Interesting shopping day

I had a number of errands to run today. Since one of my stops was near Michael's, I dropped in to get a look at the new Martha Stewart border punches. That store only had one and since it was very much like my Fiskars Lacy Days of Summer punch, I managed to pass on that one. I'd heard that some folks had seen some of the new Primas at M's. Mine didn't have any. I did see those buckets of Brides flowers though, this time in pink and in blue. I talked myself out of those since I figure that I can color the ones that I have if I need them to be a specific color, but if you're interested in bright pink or blue flowers in large numbers, check that out.

So far I've only seen the Icky Sticky Stuff Remover that I referred to in an earlier post at my local grocery store. It's not a national chain, by the way. According to the ISSR site, hardware stores would be another place to look. While I was at World Market though, I came across Earth Friendly Products' Orange Plus Cleaner. I didn't even realize that they carried cleaners like that there! Now before I'd found the ISSR, I'd been thinking that this Orange Plus Cleaner had possibilities as a non-toxic blending agent for magic colored pencil from what I'd seen online. You can read the MSDS for the concentrated form. I hadn't followed this up because it looked like it was available mainly in health food type stores, and there wasn't one listed on their site that was close to me. Its main cleaning agent is orange oil, so again this seemed to have possibilities for breaking down the wax in colored pencils and allowing for movement and blending of the pigments. This is not an artist grade product, but it has a better safety profile than the odorless mineral spirits, so if the former isn't an issue for you, then this may be another possible alternative. I did a very quick test to see if it would work on Prismacolor pencils, and it did seem to. I'll try to do a more formal test with photos at some point for the sake of comparison. The 22 oz bottle of ready to use spray cost about $3.99, so I figured that I'd buy it and test it. Kitchen cleaner had been on my shopping list today anyway, so I was going to be able to use this whether it worked or not.

All in all, not a bad shopping day, eh? I may not have found what I originally set out to find, but I did manage to find something fun and craft-related to bring home with me when all was said and done. :-)