Crystal Web Collar Necklace copyright 2008 Margot Potter for CYSWCSE
Crystal Web Collar Necklace copyright 2008 Margot Potter for CYSWCSE
"TastyLinksTM are all the good blogs, All the good blogs wrapped up in one."
Today's SuperSized offerings include some extra linky love! As always, if I've offered you Linky Love and neglected to follow through, it's only because my brain is like a colander and it sifted right through. Just send me a little reminder and I'll hook you up! Above I'm pleased to debut the first of my three Halloween themed designs created for Create Your StyleTM with CRYSTALLIZEDTM-Swarovski Elements, Swarovski's newly relaunched DIY segment brand. It features their beads and Beadalon silver plated wire, chain and bead bumpers. I'm showing their photo and mine to show how it looks on a body. I'll share the other two designs and give links to free instructions on their website soon.
Break out your galoshes because there's a 100% chance of a Linky Love Shower to follow:
Stefanie Girard's Sweater Surgery Paper is going under the knife this week at Sweater Surgery with type strips being used as photo corners on ATCs.
Layers Upon Layers Where does Cyndi find all those artists that are profiled on Layers Upon Layers? Would you like to be one of them?
Craftside-A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world This week features two new books releases; Beadwork Inspired By Art and Fashion Trims and we wouldn't be Craftside without sneak peeks inside! See how to make freeform ribbon cut work embellishments and two jewelry projects inspired by paintings. There are also pictures of the fabulous samples from the book One-Piece Wearables and an origami envelope for last week's dimensional ornament, or for anything you want to envelop!
Aileen's Musings September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month! Please take a moment to read more about a worthy project that I'm honored to be a part.
About Family Crafts Find out how to create a fun apple craft using a paper bag and a few other supplies. The finished craft can be used as an ornament, a magnet, or a brooch and it would make a great gift for a special teacher.
And some BONUS links:
Check out this link to the preview of the new book Bow Wow Wow by Cathie Filian from Creative Juice. How fun is this? Cathie is one of the most genuinely nice people in this industry and this book looks like way too much fun!
My dear friend Robin Beam has some VERY exciting news to share on her blog. She turned a few lousy lemons into some very tasty lemonade and we're all tickled pink for her. Go ROBIN GO!
Super Crafty Shout outs to Nyte Rain of Elemental for posting about my "What Happened to the Creative" Blog! She's got a great blog that's all about the crafty revolution! Viva la crafts!
Tracy of the ArtGirlz emailed me last week. It seems that all of their new links accidentally led to me. And I just thought they really, really liked me. Hee hee. Thanks for the SUPERSIZED Linky Love sistas!
I got an email from Helga of Art Chix Studios and she has some really...really rockin' new stuff on her site, including newly excavated vintage German doll parts. If you're at all into mixed media, collage or vintage, you have got to go see!
And that's about all there is this week at the old Impatient Blogger. Catcha Monday!
I've not really been consistent about reminding all of you that my Kewpie Contest is scheduled to end Monday. Bad, bad Margot. I should have made a sidebar widget, but I didn't. Since several people have told me they forgot, I've decided to extend the deadline another week. Your 1MB or smaller Kewpie jpegs are due by Monday September, 15th to margot@margotpotter.com. If your email bounces back, resend it to felfmom@yahoo.com. I'm gathering up the fabulous prizes as we speak. Remember that there are three categories: Most Kawaii (cute), Most Original, Funniest. Okay? Here's a link again to the 411.
I've been more than a little stressed about the current election. Why? Well without blathering on about my personal views, I feel as if we're a nation of people who mostly don't pay attention. Because of that, we aren't willing to do the work required to make educated decisions when we stand in the voting booth. That means reading platforms, researching voting records, educating ourselves about our local and state and federal issues. That means participating in our government and not just passively standing by either cheering or complaining. It means doing the research to make a considered decision. The politicians bank on our ignorance and our votes are swayed by sound bites or pretty words or appealing faces or empty promises or believing the endless spin churned out by pundits and the campaigns that is more often than not completely fabricated of half truths and lies spun with lots of cotton candy to make them palatable. As much as Karl Rove sickens me and not only because he's a borderline facist but because he is a bald faced liar, I have to admit the man is a political genius. He could make Charles Manson sound like a viable candidate.
Seriously folks, what is going on in this country? I wonder sometimes if people aren't too selfish or too lazy to care enough to pay attention. It's not all about me, it's all about we. The Power of We. That's democracy (I know we're a republic but I'm trying to make a point here.) No matter your affiliations, it's your duty to become engaged, involved and keyed in to what's going on. Anyone who doesn't vote should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, I said it and I meant it.
And if you're a woman and you aren't voting after what women went through to get you that right...well...that's a sad, sad thing sista. A lot of folks thought women should stay home and make babies and bake bread and let the menfolk take care of the politics, a lot of folks still do. Women fought hard to make sure our voices were heard.
More people vote for American Idol than for the President. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, they don't register to vote because they don't want to serve Jury Duty. Um, that's part of the deal. We couldn't have juries if folks didn't step up to the plate. I did my Jury Duty and even though it was truly a royal pain in the patootie, I can proudly say I served. Without that willingness to serve, to participate, to involve ourselves, this runaway train is going to jump the tracks and I wonder if it'll ever get back on.
Ah...it's becoming increasingly difficult to stay on the sunny side, but I effort.
(Bloggers Note: Let me begin before I dig into today's post about friendship by saying, in case the point was missed which it seems it may have been; it's not about the hook rug. That was a metaphor based on a long since past trend I used as an illustration for a craft kit that drew people in, but for the most part didn't keep them hanging around unless they were innately creative. I was talking as an industry professional and about major craft retailers and mainstream manufacturers. After yesterday, I'm starting to think the hook rug needs to make a come back, but I think that's because most of my readers are highly creative types who could make something interesting out of two sticks and a rock (which is the name of my corporation btw!) I realized something yesterday and it was a powerful realization. People hear exactly what they want to hear...and apparently yesterday people heard me hatin' the hook rug. Don't be a hook rug hater, Madge!
And now back to today's scheduled blog post: Friends Lost and Found
This past year I've lost some friends. It's not that I've lost track of where they are; I've simply lost their friendship. Some of them have excused themselves from my reality without explanation. Some of them have drifted into the ocean of life. Some of them have made it clear that I'm no longer on the guest list at the party that is their life.
As some of you know, I've moved 27 times in my life. That means I've lost a lot of folks along the way. It makes one reticent at times to make new friends. That being said, it's also meant I've made a lot of friends I may have never met had I stayed in one place my entire life.
No matter how you slice it, losing people stinks. It's one thing to lose them because you both get busy with life, but I think what hurts the most is opening your heart up, offering your friendship, cultivating a relationship, weathering the complexities of human interaction and being categorically rejected for content. I think what cuts the deepest is feeling that you have been entirely misconstrued and there is nothing you can do to change that. Breaking up with friends hurts every bit as much as breaking up with a lover. It's an emotional intimacy that is severed, often without explanation.
One can obsess about these things. Try to deconstruct the moment or series of moments that led to the demise of a friendship, but it's mostly fruitless effort at best. We all see reality differently. I love reading political exchanges because any gathering of people will manage to see the same exact situation entirely filtered through their personal agendas and mythologies. So what is perfectly clear to one person can be entirely antithetical to another's ‘perfectly clear' point of view, which makes for some interesting and passionate exchanges. We subconsciously delete anything that doesn't fit into our neatly constructed world view and we cling to what we believe in sometimes with far too much tenacity. There isn't much room for movement when people insist their truths are the only truths.
Ultimately there is no definitive central reality, only the endless myriad of individual perceptions. We can't be sure of anything at all and we certainly can't count on anything staying the same. I try not to let people hurt me. Being hurt is a choice. I try not to let other people's perceptions of me cloud my view of myself. No matter how ‘good' you are, everyone isn't going to love you, because they're looking at you through their own lenses.
The best we can do is to live our lives and focus on the friends who stay around, even when it's cloudy, even when we act like an arse, even when we're mired in the muck of day to day life, and especially at these times. If we have a small handful of true friends like that, if we have even one true friend like that, we are incredibly lucky. I think the best we can do is to be the kind of a friend we desire and trust that the people who drift away will return if they're meant to do so or perhaps they won't. Even though accepting that is a painful proposition sometimes.
I want to clarify a few things. I'm not against kits. I think kits are fine. Kits are an easy way to introduce people to a new craft. Personally, I'm more a fan of the kit that gives you tools, materials and instructions for a technique you can personalize (with sample project ideas) than a kit that gives you only one thing to create. I'm not personally a fan of the make this exactly same thing and there's no room for your point of view kit. I like it when the kit has flexibility and suggestions of ways to implement it. If you're making the exactly the same thing, as someone wisely mentioned yesterday, basically you're just free labor in that scenario. Personally if I can't imprint it in some way, I'm bored.
Here is my "Hook Rug Kit Theory." Back in the 70s, everyone made a hook rug. Or at least everyone started one. Then it lingered in a corner and eventually got shuffled to a closet. If you finished it perhaps it became a pillow that got sent to the Goodwill in the 80s or a framed work of "art" long since sold off at a yard sale or tossed into the trash. Mine was Ziggy and a rainbow. I have absolutely no clue what happened to it. The hook rug was the paint by numbers of the 70s, and it was a one trick pony sort of a sale. Meaning you made a sale, but you didn't create a customer. The bread and butter of our industry and the key to our survival is in creating a customer. Creating a lifetime crafter means creating a lifetime of business.
It is my personal belief that everyone is creative.
I mean that.
Here's what I mean by that. When we were five and someone handed us a box of 64 Crayola crayons and a roll of blank paper, we didn't say to ourselves, "Oh I can't do this, I'm not creative." We blissfully drew whatever wandered into our minds and we absolutely did not give a hoot about rules. Skies could be green, grass could be purple...we colored outside of the lines, inside of the lines, over the lines, above, below and around the lines. We dared, we dreamed, we imagined.
Then someone, somewhere along the way (maybe even ourselves) told us, "Hey, that's not what a cow looks like. You're not a very good artist."
That was that. The die was cast and the crayons went into the box never to come out again.
I teach creativity seminars where I help to demystify the creative process for the non-artist. There is no finished project. When the students enter the class I have a table strewn with images. Usually vintage paper items and new magazine ads that I ask them to peruse and select four items that speak to them on some level. I start by saying that we are all not Van Gogh or Monet or O'Keefe and we may never make extraordinary art, but that doesn't matter. We all have something to express and we should express it without worrying about what other people think. Then I talk about the rules of color and composition, I show examples of great art and design. I suggest that they think about their personal palette as reflected in their wardrobe and their home décor. I ask them to consider what makes a design intriguing. I make them think about the items they selected and explain why. Then I have them do creativity exercises in groups and individually using a sketch book and colored pencils to render ideas. They use the items they selected as the jumping off points for design concepts. Most of the students aren't what you'd consider creative types. They almost all start the class with arms crossed and sour expressions on their faces. As the class progresses the excitement builds. By the end of each class every student has one fully fleshed sketched concept ready to explore and several seeds of ideas upon which they can build. One of my students won first prize in the Swarovski Create Your Style design competition with something she conceived in my class, that was very cool.
I've only ever had one student who categorically refused to have fun. She "just wanted to make a necklace." I told her that was absolutely fine, but that she could if she trusted herself move beyond that level of creativity. She is the kit customer and she's certainly not alone, I just don't believe she's in the majority.
My classes are all about helping empower people to be creative and the people who take them are often retail craft store owners looking for new ways to inspire customers. By showing them new pathways of creativity, I'm helping them to do the same for others. Which is the point I was making yesterday, there are so many products on the shelves people don't understand that they often turn to the kit out of desperation. A smart retailer is going to figure out how to show people how to use their products and beyond that a smart retailer is going to inspire creativity and exploration because in doing that, they're creating a lifetime crafter. If you're relying on the impulse buy or the hook rug kit customer, they're going to be fewer and farther between when the economy is weak. It's the creative soul who fuels the craft industry and it's freeing those who are afraid they aren't creative into believing they are that will fuel it even more.
We don't have to homogenize or map it all out for people if we make the effort to show them how to free their minds. That requires effort and outreach, but it's not impossible. I think the next generation of crafters thinks this way and I also think that the older crafter would too if given the tools to do so.
Just my two cents...or actually more like my fifty cents! Thanks to everyone who commented on my various blog posting sites, I'm blessed to have such thoughtful readers.
Until tomorrow...craft on with your bad selves, Madge
I'm working on two projects for a manufacturer, as I mentioned last week. This weekend I went to three different large craft stores in search of specific materials to use for the projects. Imagine my dismay to find that these basic craft items are no longer available at two of the major craft retailers and one local very large craft warehouse. I was further dismayed to find an array of new products that had me scratching my head in utter confusion. If I'm going to alter a t-shirt, do I really need a kit? There was an entire aisle of altered t-shirt kits and accessories. Then the most important aspect of this concept was ignored. You should have seen the horrid t-shirts being offered, not a single cap sleeve or fitted style in the bunch. Besides the lack of attention to style I had to wonder, isn't the entire impetus behind the DIY movement that we can do it ourselves and do it our way? We don't need no stinking kits. Why not instead offer an array of products we can entirely personalize and then provide t-shirts we might actually wear in public.
I had a video producer once swear to me that he was going to help me make a fabulous demo reel. He said, "We've got your creative." Then he proceeded to hand me off to a paid by the hour intern and I never saw him again. Needless to say my reel wasn't fabulous. I'm starting to wonder if the manufacturers and the big box retailers aren't pulling the same switch? What happened to the creativity in crafting?
As I walked aisle after aisle in search of what I needed I began to notice the proliferation of skulls and the tattoo flash art. The sparkly skulls, the scary skulls, the cute skulls, the girly skulls...the nautical stars, the rose, the stylized swallows and the hearts...is it just me or has the entire Indie aesthetic been boiled down to skulls and flash art? Of course, the ever present pin up girl hasn't made it to the main stream because that wouldn't fly at the more conservatively focused craft chains, but in every aisle were the most stereotypical emblems of punk rock being transformed into mainstream icons. It was simultaneously funny and sad. The biggest problem with the craft industry is the entire disconnect between the customer and the product lines. Do they really think slapping a skull on it makes it cool?! Now I like a skull as much as the next gal, heck I wear skulls and I craft skully projects, but skulls are not the only thing I craft. Why don't these companies go to Etsy or wander the blogosphere or head to YouTube and see what folks are actually creating? Who does the market research for them?!
Then there was the other rather large and ever imposing elephant in the room. The one no one is talking about. The one that is slowly, stealthily taking over the craft aisles at your local big box retailers. I went to WalMart in my last ditch attempt to find what I was seeking and lo and behold, almost the entire craft section was transformed into a pretty, perfect, Stepford crafts world courtesy of Martha Stewart. Now please don't get me wrong. I love Martha. I respect Martha. I think Martha is a marketing genius. But have you seen these craft kits?! They're oddly uninspired. What's with the felt jewelry kits where you don't even make the felt? What's with the 70s era felt animal puppets? Why is it all so...lacking in personality? Is it just me, or don't you feel that it's all so perfectly perfect you don't want to take anything off of the shelf? Where's the creative? Where's the soul? It's all so planned out for you, there's no room for your input. Is this really where crafting is headed? If so, I may have to jump off of the train.
Yes, I've just effectively blown my chance of ever appearing on the Martha Stewart show. But someone had to point out that the emperor was wearing no clothes. Martha my friend, we love you, but do you really need to takeover the craft industry? Can't we share? I mean, we all saw this coming with the keynote speech at CHA, but did we think it was going to be like this? Isn't there room for you and the rest of us? Could you at least spice it up a skootch? It's so...vanilla frosting on vanilla cake with dragees, frosting swags and white roses.
When we got home my husband and I asked each other what happened to the project sheets? How do folks even figure out how to use anything? Why aren't there simple and easy to follow how-to sheets, videos or recordings in every aisle for every discipline showing the Average Jane the basics so she can inject that with her creativity? How can you expect to sell anything if folks don't know how to use it? The folks who work at these big box chains don't even know what they stock or how it works. Why aren't the big box craft retailers approaching it like a big box hardware store. Shouldn't the employees be empowered to help your customers know what to buy? Shouldn't there be written materials that help to sell your product? You'd at least think Martha would have project sheets. What happened there?
If the craft industry wants to survive the current economy, there's going to have to be more outreach and more awareness. We're going to have to get the folks who aren't crafting excited about it. We're going to have to educate, empower and inspire. We're going to have to work both harder and smarter. We can't do that if we get lazy and complacent. We can't do that by slapping a skull on it and walking away. We need to show the customer how to reuse, renew and recycle. We have to help them see that crafting is an inexpensive and enjoyable way to pass the time when you're stuck at home and it's a great way to bring the family together. We have to show them that they can make gorgeous gifts and they can refresh their wardrobe and they can redecorate their homes and it's simple, fun and affordable. We have to show them exactly what to use, how to use it and make it enjoyable for them. That's no easy feat, but in my mind there is no better time for crafting than this. This is our time. So what's it going to be? Are we going to see more aisles busting with tired clichés and bland ‘no room for creativity' kits or are we going to start injecting them with innovative, fresh, exciting new approaches? One is going to lead to the Martha-ization of our industry and the other leads to a place where there's room for all of us to prosper.
It is my entire career focus to inspire you to color outside of the lines, make glorious mistakes and "create without filtersTM." It's going to get harder if the materials at hand keep getting less interesting.
, Swarovski's newly relaunched DIY segment brand. It features their beads and Beadalon silver plated wire, chain and bead bumpers. I'm showing their photo and mine to show how it looks on a body. I'll share the other two designs and give links to free instructions on their website soon.