One of the oddities of having a mailing list of over 4,000 people is that I occasionally get random stuff in the mail. Such is the case this morning. Janie emailed me earlier in the week, saying she was reorganizing her beading stash, and had a serious amount of the tins I used in my Round Beaded Tin Ornament Kit that she would happily send me—and she’d even pay the postage. Not being completely crazy, I accepted the offer, because let’s face it: any time anyone says they’ll send you a box of stuff for free, and you don’t have to pay the postage on it, it’s a good thing.

And this, dear friends, is what arrived on my doorstep (minus the 15 year-old blind, deaf, photo-bombing rat terrier): the mother lode of little metal tins with clear glass lids, some nicely arranged in bigger metal carriers, and some loose. It looks like the Lee Valley warehouse exploded in my dining room. Most of them are not the size I use for the ornaments—they’re the little ones I’ve been wishing I had bought more of when JoAnn carried them in their jewelry section, because I used them to make little shaker pendants a while back, and thought they’d make a cute kit, but stupid JoAnn discontinued them. So, now there will be a very reasonably priced set of kits, because the really expensive part just arrived FREE!

Oh, and Janie? You rock. Seriously.