Ginny's Small Studio

Family Thanksgiving

I know everyone has already posted all their holiday photos, but we have been enjoying our company so much that I have not had a chance to post. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with almost all of our family. Granddaughter Kelsey made most of our meals and they were absolutely wonderful. She is a fabulous cook and will be a fabulous chef when she graduates from Johnson and Wales culinary school. She even brought her own knives.

Here is her olive tart. Delicious.

Kelsey carving the turkey with hungry bystanders:

Jessica, our daughter-in-law made the desserts and we ate all of them. Her pie was picture perfect.

The obligatory table shot:

Kate and Margee (daughter and DIL) were kind to do most of the clean-up.

Granddaughter Rachel spent two days making necklaces up in my art room. She declared that she sounded like wind chimes when she walked.

Kelsey found time to make necklaces, too.

It was the best Thanksgiving ever. Being surrounded by our large blended family who all like each other and who all pitch in with gusto and joy is truly the best.

And on it goes....

This is another new product by Tim Holtz. How do I know that? Why it says "By Tim Holtz". I am sure he thinks his people will know he didn't design these images just by looking at them. True, but wait a minute. It does say "by Tim Holtz". I am confused.

Stampers Anonymous

Most of you know that I founded and owned Stampers Anonymous for almost 10 years. In 2005, I sold the stamp line to Ted Cutts because I was getting married and moving to CA with John. Ted hired me back to be Art Director for a couple of years. At that time we were approached by Tim Holtz to do a stamp line with his name on it. Stampers Anonymous had never put the artist's names on the stamps and none of our excellent artists had ever asked for that recognition. It was during the infant days of family owned stamp companies who were pretty naive about marketing and commercialism. Tim Holtz's popularity is well-known and he works hard to keep his brands forefront, but I think it is just wrong and misleading that his name is on each pack of images that were designed by our original artists.

A number of the original stamps have been released as "Classic Stampers Anonymous" and are now available in cling mount.

The majority of the classic Stampers Anonymous images chosen were designed by Michelle Ward for Stampers Anonymous. I was thrilled to have this exceptional artist and just good human being design for us. Others were by David Simon, a professional artist who works at a local advertising agency. David designed more than 300 images for us and became a good friend. There are images in this collection by Michele Monet, our very first artist who is a wonderful talent and professional photographer. There were also a number of other artists who designed just a few stamps for me back then and all the rest of our images were designed by me. I feel with the new release of these stamps that new stampers should know that the artists for these classic Stampers Anonymous images are not Tim Holtz. I don't want them to be confused with the "Tim" images. The packaging should be clearly marked as just Stampers Anonymous classics. Tim had nothing to do with these images and in my opinion, his name should not be on them.

Home Again, Home Again

At the stamp convention this weekend several people commented to me that with some people time can go by without any contact, but you see each other and it feels as no time has passed.  That is just how these big, old conventions go.  It was wonderful to see old friends with whom I have been a vendor many times at many conventions over the years.

It is always a wonderful treat to spend time with Chris and Mike Meador of Coffee Break Design and Judi and Rob of Judikins.  We enjoyed some good talks and lots of hugs.

 Karen Morikawa, Mary Jo McGraw and Elaine Madrid were fun to see again at Elaine's booth, too.

I hadn't seen Jackie (Inky Antics) or Michelle Cutts (Art Gone Wild) for a few years and we had a chance to catch up a little bit. 

And, of course, Tim (can't remember his last name, oh yeah...Holtz) is always in a good mood and fun to see again. Also good to see Mario and Ted and so many others that I have not seen in awhile since we have dropped out of the convention circuit.

Connie Williams and I go back a couple of decades.  Connie puts on a wonderful convention.  It is always well attended, well organized and fun.  Thanks Connie, for letting us participate. We had a great time all around.  Thanks too, to all the shoppers that came and spent time with us in our booth.  It was so much fun to chat and laugh and reminisce with all of you.

We had a good space at the show.  Following are a few pics of our booth:

It is good to be home. 

Just a couple of reminders:

We are still taking sign ups for the rest of the Small Studio Workshops.  

Small Studio Emporium and my Etsy shop will re-open later this week.

I've Got It On Tape

My name is Ginny and I am a tape-o-holic.  They say admitting your problem puts you on the road to recovery.  I am not sure I am ready for that, but I have run out of room in my designated tape drawer.

First I fell in love with Gaffer Tapes from 7Gypsies.  Every new catalog would introduce a few more designs.  I love them all. Recently they introduced patterned paper tape and I fell in love with that too...and gaffer tape with writing on it. My idea of heaven. I kept ordering more telling myself that it was for Small Studio customers, but more and more rolls made their devious way into my tape drawer. Then my daughter told me about colored duct tape.  Soon after the hobby stores came out with patterned shipping tape...tulips and damask and polka dots, oh my. Then that wicked Kelly Kilmer blogged about Japanese tapes and Etsy sites that sold them.  I love them too. Tim Holtz is coming out with several tissue tapes that look very interesting.  I have them on order for me, I mean you. 

Thanks for the suggestions for my pillows.  I wouldn't have asked if I hadn't been questioning their placement.  I really wanted them all together and they have finally found a home in our guest room. This is the one John calls the "train" room because it has the framed train destination rolls.  

So Leslie, Doug, Sheri and Bruce, c'mon out and see how good they look.  Thanks again.

Small Studio Workshop info here. 

 

Give Me a Hand

Lucky me.  After taking the Tim Holtz class last week, Tim and Mario sent me another hand to play with. Note that I said they sent ME a new hand to play with.  

Every time I walked into a different room in the house this morning, I was greeted with a new John-made vignette using my hand. I laughed, grabbed my camera, toke a photo.  I shouldn't have encouraged him.  No siree.

How about a little kiss?

Want an apple, my pretty?

Talk to the hand!

I can't hear you!

Give me chocolate or Pumpkin Boy gets it!

John looking very pleased with himself......and winter and the indoor period of the year is just around the corner.  We need to find him some new hobbies.

Speaking of weather, well loosely, anyway, here are the last two Fall photos, I promise.  They were taken from our front yard yesterday.

We caught an old episode of West Wing last night.  It used to be a favorite show for us until it was cancelled.  It was fun to watch "smart" TV again.  That was a great series.  We haven't found anything else we like to watch on a regular basis.  Watching the news channels and the endless lies, half-truths and repeated rhetoric is taking its toll.  Since we voted last week, we haven't been as keenly interested in the political news.  We will be interested on Nov 4th to see who wins.  Have you voted early?

Sunday Evening

At the last minute I decided to take a Tim Holtz class at a local store.  The class was called "the Artful Hand".  The deciding factor was that everything was supplied to the students including the articulated wooden hand!  Tim had a ton of supplies for us to use and he is really organized.  Above is my project.

Below is another view.

It was also great fun to see some former Creative Block customers and Art Continuum attendees.  It is nice to be remembered since I am so far removed from all that now.

To answer a few questions from the comment sections of previous posts:

1. The Farm stand was Pickering Hill Farms on Detroit Road in Avon OH, across from Avon Commons.

2. The vintage shops we really like are the Medina Antique Mall in Medina and Antiques at the Bank on Lorain in Cleveland around 44th street, I think.  The cigar boxes were found at a little shop in the French Creek district in Avon that was almost empty.  I think it was going out of business.  I actually don't know the name because we were just stopping at whatever looked interesting.

3.  The last book...I covered the boards using a variety of scraps cut in 1'" x 2" pieces and then edged with ribbon.  The interior is an accordion fold attached to the book boards, so it isn't really bound.  I was playing with some pre-cut board I purchased at Hollo's Papercraft in Brunswick, trying to use up scraps.  I keep a medium size plastic bin near my worktable and toss all scraps into it.  I use quite a bit of it on later projects.  I had seen a paper quilt at Pam Sussman's book retreat last month.  The artist had used the tiniest bits of paper to construct the "quilt".  I was quite taken with the riot of patterns and was just playing around with the idea.  Thanks for asking.

I try to make something everyday even if I throw it away, save it for another time, hate it, whatever.

When I don't play with my art supplies for awhile, I find it really difficult to begin again.  Do you have that problem?

Playing Around

A few years ago, I attended a weekend retreat in Prescott AZ with Tim Holtz. We made tons of projects, received a suitcase full of gifts from his sponsors and had so much fun. Tim is an excellent and generous instructor. He gave us these cool shadow boxes to create an assemblage. I loved making the shadow box assemblages and really wanted to stop right then and just make a bunch of them. But I didn't. Instead when I came home, I went out and bought a number of empty shadow boxes with the intent to just create a zillion of them. But I didn't. As so often happens, I got busy with stuff, the boxes got pushed further and further back in the supply closet and eventually were forgotten. When we moved late last summer, they resurfaced and were put at the front of the new supply closet ready for action.
Today was a great day to play. It snowed all night last night and has not stopped today. It is a beautiful wonderland outside and our first heavy snow of the season and an excellent day to stay inside. So I pulled out one of the shadow boxes and played. Here is what I made:

The wooden box was painted green and distressed with white paint. The back comes off of this box. The back has a patchwork of various papers glued onto it and then the hotel key glued to it. The faux clock face (available in my shop) has been glued to the top of four painted wooden disks and attached to the back along with the registration paper. The inside of the box has been papered with more papers and stamps. The photo was cut out and attached to a round wooden knob and glued to the floor of the box. The word "Temptation" was stamped with StazOn on the front of the glass. The box was then reassembled. It was so much fun to make and the most difficult part was trying to take a photo of it. With the glass in the front, my amatuer photography abilities were really stretched beyond my capabilities.
Now where are all those kits I have purchased from instructors at Art Continuum????