Last night’s South Bay Craft Group meeting went pretty well, due to a great demo on heat embossing by Tracy, one of our members. Almost everyone tried it out for themselves and we spent the whole time embossing. I was able to ask her some questions about the issues I’d had recently, and I tried some of her suggestions out on a few pieces I’d brought with me or created there.

The first two are some more of the “wrapped postcards” I started making a bit ago, and I especially like how the first one turned out. The second wasn’t as great, due to the embossing powder having a lot of white in it and heating darker than expected. And the third was thicker than I thought, mainly because the powder I bought was pretty chunky.

All in all, the meeting went pretty well, though some of us seemed a bit slap-happy as the evening wore on. Side effects of the long weekend, perhaps. I think we had more people in attendance than we’ve had before, even compared to our previous meeting, when we had a lot of people making beaded bracelets. It’s interesting to see who shows up each month, because it seems like it changes every time. There are a few of us who are “core members” and show up pretty regularly, but everyone else varies. Lately, I think we’ve been shifting towards a slightly older crowd than the initial 20-something women who kicked things off. It’s ok to have the variety, though I’m curious as to whether or not it’s temporary and how it’s turned out like this. I wonder if the fact that I’ll be demo-ing cross-stitch next time will shift it even more in that direction?

Speaking of cross-stitch, I want to thank everyone who has commented on my cross-stitch piece of Ganesh, either here, on Craftster, or on Flickr. I was already overwhelmed by the reaction from my friend and her husband, so it’s great to hear additional appreciation for all the work I put into it.

Oh, and before I forget, I’ve created a few paper swaps over on Swap-Bot for anyone who’s interested. One is for origami paper and the other is for paper scraps, and there’s a little over a week left to sign up. I’ve actually been surprised to see how popular the paper scraps one has been; there are nearly 30 people signed up already!