we have the new Arnold Grummer tapes to watch, too. We might do that first before we start on paper because they're only 30 minutes each.

I had already cleared the table off...and had two whole days...and I have been out of bookcards for a while...so I got out the 12 X 12 inch paper and picked out a big stack. Remember how I have been picking up paper on sale online? And I had a bunch from that sale long ago at K & Krafts here in Moorhead, too.

Well--first I have to cut off the label strip to get the sheets down to the actual 12 X 12 inches. (Lots of Basic Grey and Cosmic Cricket.)

Then I have to sit and decide which way to cut the paper in half so that I get the fronts of the cards that I like the best. Some of them are uniform so it doesn't make any difference which direction you cut them.

Here I am almost done cutting all of them in half.

Then I got out the paper I bought at Office Max (how many months ago?) and cut that in half--the short way. I cut up both boxes of paper.

Doesn't look like much...

...but it is all prep-work.

This box from Current is just the right size to store my bookcard parts. All the plain sheets for the insides are in the back half. The covers are in the front.

This is how far I got yesterday on the next step. I have to look at the pieces and decide on which end I want to cut away the three extra inches. I'm about halfway done.

The stack toward the bottom--those are the bookcard covers. The 3 X 6 inch leftover strips are what I can use to make cards. I posted a batch of cards made with these leftover scraps back on May 2nd--and they're on my Flickr account, too, I believe.

Also made a video for youtube showing me and my cutter working away doing all this prep-work. So--when I say "I threw a few bookcards together"...well, there's actually quite a bit of prep-work I do up ahead of time. I like to have the parts all cut and ready to go. Then I can just go to that box, pick a cover & the inside sheets, fold them all in half, make some holes, pick some thread or yarn, and sew it together. They're like potato chips to me--can never seem to make just one--ROFL!

We also can take any of the pre-cut "covers" and use it for making cards, too, if we want to. They don't have to be for the bookcards. That's why I don't prefold the covers. I do occasionally pre-fold some of the inside paper, tho. :)

Decided to make videos here and there to show the process this time. Nothing difficult about it at all. Just time consuming. I personally find it rather meditative--a zen-like process. Until my timer goes off--hehe!

Cooler day today--cloudy and windy. I have the first three DVDs from Mad Men season two that I just started watching last night to keep me busy. And I could watch the Grummer papermill videos because I'll definitely want to watch them several times, anyways. Since Leah will be here tomorrow for crafts and I go to have my teeth cleaned on Friday and I am already sore from yesterday...well, I should really try to keep my hands off of that paper today.

But maybe I could just do some 15-20 minute sessions instead of an hour?? hehe! :):)