Saturday, February 11, 2012

The New Stampeaz Packing Room

It is obvious that my wonderful sister has been here to help me get organized again, right? I can't begin to describe what a difference her organizational skills, help and encouragement make in my life!!

Does anyone remember the original Lego Project? Well, a few of those Styrofoam pieces are still around as evidenced by the tidy stacks in the new packing room, but my car now sits where the tower used to be. I use the Lego blocks when all other packing material is gone, since they are compact and stack so nicely. I still have some because all my work colleagues, family and friends save their plastic peanuts, pillows and other packing material for me to recycle. Of course, I have gotten some new Styrofoam Lego pieces along the way, when friends get new computers and printers and things. My goal is to never buy any packing material. That's why you sometimes get creative and colorful packing in your orders. I love reusing all that stuff that would otherwise end up in landfills that much sooner. Even gift wrap! It makes me smile.



The stacks you see on the floor behind the packing table are the last sheets of Firm Kut. I'm going to have to decide pretty soon whether to reorder this material or let it wink out of existence. There are those who love it and those who hate it. I expect that the same could be said for almost any carving material (with the possible exception of PZ Kut - but there were white vs. orange factions even there)! Unfortunately, I can't keep everything in stock, as much as I love choices! So, your thoughts?

Here's the packing space from the other direction:


Lots of Priority Mail boxes and envelopes live along that wall, with tape, miscellaneous bits of packing material and my rolling cart for putting the baskets with invoices on when I go to the inventory room to load all the goodies to pack up. Next post? The inventory room -- the difference there is totally amazing - but the most astounding will be when I get to what my sister calls my 'creative space'! :)

6 comments:

Aiphid said...

The last of the Firm Kut?? Ack!! Say it ain't so!

I've only carved one stamp with the NZ so far, so I don't have too much experience with it, but I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't carving on FK and should be paying attention to how it carves. I think I could live with NZ.

Jimmy said...

My all time favorite material was the Mystery Material from a few years back. That's what I still have plus a few sheets of white PZ hoarded....I mean stored.

I'm sure whatever material you choose to sell in the future will be just fine.

Webfoot said...

Well, some of that original Mystery Material may find its way into circulation in the near future. I have a small stash of it that I sort of put aside when we could not figure out what had happened to the PZ batch that went off track and produced it. I had thought about trying to reproduce it at some point in the future, but I'm having enough of a challenge trying to reproduce PZ, so I'll probably let that go!! ;-)

Candice said...

Not a fan of firm kut here, lol! It was just too, well, firm! Plus it had a weird chemically/bleach smell that didn't go away even after leaving it out on the porch for a couple of months (oops).

Anyways, I LOVE orange PZ Kut, I liked the white too, but sometimes it was too soft and easier to make mistakes. I know you're working to get a PZ Kut-like material, but are you going for the orange or white consistency?

Aiphid said...

Only the first batch of FK smelled (sorry, it stunk). Current FK doesn't smell.

I've been playing with PZ thanks to the bargain basement, but I find it too soft (like the pink stuff).

I'm looking forward to whatever you come up with, but hopefully it's a little firmer than original PZ :) NZ is really good, but I could see how knife carvers may prefer it to be a little softer.

Webfoot said...

Candice, I am going for the white first. Once I have that formula iced, the quest for orange will begin in earnest. :)