Enough already!

I've turned into one of those awful people that now say at any gathering of more than one person - "careful what you say, I may have to blog it". Mostly, because they are grown up, my friends and acquaintances absorb this without so much as missing a beat in the conversation. I don't think they consider me some sort of exposure hungry hack journalist, I don't think they are meeting outside secretly, out of my earshot - I hope that the detail that I pick out of a conversation is trivial enough not to cause any offence. After all, I want to go back to these places and people; they are, after all, my life! So today's post came about after an evening around the table at my CM consultant's house. You may remember her from an earlier post. Anyway, despite my non-CM scrapping ways, she invited me to a demo and scrap evening and I was delighted to go. Now, Miss America describes my scrapbooking as an 'event per page' style, and she decided to try to use background papers from the CM ranges a little more. She did a lovely demo - made up a page from a sketch which she had copied for all of us, and of course, was impressive with her product loading. Very impressive. She stuck things down temporarily as she went along - so much the easier to keep holding the page up for our attention for sure. Well, I thought it was temporary sticking. We all favour different methods don't we, and products. Miss America's product of choice is photo splits - small squares of double sided adhesive delivered from a roll in a box. Not unusual at all. What left me breathless is how little she used! One in each corner to anchor a piece of 12 x 12, one in the top two corners to stick down the photo, and one in the middle of a cut out circle of about 4" across. I was silent, but aghast. Silent because despite my big mouth and propensity to poke fun at people, I do have some manners! When the demo was over and everyone was milling about getting ready to crop, I asked her why, after making such a lovely LO, did she intend to dismantle it? She had no such intention. Everybody, this is the amount of adhesive she normally uses. Lordy lordy. I watched some of her customers whilst cropping and they too use tiny numbers of splits too - one lady picking them off the roll with a pair of tweezers - that sort of time just to get a bit of adhesive down is a killer for me. It's no surprise to see Miss America's customers using what she uses, you tend to automatically consider that a recommendation for something if you can't face the huge choices out there. I don't use splits, they drive me mad, I like a rolling adhesive. Doesn't particularly matter which brand, as long as I can refill it without wasting a refill's worth battling with the feed mechanism or something. They need to be relatively cheap too - I can easily leave one behind if I'm crafting elsewhere, so owning 3 is sensible to me. One in my bag, one in the draw and one put in that afore-mentioned safe place that will require a complete purge of my work room to find. (I learned the rule of 3 when I went to boarding school for the first time; the uniform list wanted 3 jumpers, 3 shirts etc...1 to wear, 1 in the wash and 1 spare. Early brainwashing, see.) How much adhesive you use isn't easily quantifiable I know, but I felt like Mrs GotGlue that evening! I had a border to stick down, 12" (Bazzill's 'edge') and so I rolled my glue down its length - made my neighbour catch her breath I can tell you! I don't put strips of adhesive around aphoto corner to corner, but I probably roll a couple of centimetres across each corner and sometimes on bigger photos, some in the middle too. My shocked cropping friend suggested that perhaps my abandon was born of a lack of financial restraint. Well, I know I'm spoiled, but I don't think I'm stupid with my stash money - I would rather spend glue money on stash that people will actually see, but I dunno. Maybe I started out using less and have just become complacent. When I'm card making, I favour double sided tape. When I cut a piece of paper to stick onto the card front, I run tape right to the corners along each edge. I firmly believe that lifting, unstuck corners indicate home-made rather than hand-made, and besides, I don't want recipients pulling it apart too quickly! Perversley, I've had to learn to use enough foam pads..but I don't think this was a question of economy, more that I'm a fat fingered old woman and they are a fiddle, however necessary! So how do you glue? And, am I wasteful? I'm on the edge of my seat over this one, ...I probably need therapy to get over the guilt associated with amounts of stash, so guilt because of over-gluing may well be the end for me. Told you I picked up on the trivia. Another skill, I think.
Oooh - the pictured tag I made for a challenge at UK Stampers and reveals a lot about me...well actually, two of my most fave stamps ever; Dawn Houser's swirly background (Inkadinkado) and Hero Arts' long legged bird..such a versatile creature.