Simple is Almost Always Better....

Simpler is almost always better...

I really have to keep telling myself that.

Case in point, I am not a scrapbooker, but I obviously have some serious paper addictions. It's the whole reason I started making gift tags...it was a justification for the growing rubber stamp/ card stock collection I was accumulating. Which leads indirectly, kinda sorta, to my next confession...I am a gadget junkie. I am the one the shamwow guy is talking to (I YI YI, did I say that out LOUD? And NO, I have not made that purchase....yet....).

So imagine my fascination with a certain large, bulky scrap booking gadget (rhymes with Crocodile-wink-wink-nudge-nudge), which in my house, has lovingly become known as the

$30 hole punch/paper weight ....

I won't show you my eyelet setting efforts with the pink handled monster, let's just say they rarely came out the way I liked. Having never used a traditional, old fashioned, and yes, comparatively cheap, eyelet setter (because I just blindly jumped all the way in and bought the most expensive gadget ever for such a simple task), I just thought that's the way the eyelet fell. That or my artistic "gifts" did not extend to squishing tiny little metal rings in to perfect little circles (my sister is the jewelry maker in our family)...shrug it off and move on....

And then I went to a gathering of all of the wives from Mr. Sunshine's unit. We were getting together to stuff stockings and filling goody boxes for our guys, who will be far from home this Christmas. One of the girls made the cutest little bookmarks and candy wrappers to put in the stockings (I am ashamed to admit that as crafty as I am, I did nothing like that). You guessed it...she rubber-stamped them all and used eyelets on the bookmarks.

I was fascinated (yet again)...her eyelets looked as good on the back as they did on the front. And what was this? They weren't lopsided. They were perfect little circles. How on earth did she achieve this?

You guess it again (you're good at this!)..an old-fashioned, metal eyelet setter and the ultimate old-school tool, a plain ol' hammer....

Now why didn't I think of that?

You can bet I high tailed it to Michael's and got myself the necessary equipment. I even had the hammer already(wooHoo!)...and it works like a charm....of course....I think I will be adding eyelets to more and more of my tags- I love the finished look it gives....

Not to mention the stress relief factor...forgot how fun it is to squish things with a hammer...much more fun than squeezing those giant pink handles together (which were too wide apart for my hand anyway)....

I'm sure it's a perfectly lovely tool if you have catcher's mitts for hands....but for me I will pull out my old mantra...Simpler is always better....simpler is always better....

Until next time

(which will come much sooner this time, promise!)....

STEPH