Prelogue to the Trades

Good morning, day, evening or wherever you find your ways your standing on the Earth. I am a self-proclaimed "insomniac of all trades" and I spend much of my time late at night pursuing countless random hobbies. Much of my life I've felt things come natural to me however none of which I absolutely excel at. I guess you could say I excel at being all-around. I was always "all-around" characters in Nintendo games, like Toad, so why not be Toad in real life?

So with my late night shift hours and endless interest in trying everything that's out there, I decided to create this blog. Something to help me feel productive so late at night! With this, is a prologue to what you will see.

Queen's Cards
my trip to Winchester, VA for 3 weeks. June 2010.

Do you know where Winchester, VA is? They are famous for apples and have some crazy apple blossom festival, of which I was not there for again. I was on first shift for a couple weeks, which was a plus but I was not prepared for so much free time let alone a new, uh...rural? city. Mind you Washington DC is but an hour away and I experienced that...but my friends, I had bigger plans in store later on my trip.

When I first got hired at my job, they sent me here to train. When they did that, a couple of the guys and I went to this killer buffet called, and I shit you not, "EPIC BUFFET". Wow, was it epic. But the point is that this buffet was inside one of the largest slot machine floors in the states! Being my first time, I really enjoyed it (although I ate $80). On this trip, I wanted to repeat that with a +$160 to make up for last year and potentially next year. Because I'm superstitious...I decided to make a wallet out of cards.

Mind you, there were samples of card wallets on the internet but they were awful. So much potential wasted and you could barely hold anything in them...so I got creative with it and stole my mom's sweet exacto knife set after I made a trial (still my wallet today!). With this, I share my masterpiece:
Front view
Inside w/ 3 pockets. Left is an ID holder --


Inside hidden pocket detail

Inside billfold detail -- All of the numbers and cards here reflect the receiver's birthday.

All in all it was pretty easy after making about two of these wallets so this was a way to challenge myself by utilizing all of the suits and characters of the deck. Big lesson learned here is that EVERY SINGLE SPOT of card has to be covered with packaging tape in order for it to be water resistant. While this will make the wallet stiff at first you can put it under a bunch of books (or start using it!!) to get it broken in.

Here's to more random projects!