Assembly Line in progress

I love this part of making kits - when all the little pieces and parts I've been laboring over pull together into a nice, neat bag, and the bag gets shut and put in it's drawer and all is right with the world. I have stock again.

My general process for kit making is to worry about getting all the materials weighed out and labeled first. It's a balancing act, because you've always got more of one kind of bead or crystal than the other, so you need to figure out how many you're going to make to start out with. I find which material I have the least of, calculate how many kits that will make, decide if it's enough or if I need to go order more supplies, and then work on making that many of that kit. So then it's creating the individual little baggies of beads - I go through more plastic bags than I can fathom. And finally, lining up all the different pieces and parts. Some of the kits have up to 16 different items in them. And then putting one of each baggie in a bigger baggie which then goes into the kit baggie. And hopefully in the meantime I've actually had time to print out the instructions for the kits, so those get folded and stuffed too. And voila - it's a kit!

Last nights kits were made for the three colors of Russian Splendor, Curly-Q, and the three colors of Happy Trails. Mom's job this morning (while I was sleeping, naturally) was to work on printing out the instructions for them. I'm not sure who's more tired from it - Mom or the printer.

I have to switch gears this afternoon to finalize and tweak the instructions for tonight's Cleopatra class (the second night) and I'll try to actually go to sleep shortly after getting home tonight because I've got to be back at the store bright and early in the morning for Bead Brunch. It's a once a month thing we do at Nomadic Notions where students are welcome to come into the store 2 hours before we officially open to work on projects, get help with old class projects, and generally socialize and have fun. I like to be there when I'm in town for it because I have SO many classes at the store, and I want to be available to help anyone who's having trouble. And who are we kidding - I like the socializing too!

So that's the weekend so far...I hope you're enjoying your long weekend too, and getting some beading in!