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Saturday, December 31, 2011

2011 by the Numbers (and favorite projects)



For the last few years I've been keeping track of my personal spending.  How much do I spend on clothes, crafts, car maintenance, etc.  I did this years ago and it was enlightening and a little frightening to see what I spent in certain categories.  It is amazing how much I used to spend on pantyhose in the early 1990's!  So glad that one has gone away for a lot of reasons.


So for the last few years, I know how much was spent total on papercrafts - this falls into the slightly frightening category :-)  In 2011 I took it a step further and tried to break things down a bit.  A few dollars didn't get accounted for but I got a pretty good picture of things.  I broke things down into photo processing, cardstock, designer paper, embellishments, inks, stamps, adhesive, albums and miscellaneous.  Just like the first time I tracked all my expenses and got a few surprises.


I really thought I was spending more on keeping up my wide format printer.  It is still a bit more expense than desired but not too bad.  Also, I use it more and more as my regular printer anyway.  I average about $8 a month on adhesive which is a much better than expected because it always seemed I was buying adhesive.



The bad surprise was how much went into cardstock and envelopes - 25% of the total.  Cardstock is about the least exciting thing to buy in papercrafts next to adhesive so this is something to review.  Fortunately I have a good stock built up.   Also, I didn't put much money into education.  I took advantage of a lot of free training via Two Peas classes and YouTube.  I got so much out of these classes.  Next year I think I'll invest more of my budget in some other classes as well.




In college, I took enough accounting classes to qualify for an accounting major so I guess this is where my obsession with numbers comes from.  So, onto more numbers...

I've noticed on various boards that many people track how many layouts and cards they make, particularly layouts.  I estimated in 2010 by going back through my albums and counting.  This year I kept a log and here are the results:

81 Layouts (12x12")
36 Mini album pages
337 Total cards of which
170 cards went to Operation Write Home
50 or so of the cards went to my Mother and my aunt to send for Christmas and other events
and 3 Notebook covers were made.


The number of items made is about the same as last year but I spent a tad less money - a nice surprise.  So my head is now satisfied that I made lots of stuff with at least part of that stuff I bought.  As for my heart...

I had fun, I preserved a lot of memories, and I hope I touched a lot of people with greeting cards.

To me this is Priceless!

Here's wishing us all a productive and fun 2012!  Happy New Year!

2 comments:

  1. You are one brave lady. I don't even want to think about how much I spent or what I spent it on. I know that I need to spend less on patterned paper and card stock. I have enough to last me for the rest of my life and then some.
    I have enjoyed visiting your blog this past year and hope to return in the new year.

    Wishing you a great 2012.

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  2. Wow, your numbers are impressive! As for how much I spend on craft supplies, let's just say it is too much, but not even close to what my husband can spend on just one new camera lens, so I still come out ahead. How's that for some creative accounting? Happy New Year!

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