Foxy Fox and His Amazing Tail
Me and My Pioneer Rabbit, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Dear June, I Think You Are Mistaken
You and Me, Eggs Together
Outfit No. 12
Wordcake Cards
When friend and food blogger Jen Stevenson of Under the Table wanted to start her own writing business, she came to me asking advice about collateral. She had chosen Wordcake Communications as her business name and needed a logo, business cards and a simple website to get the business going. “I was thinking I could have a big cake, with the word Wordcake on it!” she said, giving me creative rein with a theme. I replied with a somewhat muffled “Let’s see what we can do with that…”, and got to work.
Riffing on the idea of frosting, I found this typography sample in an ornaments and borders book and transformed it into Wordcake.
The idea of a sophisticated take on a “cake on a platter” appealed to me since Jen is the epitome of a hostess with the mostess, even when she is stuffing your gullet with stinky cheeses and sweet confections. However, Jen wasn’t rolling in dough from creative writing (yet), so an economic solution was needed that would still help her stand out. I scoured the internet for an oval punch that could take the place of a diecut. Turns out, crafters have thought of almost everything, so after a bit of sleuthing I found several oval punches, perfect for the miniature platter shape that her business cards would become.
The cards were printed digitally and then hand punched by Jen in about an hour, after which she claimed she’d sprained her thumb. I told her she would have to toughen up, because once The Onion started calling and she had to churn out snarky story upon snarky story in record time, her thumb would have no reprieve.
Outfit No. 11
OK, OK, OK
The Early Years: A Retrospective Told in Buttons and Pins
Like most kids I collected various things throughout my childhood, including stuffed animals, horse figurines, knives with antler handles, stamps, and a button collection. Most of my collections were given away or sold at garage sales over the years as they lost meaning or garnered scorn for their age inappropriateness (although I still keep my prize horses boxed up in the basement). Somehow, my button collection escaped the purging episodes of my mother, myself, and the multiple moves I went through.
So when my buttons resurfaced recently, I wondered…would they reveal anything about my childhood that I had forgotten? Would they say anything about my current state, 20 years later? Given the current button craze, how would my buttons stack up? Was it time to finally purge my button collection, two decades too late?
I compiled my favorite buttons (namely, the ones I actually remember) into a mini-autobiography. Come on, nobody else was going to write it, so I took matters into my own hands. Turns out, most people like it when you hand them an autobiography instead of a business card.
Continue reading “The Early Years: A Retrospective Told in Buttons and Pins”