I had a big order over the past few days: a moppet pattern sold on Monday, and then yesterday someone ordered every shadow puppet-related item in my Shop. While most of them are patterns, I’m having to prepare three puppets to ship. I don’t have enough rods made up, so I plan on getting some more dowel and making them during the day today. Unfortunately, I’ve up.

I pre-planned, figuring I’d make one of the puppets and then buy the rods and blacken them while I make the others (the blackening stuff dries slowly). I carefully made up a blacklight shadow puppet, the buttefly, and had it all ready to laminate. Instead of waiting for it to completely dry - being 3am and wanting to go to bed - I thought I’d hurry the process along and stick it in the machine anyway. I don’t know if it was that, or my machine, because once again the damned thing got stuck.

What’s worse is that it took me 15 minutes to pry (I mean, really pulling hard) the thing out. I can’t salvage it, and what’s even worse is that the end of the laminating pouch remained inside the machine. Luckily I managed to remove it, hopefully without damaging the machine further.

So I gave up, and hope to try again. Four hours worth of work down the drain, and I have to eat the costs of the materials and labour. 

*Sigh* I’m just hoping the machine won’t need repairs…

Anyway, this is my way of saying things are slightly on hold until this order is shipped. I’m crossing my fingers I won’t need a trip to a repairer or having to buy a new machine. I have a lot of things in the works, and keep getting sidetracked… I have some paid work to do for an arts publication (some paid writing - yipppee!), plus the classes to properly promote… And some coding to do on the site in order to prepare for that ’special thing’ I mentioned the other day. 

Patience… is more referring to me than to you. Give me the patience not to screw up again, and the calmness to not throw the laminator out the back window if it does.

Still, this is the biggest order I’ve received so far, and I want it to be perfect: that’s the trouble with having a business, quality control is a huge factor. Anywho, wish me luck!

EDIT: Ok, so I wrote this yesterday. Yes, it’s official - my $40 laminator is fucked. I’m officially also way beyond pissed off. I’ve wasted a whole day, and materials, and will probably have to buy another laminator since it would be cheaper than getting it fixed (the model is apparently not supported on the manufacturer’s site, although I have put it for customer support: not much expected there. I also can’t find the receipt, which I know I kept but can’t locate. Brilliant!). I’m so furious right now - it worked fine when I made the jellyfish, but now when I’ve got an order, it fucks up… Excuse the language, but at least you know how majorly pissed off I am; I only use it when I’m really mad. Luckily the order was made via print order form, which means I still haven’t received the money yet and can hopefully use the additional time to sort out these problems.

… I need a break XX(