Last year for Christmas my mom got me a cricut machine because she wanted to see “what I’d do with it.” I’d played with hers and cut hundreds of leaves, trees and shapes while I was caring for her. I truly expected my interest in the machine to be fleeting, cut a few hundred things, use them up and then move onto the next great thing. That is until I discovered the world of Makes the Cut and Sure Cuts A Lot.

These 2 programs really unlock the power of the cricut machine. Using them you can create your own designs and not rely upon the preloaded cartridges that cost an arm and a leg. Using MTC I can scan an object, refine it in gimp and them load it into MTC for a pixel trace and then cut a mask, stencil or cut for use in my art.

MTC also has a large gallery of pre-made shapes created by other crafters, these are ripe for the adapting into new projects and adapted shapes.

I guess the theme of today is as follows: If you can’t buy a decent mask make your own, either by hacking your cricut or getting an exacto knife.

A friend contacted me in regards to working in an art show with her. She remembered some of my work from visiting my best friend back when we were roommates. My work has come a long way from the stuff I did back them. (Acrylics on paper, linoleum prints and hacked screenprinting) But the concept for the show is this: Women’s role in society. All artist’s involved will be contemplating that theme.

Here’s what I’m thinking, I want to do what I do best and get my readers involved. Sure I could explore, ad nauseum, my personal role in society but what interests me more is the stores from my internet friends. So I’m soliciting your stories. If you are interested in participating answer a few questions:

• What is your role in society/relationship?
• Do you see that role as traditional/non-traditional?
• How do you express your role?
• What do you think is the biggest current issue for women?

Write an essay and email it to leslie.herger@gmail.com or hand write the essay, scan it at 300dpi or better and email it to me. Length is up to you, but 500 words or more would be best. Deadline for submissions is January 1st, 2011.

Your essay will be expanded to fill up a board of as of yet indetermined size. (Looks likely to be 12×12 inches) I'll use the same font through out. The essay will then be transfered to the board and I'll respond in my grungy art journal style. Lots of layers of color, glazes and multi media. Let me know in the submission if you want me to use full first name, initials or if you'd like it anonymous.

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I attended a semi private High School. The school contracted with local towns to teach their students and received many donations from alumni. I received a decent education that was greatly supplemented by having 2 really intelligent well read parents.  

Lately the letters requesting donations have really gotten to me. Crawl under my skin and tick me off gotten to me.

Now, they initially got my address by sending a letter to my parent’s house with my name on it while I had an address forward in place. Instead of forwarding the letter the post office returns it with the new address stuck to the envelope. Voila! My high school alumni association had my address. I would NOT have chosen to give them my address.

When I moved from the area where I grew up I left things behind.  When I started to get the letters and publications I hadn’t been in touch with anyone for nearly 10 years. The first publication arrived with an envelope and email with a request to “update us on your status.” I dutifully emailed in a brief blurb about how my partner and I had recently moved to lovely Beverly, MA. Blah blah blah.

They never published it.

You see the woman in charge of the status updates for the publication is a Baptist bible beater who doesn’t believe in “the gays.” I knew when I sent the update in it stood little chance of reaching publication.*

After it wasn’t published I sent several requests to be removed from the mailing list. To no avail. I STILL receive the quarterly magazine and the bimonthly emails begging me for donations.

This last letter was over the top. I will donate money when the “head of school” #1 learns how to write a letter that isn’t filled with redundancy or  #2 hires an assistant with an English degree that isn’t from UMM.

First off letters begging me for money should be cliché free. Secondly let’s not be redundant, a white marking board is a white board in every part of the world except East Machias, ME. The 40 Chairs for student center, about which the entire letter was about, could have simply been written as “40 Chairs.” The “78 Student Classroom Chairs” could have  been “78 chairs for classrooms,”  unless they are chairs for elephants there is no reason to state they are student chairs. With so much detail lavished upon the chair situation I was distraught to find to requests for “tables” and “oak tables.” Dear god, where are these going?  Who are they for?

Perhaps when Washington Academy hires a “Headmaster” and is bigotry free I’ll donate. We all know that will happen when hell freezes over.

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Most of my life I’ve collected small rusty metal bits and tumbled plastic junk in a reverse magpie type fashion. The refuse of my daily life would accumulate in the bed side “empty pockets here” bowl until I moved or tossed the contents. Little of this weird collection of crap remains. Some of it has ended up in my art journal, most the landfill.

A couple of months ago I thought it might be useful or interesting to put the individual items in small plastic baggies, attach them to a card or the pages of a book and label where and when I found them. It may be useful or interesting to only me.

I’ve had this image of how the collection should look, how the pages should be and what the finished product should feel and look. So I’ve set about making the object in my mind. The book will be a 6×6 inches with a large number of pages bound with heavy linen thread to make room for the objects. The objects fit into a small 2×3 inch plastic Ziploc baggies. The baggies are adhered to the page with white tape (washi.) Each object gets a small hang tag, 1×2 inches with red paper reinforcement around the hole and rough hemp twine to hold it to the page. Each tag will get a small piece of gridded tape with the info about the object where and when collected. The reverse side may have the name of the object.

I wanted the tags to appear cheaply manufactured not handmade. So I set about making them. I used a cricut machine with makes-the-cut to cut 120 tags and hundreds of small red circles with holes in the center. I needed them to be precisely cut to fit the tag- they had to be 8mm with a 3mm hole.  The machine handled the tags with ease, the small red circles… not so much. I ended up with hundreds of the 8mm circles on my desk needing the center removed. A twitter friend pointed out that it would have been far easier for me to use a hand punch to cut the circles and then a smaller punch to cut the center hole. She was right. I have a 3mm leather punch that would have been perfect on a stack of the circles.

I then spent the evening hunched over assembling the tags. I’ve completely finished 50, complete with hemp twine. I’ve glued the circles to another 40. I’ll stop and pick up the rest of the hemp tonight after work.

Looking at the collection of junk I realize this is completely insane. I’ve know that my nearly obsessive compulsion to pick up rusty bits of metal, shopping lists, distressed paper and other assorted junk was insane but the cataloging of my nutty compulsion is a step further than perhaps I should go.*

The thing is, I’m thinking of other things I can catalog in this manner.  I may have taken this a step too far.

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I really enjoy the process of this page. There were a few spots where I"d have stopped as I love the layers she built up.

I’m horrible at networking except in those weird circumstances where it doesn’t matter to my own work. In other words I  can talk about my DayJob all night long but once the subject of what I actually DO outside of the DayJob approaches I clam up.

Case in point. Years ago I was working as a Florist and a woman paused in front of my display, she had on a UMaine hockey hat. It looked as though she’d had it for years. I nonchalantly said, “Did you go to UMaine or are you just a fan of the hockey team?” She smiled, touched the hat, said, “Both, why?” We then launched into a conversation about UMaine, dorms we lived in, frat parties etc… It turned out she worked for a local company and was involved in the higher up aspects of its running.

I ended up scoring a great deal of business for the company I work for but could have easily have turned the conversation to what I DO, and perhaps turned that conversation into business for me. But you see back then I didn’t have the words. It wasn’t that I lack passion or drive or ambition it was simply that I lacked the words.

I’ve done a lot of reading about elevator pitches, guerilla marketing, punk marketing (worst book ever) and other assorted crap that tells me how to market myself. Heres the real deal: People feel it when you do. You can’t fake being authentically excited about what you DO outside of your DayJob.  When people feel that real excitement, they smile, lean forward and listen.

In the past when I talked about bookbinding, something I truly enjoy, I got that response. I wasn’t able to follow it to excited discussion. Why, I’ll never know. Recently I’ve been talking about the eZine, art journaling, my classes and art; people seem to get it. Even if they aren't into art, journaling or the internet they listen.

All the stuff I’m interested in is converging into one big amalgamation of excitement and love. It shows when I talk about it. People can see and feel my excitement about all this STUFF. The best thing is that I can talk about it; I’m finding words to describe what I’m doing.

My DayJob boss could tell you this is probably due to me spending time in her office telling her all about it. I think I may have told her I was practicing my elevator pitch on her, I may not have. Hopefully she does not mind my using her in such a manner.

Two months ago we put together a publication, throughout the time we were working on it, about 4 months, we called it the “Top Secret Project.” We all wrote about it, we had a great time working on it and it is awesome. We learned a lot about publishing an eZine in that time, things to do and things not to do. Our goal in the 2nd issue was to put that newly learned info to use add 10 more pages to the mix and produce an even better eZine.

We accomplished that goal. Issue 2 comes in at 55 pages and is packed with lots of information about working in an art journal with no stress. There are 101 journal prompts inside, 2 book reviews, articles by Connie of DirtyFootprints-Studio.com, Jonathan of Artisticbiker.com, Eveline of EvelineTimeless.blogspot.com, Klair of Rhomany’s Realm, and of course an article by me, loads of technique pages and we’re introducing a scholarship program. This issue is even better than issue #1.

For each issue we only take enough of the profits to cover expenses. The rest of the money is donated toward a charity that deals with art. We found the wonderful UCSF’s art for recovery program. They use expressive (art) therapy to help cancer patients’ deal with their illness. It’s a fantastic program and one that we will most likely donate to in the future. In short if you haven’t bought the new issue of the zine you’re totally missing out and really should consider picking it up. Its well worth every penny of the $5 we charge.

Find it here.

Paula is awesome, the guy from Sheldon's art academy is a donkey. I messed up my code and when I enter stuff I can't see the video until it posts, so I'm sorry I confused the 2.

Paula details how you can make your own glitter paint, while glitter ain't my thing I'm glad she shows people HOW to make their own glitter paint. Paula is awesome, all kinds of awesome.

The new issue of Art Journaling: It's All Good just came out and it's ready to roll. 55 pages of non stop art journaling action. An interview with Tracey Moore, book reviews, a piece by Dawl Sokol about NaNoJouMo, and all kinds of great articles. It's $5 and the profits after expences go to the UCSF's Art for Recovery Project. You know the brain child behind the Breast Cancer Quilt Project… Wicked cool stuff.

Head over here to get a copy. Allow me 24 hours for processing.

I have a confession to make.

It’s not a big deal, but it’s kind of embarrassing given the amount of time I spend online, blogging and etc…

I have signed up for NaNoWriMo every year since 2001 and never actually participated. The first year I had no ideas, the second year I was breaking up with my stupid ex, the year after I’d started working retail and had no time, so on and so forth the excuses piled up. This year WILL be the year I not only participate but actually get my novel written. Wait, Is non-fiction allowed? Do footnotes count toward my word count?

There is always NaNoJouMo, which I actually participated and successfully completed!

Damn, the excuses are already starting!!!!!!