…blogtober day 27 :: labels labels everywhere…

To say I am unsporty, might be the understatement of the century. When I was a kid, being picked last for the teams in P.E. sucked. As an adult, I get it. I wouldn’t pick me either. I’m the kind of uncoordinated that my school friends remember specific incidents of Incredibly Dumb And Unco Things I Did, a solid twenty plus years after we left school. The kind of uncoordinated that makes my newer friends wonder why my husband thinks handing me a nail gun is a good idea. The kind of uncoordinated that leads to midnight heat gun burns. On the sole of my foot. I wish I was joking.

My idea of exercise is the Post Office Run. In my car. To collect my parcels. Containing goodies that will keep me busy crafting and not-exercising. Cardio? Yeah I raise my heart rate with an ill-advised fourth cup of coffee.

And yet, somehow, I’ve ended up with three of my four children being completely, totally, sports mad. Make it make sense, because I can’t. We’ve finished Saturday hockey for the winter season, but oh look, the club are doing a summer comp! And touch is back! Oh, and don’t forget athletics. Only Bear, our eldest, understands nice weather is for laying in the sun with a book, not chasing a ball up and down a field. One out of four aint bad I guess?

Our athletics club was on the verge of folding, but Miss12 in particular was desperate to get back to athletics. So being the good supportive-but-confused mummy I am, off I toddled to the meeting. No executive positions, I swore. Earlier in the year I stepped back from a committee to buy myself some breathing room, and within months had found that one committee where I was just a voice in the room, replaced with one committee where I was treasurer and another where I was secretary. I didn’t need a third executive role.

Reader, I got myself elected to the committee, as secretary.

Do I know anything about athletics? Not a thing. Should I be trusted to throw a sharp stick or a heavy metal ball? Not even a little. I can already hear my camp girls screaming in horror. Do I own active wear? Ok yes I do, but the most active thing it gets used for is a Netflix marathon. And yet here I am, secretary of the darn athletics club.

What I lack in actual ability, though, I make up for in a complete and all consuming devotion to finding a project in any situation. A working bee was planned to clean out and reorganise our storage area, and my time had COME.

Totally normal to rock up to an athletics bee with a Cricut**, yeah? I behaved myself on the day, but came home with a list a mile long. This morning I needed to collect some other supplies from the storage container, so decided to get my laminator and some vinyl while I was there. Once the children were settled in for their bookwork session, I opened the laptop and got to work.

There were a mix of labels needed. Some A5 sheets for the ends of trolleys. Swing tags for buckets. Shotputs were sorted by size, which also have different colours, so I not only made swing tags for those, but I cracked open the watercolours and added splashes of the corresponding colour to the tag. Running all those through the laminator gave me time to open Design Space and cut crate labels and shelf labels. I created both of these in Futura fonts using all caps, and sized them to be approximately one inch tall letters. Shelf labels I cut in the last of my white Cricut-branded** vinyl, and the crate labels I used a cheap gold vinyl I’d picked up at BigW at some point. Both are a non-permanent vinyl, so should we wish to change up the labels next year it’s not a big deal.

I’m also a bit of a tightwad, so I weeded out the vinyl labels, but didn’t apply any transfer tape. I’ll take the roll with me when I go in with the labels and do it myself, so I can reuse the transfer tape a few times. It’s very rare I use transfer tape just the once, especially when I have a batch of transfers to make at once. Instead, I use the same piece until it starts to not want to work.

Last week’s meet was washed out. This week is looking the same. The week after will be spent applying all these labels. That gives me a good three weeks to come up with another project that looks Super Important and keeps me away from all the things that could break a window or my toes. Any suggestions? Do we think I need to make club branded drink bottles for the upcoming zone carnival maybe?

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