The Legacy Lives On....

Yesterday was spent with my good friend, Anita, just shopping and catching up.  We met about 20 years ago while I was living in Bristow and have stayed in touch since I moved away 15 years ago.

Anita's an avid and talented seamstress and she had put some little cloth rabbits that I thought were cute, in a local craft shop on consignment.  I really wanted one of them in a particular shade of blue so the shop owner told me who had made them and that I should ask her to make the one I wanted.

So, I walked across the street to the muffler shop where Anita worked, introduced myself and gave her my order for the bunny.  We began to talk about crafting; she and I both sew, love to paint and make all sorts of crafts.  And so, our friendship began.

It was over 10 years later when she finally made the bunny for me! But, I did eventually get the one I wanted. And it sits with several other small dolls she's given me over the years.

She and I have had a lot of great times together, taken road trips that would make Lucy and Ethel feel right at home and have tried every type of craft and new craft tool that's been put out.  We love new toys!  I'll be the first to admit, the new toys always seem like a good idea at the time and often get tucked away and not used.

A little over three years ago, I began making cards and gradually removed all traces of my sewing supplies from my craft room so that I'd have a place for paper, punches, stamps and other paper crafting supplies. 

I've tried on numerous occasions, with no success, to convince Anita that she needs to start making cards or doing scrapbooks for her kids. She kept telling me she wasn't interested and that I just needed to get my sewing machines back out and get back into sewing.

Yesterday, in Hobby Lobby, I noticed 12 x 12 paper that has a family tree form printed on it and showed it to her.  She enjoys doing genealogy research and has managed to trace her heritage back several generations so she was excited about the paper.   But, she still told me she was not doing a scrapbook and put the paper back into the rack.

A few hours later, after a wonderful lunch at our favorite sandwich shop,  we were walking into Michael's and I made a beeline for their outdoor clearance rack.  They had albums marked down to $4.99!  I told Anita if she was ever going to do her genealogy album, she should buy the albums since they were so cheap.

 After much debating on how many albums she'd need and which colors, she chose two and we went inside to continue our shopping.  While inside, I pointed out to her that she could add pages to the album; she picked up two packages of refill pages and we left so we'd have enough time to go back to Hobby Lobby for the family tree sheets she liked so well.

I'm not sure how many of the family tree sheets she bought, but while she was mentally debating on how many she'd want, I showed her a single sheet of patterned paper that goes really well with her printed sheets---and the hunt was on!  We probably spent about an hour selecting and matching papers.  She wound up with a nice selection to begin her albums.

Well, once you have albums and paper, you have to have adhesive (at least).  So, we moved over to the adhesive aisle where I explained the differences in glue sticks, pop dots, ATG guns, glues and tape runners and she got what we think she'll need to get started.

They say what goes around comes around and I was just passing on to her what's been handed down to me through my friends on the Cricut message board, at stamp club and Shirley, aka Okieladybug.  No matter how hard I resist and try to convince myself that I don't need a particular paper, punch or Cricut cartridge, my resolve disappears when I see a project made with something that I do not own and I wind up dropping money like tree leaves in the fall.

And so, the legacy continues.  Fellow paper crafters, we have a new acolyte!  Now, I just need to get her registered on Cricut.com because I see an Expression in her future!