Business Venture

Grandma Mast used to make scrapbooks for each of her grandchildren. I used to really enjoy watching her work on them when ever I was allowed to spend several hours at their house.  She went through all the catalogs and magazines that came to their house and cut out any pictures and poems or sayings that she thought she might find use for.

I loved the little room she used for this hobby. It was very well organized with lots of boxes labeled carefully so she would know where to look for whatever she needed.  My favorite was a box of stickers. She had a huge variety and would allow me occasionally to look through all of them and choose a sheet to take home with me.

One day I asked her why she doesn't use more stickers instead of so many tiny pictures that she cut from catalogs, and she told me it would be much too expensive to buy that many. I could understand that but thought it was too bad that she couldn't find a source for cheaper stickers since they were much nicer to use.

A few weeks later I was cutting pictures out and gluing them on pieces of paper to make a little book when Mom called me. I went to see what she wanted and by the time I got back to my little project I discovered that I had put glue on a picture but forgot to to paste it to the paper and it had dried. On a whim I got a damp cloth and wiped it and was thrilled to discover that it moistened the glue enough that I was able to use it.

I was excited about my discovery and got a piece of paper and traced lots of cute pictures on it, after carefully coloring and cutting them out I spread Elmer's glue evenly on the back and left them to dry. I continued until I had fifty of them and then put them in a little box and took them over to Grandma's house where I showed my homemade stickers to her. She oohed and ahhed about them and when I told her she could buy them if she wanted to for only a penny a piece.

She went and got her purse and counted out fifty pennies and gave them to me. I felt quite rich as I ran home and promptly set to work to make another batch of stickers. A few days later when I took my next batch to her she carefully sorted through them and picked out only the very nicest ones, this time I carried only a few pennies and most of my stickers home. After a few more tries and earning only a few pennies I gave up making stickers.  Much to Grandma's relief I'm sure.