A magnificent obsession

I tend to get somewhat obsessive about my hobbies. An archeologist might be able to figure that out from my enormous yarn stash in the basement or perhaps by counting up the number of bonsai pots that are now just taking up shelf space.

I'm not even going to mention my cake-decorating phase.

So, my current obsession is with making pop-up card (or paper engineered cards, as not all my cards actually pop up, but most of them do involve some form of engineering).

I decided to spread out all the things I'd been working on for the past week and a half (this is two weekends, plus the week in between).

I'm not including the items that simply didn't work out, but you can see some of what has consumed my free time lately:

• Two graduation cards (boy and girl -- still working on perfecting these -- I think I'll do a line of graduates, instead of just one).
  
• Obama commemorative inauguration pop-up card. I started three variations, but I really need to follow through on the last idea.
  
• A pig pop-up card. A coworker who is a pig lover asked me to work on this after seeing the Year of the Ox cards (apparently March is National Pig Day). I banged it together and made ten of them to deliver tomorrow -- they came out pretty nice!
• Baby in stroller card. This pop-up card idea came about when the grade school rhyme "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes (your friend) with a baby carriage!" I think this is pretty cute and having a baby card will be a nice addition to my store, but it needs a little work still.
• Designed and fiinalized the heart with wings Valentine's Day card and posted it on etsy.
• Finalized the Alice in Wonderland birthday card and posted it on etsy.
• Put together a flyer for another coworker to contribute to her school's auction (I'll be doing birthday party invitations for the winning bidder) and printed, cut and assembled several mock-ups for examples.
• Worked on the "Guess who thinks you're awesome?" secret slider thank you card for a potential circus invitation buyer -- I put in a printed background on the sleeve part of the piece and it really looks a ton better.
• Worked on a "Guess who's turning five?" secret slider birthday invitation with a birthday cake that pops up. This is coming out totally cute. I'll be posting photos and commentary on this one soon. One nice aspect about this one is that it's not themed and it works equally well for both sexes and even for adults.
• I completed a custom order for some spinning birthday party invitations for a gal who gave me a bang up review! (see prior post) I could not have paid her to write up a more glowing report, so this was extremely satisfactory.
• I started, completed and posted a new spinning birthday party invitation for a space-themed party.
• Tried out cpeep's floating table popup, added a roof to it and have the germ of an idea to make a popup dollhouse or something of the sort... (she kindly added the photo of my idea to her blog)
• Tried out the bobbing duck mechanism... needs work!

So, lots of activity lately! The trick is to not get too burned out... it really can be tiring to work full-time, try to spend quality time with the kids and husband and try to bang out a new card or two to post every week. I really haven't slept a full 7-8 hours in quite some time (early morning, around 4am, is VERY productive for me!).

Being able to post and make an occasional sale on etsy has really spurred me onto a flurry of activity. Getting positive feedback in the way of sales really encourages me to do more, plus the tiny bit of money that I make off each sale allows me to purchase additional raw materials (images, cardstock, glue, etc) to use in creating even more cards.

I'm not really sure where this is all going to end (may end up in my total collapse from exhaustion at some point -- I have so many ideas that I'm dying to try out but just don't have time to do), but for now, I'm just having so much fun with all of this that I can barely stand it.