I've spent the last week cleaning out my office. I'm only working for one manufacturer now and can only use their most recent products. I had no need for older products, especially from manufacturers that I no longer work for, or no longer exist.
The big cleanup was something well overdue, for me a clean office means a fresh slate, inspiration and creativity flows easier. It was needed. But it was also sad. I purged items dating back 10 years. Items I won during my year as a USA Memory Makers Master. Years of collected BasicGrey papers. With each collection I got rid of I had memories of stressed out summer days creating for CHA or catalogs. I felt the pride of "Working for BasicGrey" and the satisfaction of seeing my pages, MY pages, in the CHA booth photos all over again. Those were the days.
My room now contains probably only about 30% of what it did. I got rid of a LOT. The good news is there is a small country school with no art budget that loves me right now.
But some things, some things, I just couldn't let go of. So in the name of awesome products from years gone past, here is this week’s Five for Friday.
Products I just cannot let go of.
1. Making Memories Tags.
Vellum tags. Paper Tags. Those gorgeous little Making Memories taggy tags. They came in all sorts of sizes and later they came in coloured vellum. Ahhh vellum. There is another thing I did not get rid of. Old habits die card.
2. Making Memories words.
Clearly I had a Making Memories thang back in the day. They were one of the elite companies. I haven’t used these words in forever, but couldn't;t let them go? Why? Because they remind me of good times with scrapping friends, scrap-camps, weekends away and most of all they remind me of scrappy buddy Evana. I’ll be keeping these.
3. Colour Me Silly.
For a girl dubbed ‘putty girl’ by her first editor because she only liked to use beige in monochromatic tones, this was a step waaaay outside my comfort zone. I once created a page called “Please don’t make me use red”. Then BasicGrey, cue feelings of pride for being part of their on-call-team for all those years, released Color Me Silly.
I’ll never give this away. Please wallpaper my rest-home room in these bright reds and quirky frog images.
4. Tia Bennett & Autumn Leaves Stamps.
Tia was one of the first ones, alongside Autumn Leaves, to bring out clear stamps. I have fontwerks stamps, sassafras stamps, Tim Holtz stamps, but none will ever be my favourites like the Autumn Leaves ones. Especially Tia’s hand-drawn beauties. Who could let them go? Besides, they remind me of Tia. And the 2Peas days. And Crafting Connection. And teaching to huge crowds with KiwiScraps. Amazing what memories one set of stamps can bring back.
Yep, they’ll be staying.
And last, but not least.
5. Scenic Route papers.
I know they are just papers. But in the crazy, publishing, DT driven world that used to be scrapbooking, my inclusion into the Scenic Route design team was the thing that truly made angels sing for me.
I will never forget getting my first collection of Scenic Route papers, and falling in love. They were these exact papers. I bought many sheets once I realised they were discontinued.
I’ll also never forget email conversations between the owner of Scenic Route & myself. The sharing and praise. I still have the woohooo email I sent a friend when I was asked, when I was asked, I still get a buzz out of that, years later, to join the Scenic Route design team. In terms of feel-good scrappy days, these papers encompass it all. They will be staying.
So those were my most treasured Five for Friday. Of course there was more small things I kept for whatever reason. Many, many more. But boxes and boxes of papers and other crafting goodies are now being loved by a new crowd of scrapbookers at a small country school, most of which were probably born well after the products they are now using ended up in my scrap room.
How cool is that?
Laters
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