Making an impression . . .

How to make a striking and memorable impression with my first blog post? Hmmm. How about taking that a little more literally?


I'm currently in the throws of remaking my store front on Etsy and attempting to actually execute a few art projects I've had on my heart for some time now. It has me in a very happy-hap-hazard way. Despite the erratic way in which I've been working, there are a few results and I've posted the beginnings here for you.


So, back to literal impressions - these are paper embossings I've been doing by hand on light-weight, cotton-rag paper, using tin-embossing tools. I'm loving the way these turn out! However, I cannot use my right hand for the rest of the day after completing one. This is a bit inconvenient. I'm going to try an even lighter weight paper on the next one. If this does not solve the hand-ache problem, I'm hoping that practice will strengthen my hand muscles. (I'm a notoriously light-touch when drawing - art profs used to yell at me to "press down".) Either way I don't intend to stop doing them.

As to what these embossings are - initially, I was going to name my shop "Efemera". That didn't really work; somehow it brings up visions of libraries. I love libraries, but that's not what my art is all about. And the lettering style is a bit more "Ren Faire" than I intended. I'm not a very focused artist. My creative productivity manifests itself rather inconsistently and my inspirations tend to be incoherent. Simply put, my "muse" suffers from attention deficit disorder. She needs therapy. "House of Trouble" surfaced while I was looking at old carnival and sanatorium images on Google. And there it is.

The centauress is what I imagine my muse would look like if she appeared in bodily form. Mythical, strong, and a little, well, bizarre, but not unfriendly. I intend to Photoshop her into the "House of Trouble" lettering to create a banner/logo for my store. We'll see how that goes.

Other plans include creating a stamp or embosser with the logo for creating hangtags, letterhead, and other such nonsense. I will be impressed if any of those materialize - maybe your watching my progress on this blog will inspire me to more responsible execution. Please keep an eye on me!

Cheers,
Catherine