Guest Author - Lawanda Kress

Always mark your property (tools, storage contaniers, etc.) with your name very legibly and noticably. It is important to mark EVERY tool when you are going to a crop. Things are so easily mixed up.

Ok, quick tip but long story to follow!

True Story:

It was Saturday Morning at Scrap Camp (a weekend long non-stop crop). I had gone to bed at 3am, and woke up at 7 am to go back to the cropping room. I was the only one at my table, everyone else was still sleeping. I was just cropping away with my Fiskars straight edger when I thought..."Hmmm, this isn't cutting very well...I don't want people to use a yucky trimmer and ruin their pictures with it, just in case someone might pick it up and try to use it on accident...I better write my name on it." So I did.

You know when you have been up all night your brain cells aren't fully functioning. Well mine aren't anyway. So, then I thought..."Well, DUH, why don't I just buy a new blade!" So I did.

SO I continued cropping, thinking everthing was peachy keen. My Fiskars was working so much better, and I thought if anyone picked it up to use it now, it wouldn't ruin their pictures, AND they would know where to return it when they were finished!

Then the other camp counselors came in to start cropping. I am a counselor, and we all sit together. One of them asked me if I knew where her Fiskars trimmer was... and I said, "No, does it have your name on it?" And she said, "Yes. On the back."

I groaned inwardly, because I knew what I had done right then and there. Sure enough, I turned over my trimmer and it had HER name on it! AAH! I felt SO BAD! I guiltily scratched my name off, but of course, it left an ugly mark. I told her at least I had changed the blade! But that didn't make me feel any better, at all. Luckily for me, she forgave me very gallantly.

So the purpose of this tip is not so you can show off what all you own, or hord it all to yourself, but to protect people like me from extreme humiliation!