I had to have a private funeral for a friend today.  That friend is my Misti stamping platform.  It was one of the very first Misti’s available and it has been a faithful friend for years, but today it died.  A whole chunk of the lid broke off in my hand and it is no more.  Goodbye friend and hello to my new friend.  Anybody want to guess how long it will take before my new friend looks as well used as my old friend?

Today’s card set a new record for do-over’s.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong with this one.  First of all, if I followed the instructions on the packaging, the giraffe’s were not merely hugging, but rather were strangling each other.  It took several attempts before I realized that indeed, the measurements were off.  Then, there were several more attempts to stamp the Giraffes in just the right position on the card.  There is an “L” shape guide on the bottom of the stamp but with long necks and a floppy stamp, it can end up being out enough that the dies don”t fit on squarely.  Chalk up three more attempts when I put the gatefold card in the Misti upside down and stamped the long side stamp on the short side and vice versa.  Wouldn’t you know that I coloured and it intertwined perfectly……………….before I noticed that the whole thing was off centre.  More attempts were discarded due to ink smudges from my fingers, as I had just re-inked my black ink and it was a bit too juicy.   The “piece de resistance” was when I finally got nearly the whole card finished and one of my copic markers “blooped” all over the image.  This almost never happens with my copics…………….are you kidding me?   This card is actually one of the ones where it ended up off centre, but I liked it that way, as I could add the long grass embossing on the wider side of the card.