Green Paper

Sticking With It....

Do you ever feel this way too? I was talking to my sister Eileen this week and complained that everything I've created lately looks horrible. I joked that maybe my art-ing days are over.

My beautiful sister, Eileen, helping me at Silver Bella a couple years ago.

Then last night, Eileen and I were talking again and she mentioned an Ira Glass / This American Life episode she listened to. I remembered that I had saved an Ira Glass quote a while back because I found it particularly meaningful, but I couldn't remember why.  So, I pulled it out again...

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. 

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. 

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”-Ira Glass” 

Do you find that true, too? How easily I forget!

I can't tell you how many gluebook pages I've set aside lately, because I just couldn't finish. I'm so unhappy with them! So, my goal for the weekend is to finish some art every day. To stick with it, even if I think it's really bad.

Wish me luck, I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and just a reminder that the Spring 25% off sale ends tomorrow. If you'd like to gluebook along with me, come ahead!

How do you like to follow blogs?

As you probably know, Google Friend Connect is going away in just a few days (yeeks, that came up fast!).  So, I've been doing a little research on other ways I can follow blogs and ways others can follow my blog. But on every site I've looked at, it's a little tough to understand exactly what I should expect and how much I can tailor my experience...

So I'm asking for your advice!

If you have a blog, what do you plan to do? If you like to follow blogs, how do you do it now...or plan to do it in the future?

Here are just some of the things I'd like to do as a follower:

• I want to follow on my own schedule, to be able to sit down with a cup of coffee and read through all "my" blogs at one time a day.
• I want to put everybody I follow in one place, so I don't have to go to a bunch of different locations to follow
• I want to be able to add blogs myself - for example, new bloggers who don't have widgets yet. 
• I want my list of blogs to show who's posted since the last time I logged on, so I get straight to what's new.

Do you follow blogs, and how do you do it? If you're a blogger, what's your plan to invite followers?

Any recommendations will be truly appreciated!

She's posting my work...

I hate writing this post, but I could really use some help. 

A few weeks ago, a friend directed me to a Flickr photstream, which includes about 70 (yep, seventy) pictures of my own gluebook art. None of the individual pictures mention my name or any information about me.

Since it's my art and I want the pictures removed, I have emailed the Flickr user twice, and have contacted her through the Flickr system. I've never received a response.

In my last email, I asked her to have them removed by yesterday, or I would have to contact Flickr/Yahoo. I also told her I would post about this on my blog.  Unfortunately, nothing happened.

So, today, I sent a copyright infringement notification to Yahoo, and now I'm posting on my blog.

I know this person reads my blog, in fact, she enters the monthly challenges. So, how do I get her to remove my art from her Flickr photostream?  Any ideas would be so appreciated!

My Other Mother....

How many mothers do you have? At one point in my life I was up to 4, but now I'm really down to just one. I had my own mother, adopted roommates mothers, and aquired a mother-in-law for a while.

But my most consistent "other mother" is still in my life, in a really big way. 

My family moved to Missouri when I was about 13. My sister fell in love with the boy across the street later that summer, and I became best friends with his sister. Of course, I spent plenty of time at their place, and 'adopted' both a mother and a father.

my other mother and my mom, about 5 years ago

Fast forward 5 years and my sister married the boy across the street. Both sides of the family and all of the friends knew each other really well, and it was a great celebration.

A few years later, my sister and brother-in-law had the first grandchild on both sides. About 6 months after that, my parents moved to California. I stayed. I was in college nearby, and just couldn't bear to leave my sister.

Later my best-friend-across-the-street moved 1000 miles away with her family. I became a doubly surrogate daughter in my other family.

In all of this time, my other family and I have shared most holidays and countless family events, plus lots of just hanging out.  To this day, weddings and babies are celebrated by both sides of the family, and I'm surrounded by people who know each other and have a long shared history. 

Both of my parents have passed away now, and my other father has too, but I still have my other mother with me. On Thursday, I'll be lucky enough to be one of dozens of people at Thanksgiving dinner with her. That's just one of the things I am thankful for.

Everyone needs other mothers. Collect them if you can.

What if we die?

Catchy blog post title, eh?

The latest edition of the Collage Club was about using 'the real thing' in your art - the actual vintage papers and ephemera you've collected. I've been thinking about my overflowing 'collections' recently. I know you have them too....old paper and books, rare ephemera and trashy ephemera, fabrics, beads, buttons, lace...should I go on?

Then, I received some timely comments this week. First, from Pam at Fairy Rocks and Things: I love old photo albums. I just hate to see those abandon families.

Then a comment from Julie (Jewels, how come I can't find your blog?)  in which she says: I got to the point where I was asking"if I don't use it now will I ever". Can't stand the thought of something just siting in a box some where when I can highlight it in "art"!  

It all percolated together for me....overflowing collections, abandoned photographs, if I don't use it now...and it made me wonder: what happens if I die?

Will any one of my family members treasure my bits and bobs the way that I do? Will any of them see a tub full of old paper as anything except trash? Will they have any idea what pieces of my stash are actually valuable and which pieces have very little value to anyone except maybe artists like me?  Are my beloved collections about to become the forgotten cabinet card photos at the flea market...or more likely added to the recycling bin?

If you're like me, you have friends and relatives who 'don't get it'. They may love us, and our art, but they don't really get the magpie attraction we have to the faded and aged. Can you imagine their dismay at having to dismantle our collections someday?

So, I am committing myself to using the real thing even more often. Who will appreciate it and enjoy it more than we do? Would I rather it was thrown away by an unsuspecting relative 30 years from now, or would I prefer to take a deep breath and glue it down onto something beautiful, so it will be seen and appreciated...by me and my blog friends at least!

I plan to label the truly valuable things I would never use, like my French Holy card collection and my Tennyson calendar, among others. They're all in a special drawer anyway; I just need to add some notes about them so maybe the descendants will make a bit of cash.

Then, I plan to start using the real thing even more often: the dozens of magazine images, the damaged ledger pages, the ripped handwritten letters, the old book pages, the actual photographs, and torn bits of ephemera.

It's true for money, and I have to remember that it's true for art supplies too - you can't take it with you. 

Back from Vacation...

I'm home from my visit to California, where I had a wonderful time.

We did both family (Nica's first birthday!) and tourist-y things. Nica's birthday party was fabulous - just family and a few friends. Nica was cheerful and smiling through the entire thing (actually, she's normally like that) and she seemed to love all of her gifts, as well as the cake.

But the thing you all probably care about the most is my trip to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena CA. Hundreds of vendors, miles of aisles.   This is the 3rd time I visited the Rose Bowl Flea and the other 2 time were fabulous. This time, there were some cool things you might have liked...

sweet baby shoes...

burlap...

and more burlap...

and loads and loads of vintage clothes

The last time I went, I bought dozens of cool things. This time, everything seemed overpriced or just boring. There were few books there, and even less ephemera. I had better luck last year when we visited the Pasadena City College Flea. I plan to schedule for the Long Beach Flea next time - I hear that's great!  

So, what did I get? I bought two items. Yep, you read that right, two. But - they're both wonderfully cool, both were affordable and they'll give me hours of gluebooking fun!

One is a 1920s-1930s scrapbook of dozens of cool pictures of people and activities, including swimming, a wedding, graduation, and plenty of family and individual shots.

The other is an 1880s autograph book with loads of pages of sentiment - many decorated with a bit of Victorian scrap.

I'll share something from each with you in this week's Collage Club, so if you're a member, or become one, watch for that.

What else did I do on my trip? I visited the Getty and saw various exhibits, including the Luminous Paper exhibit, which I highly recommend. We went to Universal Studios, where I got a private back lot tour with my sister Kathi, who is head of benefits there. We also went to a free outdoor jazz concert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and visited some of the exhibits there. One was a small dual Monet/Lichtenstein exhibit of a series of paintings by each artist, both of the Rouen Cathedral.

What did you do while I was gone?

Wall Art Inspiration

I spotted this picture on the Restoration Hardware site. Notice the wall art?

Those appear to be framed pages of sheet music - not the decorated covers, but the pages of music itself. They look beautifully graphical.

I love this idea - do you?

Storing Your Vintage Books and Paper...

I had a couple different questions recently about how I store my vintage books and paper.

So, today I'm opening the door to my non-glamourous methods for storing my supplies. Please be kind, I will never be in Where Women Create.

First, book shelves. I have some cheap industrial shelving in the closet of my craft room. These were supposed to be a temporary measure but they've actually worked out pretty well, so I still haven't replaced them. 

I have very few 'complete' books on these shelves. I go through each of them as I buy them and take out pages that I particularly like, or those I know I want right away. The books are then put on the shelves, and they're loosely sorted so that all of the foreign language is stacked together, all of the children's books, etc. So it's really not too hard to find what I need when I get into them. I do go through the stacks periodically and resort, and it helps to remind me of what I have.

Loose paper I pulled out too much of, or I'm not using right away, goes into file folders in a big plastic tub. It's sorted by what type of paper it is. I also use these files to build the 30 page paper assortment I sell on Etsy. So, you can actually buy the paper I use myself.

Lastly, I keep the paper I am currently working with in an office in-basket. As you can see, it's overflowing right now, it's time to go through and put some back in the folders. I have a bad tendency to over-estimate my needs and add too much from each book.

If you've taken the Your Vintage Gluebook class, you've already heard about this in more detail. I keep three baskets on my desk - small, medium and large, they stack up in each other. When I need a little accent of something, I go to the small basket first and look through the little pieces of papers and images. It helps me use up what I have. 

In the past I sorted all of my images by style or subject, but now I sort them in these baskets by size. May be odd, but it really works for me.

Thanks for following along. How do YOU store your papers?  

 

A Memorial Day story...

So my father walks into a bar...it's during WWII, he's in his Air Force officer's uniform and about 19 years old. The bartender asks for identification to prove he's 21. My father was a quick thinker and said he didn't have his ID with him, "But I'm an officer, you have to be at least 21 to be an officer."  The bartender says, "Oh yeah, that's right."  He got his drink.

 
These pictures are from that time and labeled on the back: 1944? Before he went to Pacific.  Dad was a navigator on a B-24. 12 missions over Japan in WWII and 27 missions over Korea in the Korean War. 

You are sorely missed, Dad.

Happy Birthday Audrey Hepburn...and me

 "For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others." - Audrey Hepburn

What a lovely woman to share a birthday with...I hope all of you, my friends, have a wonderful day today!