Serendipity Day

Ser·en·dip·i·ty  (srn-dp-t)

n. pl. ser·en·dip·i·ties

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.

3. An instance of making such a discovery.

 

I've always loved that word and it's definition - can there be anything better than making a fortunate discovery by accident? And they also say good things come in threes, which today they have done.

 

I've managed to pull a muscle in my right calf. No, that's not serendipitous, nor good, quite the opposite, but whilst I am no longer limping around I do need to get more exercise, so my fella suggested I take myself off to Barleylands this afternoon and go for a walk around the craft shops. Not necessarily to buy anything, but to have a walk. Park at the farthest end of the carpark and all that.

 

Not buy anything at Barleylands? with Pinnacle Crafts and Sugar & Spice and Craft Arena just waiting to relieve me of all my wages - and then some? I've got more chance of waking up next to Daniel Craig in bed (hmm, hold that thought for a while girlie...)

 

So off I pootled this afternoon, drove over to Barleylands and parked where I usually park, but took the longer route into the craft village via the loo's (bladder the size of a small walnut and all that...) and resisting the ice-cream van parked at the entrance. Quick shufti around the Brocante market but not grabbed by much today, and into Sugar & Spice. 

 

Now Toni (Mistejay) and I had done a class there a few weeks back, making a rather lovely mini-book with the lovely Barb - and I've only gone and mislaid the Eiffel Tower. Yeah I know, how on earth can you lose something that is 1,063 feet tall and made out of iron? Well, somehow I managed it, but today the lovely Nina gave me a replacement version that was 5 inches high and die-cut out of chipboard, which will do perfectly as a replacement for the original die-cut piece that Barb did for us and which I promptly left there as we were packing up... so that was the first happy discovery.

 

Then I poodled over to Pinnacles. No Andy there today, so I picked on Paul instead (the poor lovey!)... Y'see, last week I'd bought a Fiskars paper trimmer from WHSmiths in Southend, but when I got it home I discovered that it was faulty and didn't cut a straight line, so it's going to go back. However Pinnacles had a couple on their shelves, so I bought one and promptly opened it and made a couple of trial cuts to make sure this one worked properly, which luckily it did, so now I have a working trimmer. Which is very odd for me, because usually I'm a "ruler and craft knife kinda girl", but the minibooks I'm working on at the moment need some weird sizes of paper to be cut and they suggest using this paper trimmer, so I *had* to rush out and buy it. Along with the Martha Stewart scoreboard. Damn, I'm easily led... Anyways, getting a working trimmer was the second happy discovery.

 

Heading back to the car I cut thru the upstairs shops in the craft village and ended up in Craft Arena's new 3-shop premises - looking good Denise! Especially as she's got a couple of tables set up with stock she's selling off at either half-marked price or £1... and it would have been rude not to have looked eh... Well, nestled between some Ten Second Studio metal sheets and a couple of black chipboard albums was something that I have been meaning to get for a while - a new cutting mat... 'cos I stupidly cooked mine whilst using a heatgun on it (even tho there was a heatsheet on top, the heat still warped the cutting mat grrr...) Don't try this at home children...

 

Now I've seen several cutting mats for sale over the last couple of weeks, but they were either the wrong size, the wrong colour or metric only - and I'm an inches girl (don't go there - you know who you are!) so to find that this mat was a) the perfect size for my craft table, b) the proper green and c) inches on one side and metric on the other was fab. And at half the marked price, bringing it down to £3.99 - how could I refuse? Very happy discovery #3.

 

So, tomorrow looks like I shall be happily playing with all my new toys - adding my Eiffel Tower to my French minibook, and cutting more paper and cardstock with my trimmer and my new craft mat for my Kathy Orta minibook... More on both of those later - with pics if I can remember how to add them!