GirlMeetsArt » Paper and Book Arts

Becoming a businesswoman

Chris Raymond — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:42:46 +0000

I have had my Climacterica postcard set printed and offered for sale at Big Cartel for a couple of weeks. Every sale gives me a thrill and a great sense of affirmation, naturally. It’s much different than feeling satisfaction from nailing a design for a client, because in that case, my work is done to please someone else and solve someone else’s communication problem. Personal work, by contrast, is done strictly to my own desires, esthetic values, and vision.

Now that I’ve made my first sales, I have started thinking like a business woman: keeping track of customers, setting prices, finding the most economical packaging, and of course, thinking about spin-off products.

It’s a whole new world!

Dispatches from Climacterica

Chris Raymond — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:23:15 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the last week of August taking a workshop, “Illustrating the Personal Narrative” at the Penland School. I began the week with trepidation: I’d never really worked in watercolor or pen-and-ink, my drawing skills left much to be desired, in my mind at least, and before even arriving, I had already gotten very bad vibes from the instructor, a brusque New Yorker with no experience teaching the mixed-level classes that define the place.

My week lived down to expectations about the instructor, but exceeded expectations greatly as to the work I produced: a series of postcards from the mythical country of Climacterica, where all the residents are female, minds go absent, lists get lost, and intentions often go far off track.

Like most artists I know, I am REALLY hard on myself and nitpick my work to death. But I have to say, the set of postcards I created please me greatly. They hit my sweetspot of combining concept, humor, color, and writing. And several fellow students are in line to buy these once I get them reproduced.

I’m now researching the best way to reproduce the set and getting tips on selling my work from colleagues; so in a way, this could be one of the more transformative weeks at Penland for me, if it finally nudges me toward selling my work.

UPDATE October 27, 2009: My Climacterica postcards are now available for purchase, for keeping in touch with friends, giving as gifts, or framing. View the details and order at my Big Cartel storefront.

Golden anniversary scrapbook

Chris Raymond — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:25:02 +0000

In 1998, my parents celebrated their 50th anniversary, and renewed their vows. I wanted to do something special. The preceding summer, I had spent many hours with my Mom, poring over boxes of pictures so I could organize them by year. So I decided to create a scrapbook that include five montages of scanned images, one from each decade of their marriage. Then I researched cultural and personal milestones from each decade, and created lists of the milestones (including the decade during which my father finally learned how to program the VCR!).

Finally, I found stock images of things in pairs, scanned them, and printed them out on vellum, alongside the list of milestones. I used colored pencils to hand color the stock photos.

To complete the scrapbook, I made a cassette tape of the song Grow Old Along With Me, which I put in a pocket I made on the inside cover of the album.

A girl’s dating guide to running and screaming

Chris Raymond — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:33:23 +0000

Remember Melissa Bank’s book about falling in love, Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing? Well, my helpful advice book is A Girl’s Guide to Running and Screaming. Its advice is based on some oh-so-awful dating experiences, including the slobbery kisser and the one who heard voices promising him the formula for an AIDS cure.

I made 12 editions of this accordion book to share with classmates at Penland, and to put in the box of books our class auctioned to support Penland. Final bid: $1000.