I have had my Climacterica postcard set printed and offered for sale at bigcartel 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!

A map of the mysterious land of Climacterica (watermarks not on original) © Chris Raymond

Late in the week at Penland, surrounded by cards, sketchbook, and dictionary pages © Chris Raymond
Click on image for more pictures from the week

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.

Decade two spread from Mom and Dad’s 50th anniversary scrapbook album © Chris Raymond

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.

Accordion book of dating advice for women © Chris Raymond

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.

If you’re like me, you buy lots of crafts books with good intentions of doing the projects within. They are kind of like porn for crafters, don’t you think? Well, over Christmas, while away from home for a week, I decided to try some paper quilting, inspired by Bridget Hoff’s book, Paper Quilting. I had made some thick paper, embedded with stray fibers and such, many moons ago at Penland. And when I’d first read Hoff’s book, I went out and collected and dried lots of leaves. Now, thanks to a Penland workshop on embroidered maps I took from Melinda Barta, I had some embroidery skills, too. Voilá, my own paper quilts! I used embroidery floss, usually with only 3 of the six strands, and an awl to pre-punch the holes for sewing. Then I just let myself play with integrating stitches, color, and the leaves, along with some buttons also stashed away in my crafts drawers.