Eleven, Dammit Anyway :(

I was so excited about a swap at Frenzy Stamper I'd signed up for two months ago! The pages are due tomorrow... uh, make that today... and now I'm deflated. I'd printed out the rules from the hostess and had them on my work table. But in a creative frenzy, I had used the back of the paper to stamp and stencil on and then used it in someone's journal last month. So I had to rely on memory.

Yeah, I know. Bad idea!

I've had life happen to me again as it seems to all too often lately, so I didn't get around to finishing my pages until the last minute. I worked on them for a few hours yesterday and again last night, making satisfactory progress. (Me still being awake right now, that 'yesterday' means on Thursday.) So I worked on them a bit today and got as much done as I could without a trip to the store for more adhesive. After dinner tonight, I jumped to it and got them all finished in time to go to bed at nearly a reasonable time. Then for the last check of the rules to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.

Uh oh.

I needed danglies and to put my name on the back that I wanted to leave as is. I'd actually started thinking of the inside as the "back" in a way. I loved the stark colors on the back and the front flap and the graphic look of the characters. And I'd already tried signing them but it interfered. OK, I got out a really fine tipped gold pen and signed them as close to the bottom edge as possible. I dug out my stash of embellishment quality yarns and made a fringe for each and applied it. Not wanting to write my email address on each and thoroughly ruin the backs, I put each in a baggie with one of my Moo cards. But I'm afraid that my friend who is the hostess will be upset with me for not following the letter of the rules.

The work is supposed to be all originals and I had missed that somehow. The outsides are all original. The back is stamped and I had to stamp each one three times because my alphabet only had one letter 'e'. The word 'eleven' has three. So that worked out well actually. The front flap has a carefully placed stencil that I hand-cut and stencilled each one with an Adirondack Dauber. Can you say slow work? It was sort of fun though. I strung up some string above my work table and pre-folded the flaps so I could hang the freshly stencilled pieces on the string.

The trouble was in the photo collages inside. They weren't all originals. They weren't even original photos. They are very good color prints on regular paper. I've carefully trimmed each one, folded it, and placed it on the backing paper. But they don't follow the letter of the rules. There aren't any 3-D embellishments which is what I think she meant, although it just says 'embellishments' and 'danglies'.

Crap. :(