Director of Community: A Business Card Approach

The Business Card is by far the most impossibly disengaging communication device in modern times. Why can’t we let them go? Maybe like newspapers, the ephemeral journal of our day-to-day existence, in spite of death and starvation, still connects us.

Let’s get together.

That’s what’s said by a business card. And it’s sometimes said so appealingly. Business Cards are professional by nature. So the society they invite is per se public, shameless, and manageable. Puritan, of the dance card type.

In my neck of the woods, business cards all look alike. It’s not necessary to print our damn logo again twenty-thousand times. Use the Search Directory. But. Put people in a community that is larger than the brand, and they need business cards. Identity branding. Pure self promotion, yeah.

But cynical? Gosh no. I am thoroughly taken with browsing the stack of cards in front of me now, the representation of a decade in music publishing. Graphic art, paper art, memorabilia. A network as dense as the width between two cards at the bottom of a stack of two hundred. There is nothing less cynical than the humanity of business cards, and people looking for ways out or ways in.



Get upgraded on ETSY at socialcirclecards.

A Handmade Dress a Day

There is this wonderful blog that every fashionista / crafter reads: A Dress a Day. She finds incredible vintage patterns and dresses across the cybermall and shares them with her readers. Here's my dress for the day -- all handmade all the time (unless it's vintage and I can't resist).

This shop is called Audrey and Grace, and they are a self-described shop for authentic reproductions. They do incredible work at prices that most of us would consider a totally reasonable splurge for a special occasion.

Made with Vintage

I love vintage fabrics. I love vintage anything really, so long as it's not dirty and falling apart. But I have a special attraction to fabrics (and keeping the text / textile connection alive, to paper too). Table cloths, old upholstery, napkins, and stray yardage - just can't pass it up. Here is a new pin cushion I made with the sweetest vintage fabric of all. I am already hoarding a little belt I made for my daughter with it.


What do you think? Could you just sleep on this sweet thing?

I made the ETSY Front Page

It sounds absurd. I have two beautiful kids and a loving husband, and a rewarding job I don't hate. But the highlight of my Thanksgiving holiday was making the Front Page of etsy.com. I grouped together a bunch of items based on their loveliness (I curated.) And then a site administrator showed up in one of my comment fields, and shortly thereafter, my curation was on the main splash page. Isn't it lovely?


Everyone else seemed to like it. I am reading over people's compliments like old love letters. Every time one of my items has made it to the front page (three or four times total), I've gotten about 300 views in 30 minutes. This time, I got 10 views total. Yet I am so proud.

I am also proud of my son and daughter. But that is so very different, of course.

Ithaca Update

Ok. So we're stuck here. Not like we were planning on leaving the area, necessarily, but maybe buying a different house in a handful of years. Maybe five. But no. We're stuck. Like a lot of people I guess. Better stuck than a cardboard box. Which I would just cut up for crafts anyway. But the worst thing is the money mistakes we made, that had we been smarter, we'd be sitting pretty now.

Regret isn't healthy. So moving on.

Pillow Box Talk

I am in love with pillow boxes. Isn't that romantic? All I want to do is make them. All day long. I have been cutting up cereal boxes and hanging file folders like mad. Upcycled, recycled, recraft, repurposed. Whatever. It's cool. It turns a so-so gift into a buried treasure. What..is...in....here...?Wha?...Ahhhh!! But I'm having some difficulty with finding a piece of recycled cardstock large enough to make a pillow box for my pin cushions. This I believe would be the thing finally to get them to sell. No one wants them without the custom-sized, handmade pillow box wrapper. No one. But I believe in the potential of the pillow box. I have 15 pin cushions. Anyone want one in a gift bag? I don't want to steal anyone's images anymore (new pride in myself - artifact of new patriotism - pretty cool) so can't offer you a pic. Owell. Then here's a gratuitous baby June shot.

Oh say can you see?

a.k.a. Jose, can you see? A herald of things to come. I composed a post in my head on the way to work while listening to reports on last night's election results in the U.S. As with most times I hear Obama speak, I get the chills and tear up. (This by the way seems to make my mother craaazy. She seems to hate the idea that we would look up to a politician with sincere hope in his leadership. She's not a cynical person, but during the campaign leading up to this election, she has seemed resentful about the fact that so many of us are not cynical.) But my post was about last night's spontaneous outpouring of good will about race. I can't believe I just said those words all in a row: outpouring of good will about race. It was an unexpected joy last night to witness the joy of black America in the election of a black man. Looking back, it is a wonderful thing that Obama ixnayed the aceray subject so early on. It prevented us from making race a negative issue, for now all we have is pride in ourselves for our own risk-taking, and exuberance in the good fortune of our neighbors and the long-awaited arrival of boundlessness for their children. I hadn't realized last night, in the presence of new possibility, what that absence must have felt like for them.