Where's Kory BEEN?!

I know!  It's been ages.  Nearly a decade, it feels.  I hope you don't feel that I abandoned you!  Don't worry-  all of you right there, in what tiny shred of a heart I have left!

For those of you who don't know, or for the rest of you who've drained a box of wine or three since I last posted, I'm a stage manager.  And I've been stage managing one of the toughest plays I've ever worked on...  The past week of technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals, a preview and an opening night have left me nearly dead.  I'm surprised to be alive and breathing!

For most of the past four weeks, this has been my view:

My Vanilla Coke.  Pencils.  My 'good' pen.  Little Post-Its.  Post-It tabs.  Candy.  And: my script, which slowly became filled with light cues, sound cues, projection cues, AND A SNOWSTORM.

To make a long story short and protect my reputation:  the show opened last night, and I'm still alive.

(( An hour long break occurred right here, as I drove my truck to a furniture store to pick up furniture for a DIFFERENT show in town, and drove it to its theatre.  Work doesn't stop for long, for me, it seems. ))

So what am I here, this afternoon, to share?  What I made for opening night gifts!

Making a gift of some kind is one of my favorite parts of the job- and it isn't even one of the required parts of the job.  It calms my nerves to arrive early on the first night.  I walk slowly, unlock the theatre, turn on all the lights,  sweep the stage floor (nearly a ritual in itself!)  Then, the most calming part of my pre-opening ritual:  I place my gifts in the dressing rooms at the nearly cliché makeup tables surrounded by lights.  It's so exciting!  I love the idea of the actors showing up and finding their gift in their dressing room.  And I don't just make a gift for the actors- I leave one at everyone's 'position.'  

SO WHAT DID I MAKE?

I made necklaces!

I bought lengths of chain at Micheals- it was on sale for 2.50 per package!  I already had the rest of the stuff at home- necklace clasps, jump rings- and the most important part, Tim Holtz's Philosophy Tags.  I love these things!  They are beautiful.

As I didn't have ANY free time,  I used my lunch hour to assemble the necklaces.  Late one night after rehearsal, I made the 'packaging.'

For the packaging, I used an office-supply 'Custom Stamp Kit' to make my own stamp- with the title of the play, the year, and that famous theatrical pre-show greeting: "Break A Leg!"  I stamped this on two tags.  The first, a kraft tag (from Ranger) which I embossed with a Sizzix/Tim Holtz Sewing & Stitching embossing folder.  I stamped one of Mr. Holtz's trucks on it, wrapped the necklace around it-  and put it in a regular brown paper bag.  I folded over the top and punched two holes with my Crop-A-Dile.  I took the other stamped tag, just a plain manila shipping tag (bought in bulk at Staples- very cheap!), wrote a note on it and tied it to the paper bag with some Dollar Tree twine.

Here's the pictures!

There's the bag!

And here's the gift inside:

Isn't that nice looking?  I was impressed with myself.  For not much money at all, I had a gift for every person involved with the production.  It took only about an hour to produce eight of these.  Yes, only eight, it's a fairly small (but technically difficult) show.

Here's a close-up, cuz I like lookin at it!

Well, it's suddenly 4:30.  I've got less than two hours before I need to run downtown for tonight's show.   I'm so so relieved that the week of technical rehearsal is OVER.  There's a reason show people call the week of technical rehearsals "Hell Week."  After tomorrow's matinee, I'll have a few nights off and some major relaxing and crafting!  And on top of that, I'll be back soon (!) with some exciting news and a new card!

See ya then!

-kory