A Lesson Learned....

I have learned a very valuable lesson....the hard way, but isn't that how it goes?

Last week I mentioned that I had gone to a scrapbooking garage sale - referring to it as 'the happiest place on earth' - and eluded to all the fantastic deals I had scored.

Sadly that was not the case when I looked, or in this case, smelled closer.

Over the weekend I went to unpack my sale purchases, looking forward to sorting through all the pretty paper and embellishments while smugly noting how cheap I had got this product for and how much money I had saved.

Unfortunately when I opened the first bag of paper I was overcome by the horrific smell of cigarette smoke. Yuck! If there is one smell that I can not stand it is cigarette smoke. I instantly got a headache. Frantically I ripped open the other bags of paper and bag after bag the smell was there. Some smoker, with fantastic taste in scrapbooking paper and supplies, had brought their wares to the sale and I must have bought it all. After smelling each piece of paper and embellishment package, I ended up with a big pile of pretty but smelly product that I needed to throw in the garbage.

I was in tears, what I had thought was such an incredible deal was a total waste - of time and money. I was not happy.

What was worse, was that I had bought a lot of Christmas product at the sale with the intention of making cards, and now I was back to square one with no Christmas papers to work with.

I hated throwing out all this product, but there was no way I could possibly use it in my own albums or for cards to sell in my shop. Crafty Cucumber cards are not smelly.

It was then and there that I declared that I would steer clear of scrapbooking garage sales in the future. It is not a deal if I have to throw more than half of what I bought in the garbage. And the risk of buying something smelly is not worth the cheap price either. Buyer beware I guess...and a valuable lesson learned by me.

But there is a happy ending to this story. While I was at work on the weekend, Steve and the girls went to one of the local scrapbook stores and bought me two whole lines of Christmas paper to replace what I had to toss. And at the same time I popped out to another local scrapbook store on my lunch hour and bought two other Christmas lines (luckily we both bought different stuff). Needless to say, I now have lots of Christmas paper - new, not smelly, and ready for some card making.

My new Christmas paper! I am so excited to start working with you.

With all this going on, plus regular life stuff, I did not get any cards made just yet. But my supplies are stocked and ready...so as I said last week, Let the Christmas Card Making Begin.... ...