John was very sweet to me on the weekend - after I said that my carry bag didn't work well for taking stuff to the crop, he said he'd take me to get one! I was going to use my Joanns 40% off coupon to buy it, but when I looked on the website they were already on sale for three days only... so we went shopping. First we drove down to Michaels to compare prices (expensive but if they have a sale I'll have to go back because they had some neat stuff) then I dropped into the Rag Shop (they don't sell totes, but I got a bunch of my adored peely stickers for $1.99 each - hooray!)
Then we drove up to Pompano to go to Joanns. Joanns seems to have a bad tendency not to carry stock in their actual store - you look on the website and they have a thousand items, with about 200 of them marked as 'web-only', but when you go into the store they only have
200 others there, and they never have the actual item I was looking for! I find it very frustrating because I'm the sort of person who a)likes to see what they're buying with their own eyes instead of taking someone else's word for it, and b)demands immediate gratification. If I'm going to fork out fifty bucks for an item I want to hand over the cash and walk out the door with it in my hands, not wait two weeks for delivery!Anyway, they had hardly any storage stuff in the store... and they didn't have any sign of it being on sale despite the website's claims :( I was considering the smaller crop bags but they didn't have any of them... so I ended up buying something entirely different - they had their own 'Essentials' crop bag on sale for eighteen bucks! I hadn't been considering that one because there are a few bad reports on the reviews page, saying it's a bit flimsy... but at that price it was worth considering. John gave me a choice - I could go home and order the crop bag I wanted online for sixty or so dollars, OR I could wait a few months and then get the XL one from Costco for ninety... or I could buy the Joanns one and he'd let me spend the other thirty dollars on other sale stuff right then. Put that way it was an easy choice, especially since he says he'll be happy to buy me another one in 12 months time if this one doesn't last :P
I got the crop bag, a Summer paper pad ($8!), a box of discount cardstock ($10 with a bunch of textured CS in it), some loose paper for a project, and two smaller carrybags made for quilters but they look like they're just fine for carrying scrap stuff ($5 each). One's a nylon 'folder' with zippered pockets, and one's a collapsible square nylon box with a shoulder strap. I almost got even more goodies than that but John was getting tired and the stuff was getting HEAVY!
And now for the questions - I've got this thing and I'm not at all sure how best to pack it.
Do you keep your scrapbbooking stuff (or some part of it) in your tote all the time? Or do you just pack it before you go to a crop? If your tote has metal snap rings in it, what are they meant for? Do you keep your pens in the 'pen-holder' or other stuff? I'm thinking of putting my tools in the pen-holders on the top of the case, but will they fall out? It's all very confusing...