Back on the Chain Gang

Eurgh! I have just spent the most boring day working on a wedding stationery order for my friend Karen who gets married at the end of the month. Shoot me down in flames, but I have gradually come to hate doing this kind of work. I absolutely love crafting - making cards is my main thing, although I am in love with the idea of scrapping (but just haven't got around to actually doing it). I guess wedding stationery is a fairly natural progression for many card makers and at first it seemed like a good idea. I loved coming up with new designs, I loved that brides thought my work was fantastic and I loved seeing the finished product all packaged neatly, ready to send out. However, it is the most monotonous, repetitive thing I have ever done (and I have worked on a supermarket checkout!). I'm so glad I decided not to make this my full-time job (once a distinct possibility when staring redundancy in the face). However, I really, really miss crafting for crafting's sake! I just want to be able to sit in my craft room, amongst my stash and play to my heart's content.

To give you an idea of my day today, take a look at the following picture...

What you see here is a pile of 100 die-cut hearts. What I see is a good couple of hours of torture (is there such a medical condition as 'sizzix hand'?) Unfortunately for me, this innocent-looking little heart features pretty heavily in several of my wedding designs. They look lovely, but are a bugger to make! If I never see another heart again, it'll be too soon! Today I have also printed the covers for 100 Orders of Service - each piece of card fed manually through my crappy printer and I have also cut 100 pieces of card on which to mount the damn hearts.... Thank goodness I have had 4 hours of America's Next Top Model to help me through the pain barrier!

And tomorrow's fun-packed day? Yep, more hearts - only smaller....