“At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.” M.C. Escher

For the longest time I have said to myself: Self, you have wanted to make greeting cards for a very long time now… so why don’t you get your lazy bones in gear and do it? And I would inevitably answer myself with: Well, because I’m lazy, you see. This prevents me from doing a great many things that I wish to do. So today I decided I would at least get a start on cutting up all the catalogs and magazines I wanted to cut up for the cards that probably ever won’t really exist. Little did I know how painstaking a task it would be. Because I’m rather uptight about these things, you see. I’m entirely too concerned with symmetry and neatness and matchy-matching to really be creative. Something about following the rules and staying in the lines or something. Was I born a Baptist? I digress. So I struggled with even the first step of CUTTING THINGS OUT OF THE EVER-LOVING MAGAZINES. I would tear a pattern out and then it would seem the torn edge wasn’t straight enough of a tear…. Give it a REST already. Artists aren’t neat, they’re sloppy (sometimes). And if I expect to be named among the geniuses (geniuzim?), I better just let that whole trip go or I may slow my own greatness and keep it from really emerging.

I began with a neat stack of catalogs like so:

catalogs from the greatest store on planet Earth.

And after an hour or two of furious cutting and hemming and hawing over the straightness of the edges and OH MY GOSH, I TOTALLY DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD MIX ORANGE AND PINK IN THE SAME OUTFIT we arrive at this post-bomb-like (ish?) scene (which eventually reaches DefCon 1.5 in a matter of about 20 more minutes):

disaster strikes.

But then my hand got a scissor-cramp and I decided that, to make the whole thing worth it I needed to make at least ONE greeting card. And yes, I will insist on using the word ‘greeting’ when I refer to my yet uncreated collection. And I had a friend in mind when I pulled out all the greeting card accoutrements, so I should at LEAST get one together. So this friend will get a sneak peak of the card but won’t know it is coming to her (…or is it him?). Watch your mailboxes, folks.

Of course I needed to tidy up a bit before I could settle in with glue and The Chosen Cutouts For Greeting Card Number 1. Tidying here basically means consolidating anything that was cut out and intended for future use on a greeting card into the same clear box for ease when glancing at it.

The fruit of my tedious and back-breaking labor.

At which point I was able to settle in, break out the glue (and more glue) and create Greeting Card (Number 1) Made Especially For You By Holly Ann Worsham (available out of the trunk of a Gray Mazda 6 near you):

Voila

So I’m no Charley Harper (my hero, will post about him soon). But I’m going to keep trying. Wish me Godspeed, many more free catalogs, and success with the hot glue gun.

~ by andtheivy on Sunday, August 17, 2008.