I am in adhesive purgatory!

Yes, I am in tape purgatory! This is the source of my many woes:

I had been using tombow mono multi happily for quite awhile, but was longing for a tape runner again. I had heard many good things about the dot 'n roller and decided to take the plunge. I ordered one snazzy little dispenser and 6 refills. I tested it out and was immediately in love! Adhesive love. Heh. STP anyone? Anyone?

I digress. Back to my agony. I tried it, loved it, and happily toted my new dispenser and 2 refills to an overnight crop with me. All was going well- I was cruising along and had done several layouts I was quite pleased with when it came time to pop in a refill. Then my happiness quickly dissipated as the unthinkable happened- my refill didn't work properly! Crap! Basically the uptake roll which collects the empty plastic strip is not rolling back, so the tape strip stays stuck to the paper leaving a great big mess and the need to take the thing apart and manually roll the strip back in. I end up with not enough adhesive on my project for it to stick, but enough left on the plastic strip to get all over my hands, pants, desk, really anything nearby.

Thankfully, I was smart and brought another refill with me. Problem was, that one didn't work either. Now I was in deep sh!t. It was very late at night and I was at an overnight crop in some remote camp ala Jason movies. CRAP! Luckily, I'm super prepared and actually brought about a billion adhesives with me, so I was not without stickiness.

Ok, fast forward, I go home and try out my other 4 refills, and they are sucked! Ack! I had purchased these online so I was a little worried about exchanging them, but the folks over at scrapbook.com were oh-so-nice and sent me 6 brand spankin' new refills cartridges! Hooray! 5 of my bad refills were from the same lot, and the 6th was from the next sequential lot.

Ok, so I sat down the other day to make some thank you cards, like a good little gift recipient when what should I discover? Why my replacement refills also suck!

Now I have invested probably a few hours of my life attempting to understand what my refills are doing when they are not working properly and have to figure it out. A few hours is a lot of time to spend considering adhesive. So finally, I have given up and succumbed to societal pressure and ordered, you guessed it, and ATG-714. The Cadillac of adhesives. It came with 3 rolls of 908 acid free Gold tape and I purchased another 3 rolls for a grand total of 216 yards of 1/4" sticky goodness.

Because I have been moderately obsessed with my little adhesive dilemma, I decided while I was trying *one more time* to correct my adhesive misbehavior I would take pictures. Because that's what scrapbookers do: we take pictures of things that really don't deserve to have their picture taken. Enjoy.

Starting to roll. Not too bad. A little slack isn't so bad....

Hmmm, maybe it's more than I realized...



It does not appear to be getting better...


So you see how this can become problematic:


Yeah, no good. Probably funny for the people who saw me ripping up huge strips of the stuff and doing battle with clear sticky tape and midnight.

On to a more positive note! Here are the cute little images I plan on using the yet to be constructed thank you notes:


There are actually going to be thank yous from the dog to the family members who purchased her goodies. We're a polite family. When I was visiting my parents my mom cleaned out her arts supply stash and found an unused box of Derwent watercolor pencils. Yeah, completely unused! Full set too- 72! So now I have watercolor pencils. This was my first foray into watercoloring since probably elementary school. I'm pleased with the results and look forward to practising more. Here's a close-up.


The stamp is from Amuse, also a Chrismakah present, but for me. Madison would only chew on stamps if they were given to her.