Sticky Stuff

I've worked very hard lately on a project that involves cutting out vinyl letters on my Cricut Expression- a nifty electronic toy used mostly by scrappers, meaning those who preserve photos, etc. in a very attractive manner costing a lot of money. I am not a scrapper but I love the Cricut. I am making a banner for a presentation on prevention of influenza - avian or H1N1, or whatever. Today I was finally ready to peel and stick my nicely formed letters to a pristine white banner. First I had to measure. I measured 6 different ways to Sunday, got out my calculator, multiplied, divided, added and marked. I truly believe at this point in my life that I must measure many times and cut only once, or, in this case, stick only once. I have screwed up so many projects because I can't make sense out of a ruler so I was determined to get it right. Finally, a flash of brilliance! Keen observation revealed that the manufacturer had placed a grommet slap dead center at the top and bottom of the banner - directly opposite each other. Bingo! I was home free so I laid out the letters, side by side, in preparation for the big peel.

Recently I have noticed that I am not as good at this sort of thing as in the past so I cautioned myself to be especially careful, attentive, and deliberate. I started in the middle and worked outward. The word was "separation". By the time I got to it I had managed to come up with a process that was working rather well - not perfectly - but OK. I was feeling fairly confident. I had also determined that once these sticky letters hit the vinyl banner they were there for good. I confess to a few wrinkles, but I used the "gallopin' horse" adage on myself and declared that no one standing 5-6 feet above the wrinkles would ever notice them. Oh, did I mention that this was a banner that people would be walking on SO THEY WOULD NEVER NOTICE THAT I LEFT OUT THE "A" IN "SEPARTION"?

Tomorrow is another day. The Cricut will go with me to the church where the "A" is waiting to join the new letters I will cut out to replace the squiggles that resulted when I tried to unstick, move and restick the misplaced, evil, sticky, stretchable, offensive, disgusting and absolutely tormenting black, vicious and misshapened members of the alphabet! The moral of this story is measuring don't do no good if you don't pay attention to what you are doing anyway.