This year for Christmas with Steve’s family, we drew names of individuals (children, even unborn children, included) for Christmas gifts. For some reason someone then had the bright idea of adding the further restriction that gifts had to be homemade/handmade.

Steve and I were in charge of three gifts: Steve drew his aunt, I drew Steve’s nephew, and “the baby” drew his future uncle. We ended up doing quite a bit of teamwork on all the presents.

Steve’s nephew is seven years old. I forget whether Steve or I had the idea first, but we came up with building a wooden treasure chest. I looked online and found some cool kits, but shipping was prohibitive, so we decided to build our own!

I sketched out a rough plan with dimensions and we went shopping for wood and materials. Our good friends who live a few doors down have all kinds of tools including a table saw, jigsaw, etc., so we went over and spent two weekends cutting the wood, putting it together with wood screws (main frame) and nails (top slats), staining it, and adding hinges, a chain on the inside to keep the lid from opening too far, and a latch and small padlock. We read some stuff on making real wood joins but it seemed too complicated for the short timeframe we were working with (plus the fact that neither of us had any experience making wood joins!), and let’s face it, we didn’t think a seven-year-old would care! Steve and I pretty much worked equally on the chest together even though it was technically “my” project.

Given that this was my first real experience using power tools and building a “real” item out of wood and that we made up our own plans, I thought the chest turned out really great! Here are a few photos, you can see the rest on Flickr:

Next, we attempted to make wooden pens for Steve’s aunt and brother-in-law. My sister’s husband has a lathe and other tools necessary for making wooden pens in addition to a lot of the wooden blocks (called “blanks”), so I went online and bought two pen kits — the metal pieces that make up the rest of the pen. We then spent three weekends driving out to their house to use his tools. Unfortunately, I had apparently picked a style of pen kit that was complicated to work with, and my brother in law didn’t have any experience with that type and couldn’t help us. After using up about 5 different blanks and being generally unsuccessful, we got frustrated with the whole thing and decided to think of alternative homemade presents to give!

Steve was stuck for a while on what to do for his aunt until his mom suggested that we make her a shadowbox. We couldn’t have done this without his mom, who spent some time pulling out old photos for us to use. Steve ended up focusing on photos of his mom and aunt. I pulled out various materials and arranged them in the box for him to pick from and he made executive decisions on what to include. I handled most of the assembly, although Steve trimmed the photos and bored the holes in the side of the cardboard frame for the clothesline. He also picked out the small picture frame and we used a more current photo. (I’m really into the frame-within-a-frame idea.)

Here’s the final result. It’s interesting how cameras differ from the human eye — the ribbon shows up much more “orangey” in this picture; in person, it looks like the same shade as the red dresses in the main photo.

Two down, one more to go. I was having some problems coming up with presents for the baby to give our brother-in-law. Thinking about our former success with wood, I thought about making a mancala game with a wooden board that could fold in half and latch to be “travel-friendly” and even bought some materials, but returned them all as I didn’t think it was that great of an idea and might just end up collecting dust in the long run!

As the day drew near, I finally decided to do a two-part present. I ordered a photo calendar through Costco, uploading family pictures and adding family birthdays and anniversaries. Then, I spent the weekend before Christmas making homemade chocolate-covered gummy bears, his favorite sweet snack. It was a little time-consuming but pretty easy to do — we slowly melted chocolate chips in the microwave, stabbed gummy bears with toothpicks, and swirled them around in the chocolate. I put them in a large Coke glass, found at a thrift store — our brother-in-law has some Coke paraphernalia that he’s collected over the years — and wrapped it all up with holiday-colored plastic wrap.

While it was at times stressful and frustrating, we found that making presents for a few individuals was overall a very rewarding experience for both the giver and the receiver!

Two creativity tools have come across my way recently that I’m excited to start using.

Wreck This Journal – This book – journal – grown-up coloring book – creative tool by Keri Smith recently arrived at my home after I read about it at DIYPlanner.com. Each page has instructions that you can interpret and follow, such as “fill this page with circles” or “drip something here.” If you’ve ever had a pristine Moleskine that you didn’t touch for years, this is a book that gives you free license to ruin it, scribble in it, and actually use it to stimulate creativity. The blog (linked above) has a gallery of photos from people who have used this book and more information about the book itself, which you can find at any major bookseller.

The Majency Oracle, Deck 1 – James Bickers sent me an email to let me know about this free deck of creative prompts (and I see that Dave has already plugged it, but I’ll jump on the bandwagon). Each card has a short phrase, meant to jog your mind into creating a story or image around it that you can then run with in your creative medium of your choice. The zip download comes with a PDF of ready-to-print 3×5 cards; they look pretty, and did I mention that they’re free? (Of course — if you do find these useful, I’m sure James would appreciate a small donation!)

If you’ve used any cool creativity tools, please share them in the comments!

This weekend, some of my friends and I helped to paint a room. Julie invited us to help her paint her spare room for her nephew with a fun blue-green color scheme and said that she was thinking of doing some kind of mural, as well, with a quote from Guess How Much I Love You: “I love you to the moon and back.”

Here was the final result:

I must brag about my creative friends — Holly, who designed the mural and did the frogs (with some “fill in” help from Julie), Julie, who painted the moon, and Liz (a.k.a fellow baby shower decor designer), who came up with the idea for the stripe of blue around the rest of the room and was our general manager for the day. My bragging rights come in from doing the lettering and painting the lily pad. We all prepped the room together and painted in stages; both colors needed two coats and we had to wait for the blue to dry before taping it off to do the green. The blue bled a little bit behind the painter’s tape; I figured out that if we cut in the edges of the green very carefully with a paintbrush instead of simply rolling over it, that problem could be avoided — and it worked!

It took about eight hours (with a short break for pizza) from start to finish, and we were all very pleased with it by the end. Except for Julie’s nephew, who was just slightly disappointed that Holly didn’t have time to make a dragon on the other wall, too, as planned…

I am very very very excited to announce that my new “side business” is finally opening its virtual doors. VERY.

Introducing Custom Shadow Box at www.customshadowbox.com!

Business plan? What business plan?

The [rather uncreatively named] business is meant to be a side project for me. I enjoy working with my hands, and this is an opportunity to try to get some additional income while doing something else I love. I’m not expecting a high volume of orders because of the price point, so I expect to show a loss at the end of this year (for the shadow box side business part, anyway). The startup costs weren’t high, but I did invest a nice chunk of change into professional photography in addition to fictitious name filing fees.

Nevertheless, this has been a great (albeit sometimes frustrating) way to learn about selling tangible product in California, which involves getting a reseller license, dealing with sales tax, and all that fun stuff. Making the web site was also a great learning opportunity. More about that in a bit.

Beginnings

It started with a wedding present given to my sister back when she got married. A friend had arranged the invitation artistically in a small shadow box with silk floral accents that matched the colors of the invitation. I always thought it was a cool idea, but it wasn’t until my coworker got married that I finally tried it out. Their invitations were wrapped in orange vellum with a gorgeous patterned ribbon. My coworker had gerbera daisies in her wedding, so I picked some silk flowers that matched the invitation and put it together.

Fast forward to sometime last year. I was brainstorming ways that I could develop alternative streams of income. By this time, I’d created some shadow boxes to display my own wedding photos and invitations and created a couple more for other friends, as several of my friends were conveniently getting married. I played with the idea of making custom shadow boxes for money and sketched out some pricing ideas. Come 2007, I decided that one of my main goals for the year would be to get this new business idea up and running.

Process

First, the logo. Below, you can see the logo evolution. I started with a simple 3D box shape created in Illustrator and eventually made the frame “thicker” to give it some depth. While I liked the inner shadow effect (large upper right), I eventually moved the shadow in front of the box so that I could do cool things with Jason Gaylor-inspired flowers. I liked my original wild tangle of flowers (third row left), but when reduced to logo size it was too hard to tell what they were (my sister Angela’s feedback), so I simplified the shapes for the actual logo itself. I didn’t want the time I spent on the crazy flowers to go to waste, however, so you’ll see that they show up in other parts of the site.

My original logo and web site design color was teal, but my graphic designer sister said that I should pick more neutral colors so that the site wouldn’t clash with my product pictures. Above you can see my attempts at choosing other colors. Eventually I figured out that it would work best to have the shadow box mark in one color and the text and the rest of the site to be in another color. I also made the page titles green to add some additional oomph (that’s a technical term, by the way).

The web site design went very smoothly. I used my wild flower mass as a page background and already had in mind the kind of feel and style I wanted for the web site, which I’d describe as clean and web 2.0-ish.

The web site development, on the other hand, was a fun learning experience and challenge:

• I tried to use as-clean-as-possible HTML for the markup. I generally suffer from divitis so this was my attempt to use as few divs as possible. (Note – I don’t think the site validates 100% quite yet. Still working out some of the kinks.)
• I bought DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith and then completely redid the gallery page to use better markup, with a fancy Javascript file controlling the application of classes.
• I also used DOM scripting to get the order page more interactive, with prices highlighting as you select options and the bottom invoice amount automatically updating as you “build” your shadow box.
• I got to experiment with a totally new illustration style. More below.

There are still some challenges with the order page that I haven’t figured out how to deal with. There’s something about my script that won’t allow me to automatically put the focus on a text field after selecting a radio button (such as Calligraphy Options). Also, if you leave the page and then go back to the order form, the radio buttons are selected but the Javascript stuff has all been reset so the prices aren’t highlighted and the order total is “$0.” Not sure what to do about that either. If you’re a Javascript expert and would like to provide some tips or want to monkey around with my code, please do!

The next step was to get some product photography. I had put in some temporary pictures into my gallery of older shadow boxes I had created and photographed. Some of the photographs were okay (such as the one used on the home page which had removable glass) but the photos of black frames were generally not usable because of reflections on the glass. I chose Bonnie Anglin from Anglin Art and Design because of her experience with product photography, although I think I offered her a new challenge with photographing glass-faced picture frames! You can see her great results on the gallery page; she took all the photos except the first one and the third one.

At about this point, I also decided that I wanted to put some illustrations on the how it works page, which was text-heavy and boring. I didn’t think my typical comic style would work, so I contacted Paige Pooler to see if she was available. Unfortunately, she wasn’t, but I was inspired to try out a different style of illustration and see how far I could take it. You may remember my first attempts; that specific portrait ended up on my about page. The other illustrations took a while to complete because of a bout of procrastination, but I’m very very pleased with how they turned out. Notice that I managed to incorporate the wild-flowers in the illustrations as well. See the other illustrations on the how it works page.

Using code culled from other projects, I finished up the web site by getting the order form to work, then actually shipped shadow boxes (long-belated wedding presents) to test the shipping price. US Priority Mail ended up being the most cost-efficient way to ship. I ordered boxes from Uline although I still need to find a source for bubble wrap (Office Max will do for now).

And this morning, I went live!

Next steps, and how you can help!

Things I still need to do:

• research bubble wrap costs and find a source
• create business card and brochure
• create invoice template
• finish baby shadow boxes for friends (need to add baby photo) and take photographs for gallery

How you can help:

• Kindly spread the word! Word of mouth, blogs, anything will help.
• Provide feedback about the general business idea, site, and price point.
• See a typo? Let me know!

On Sunday, I visited a local toy store for some initial consultation. The husband-wife pair, who had taken over the store about a year ago, were going to add a bunch of inventory to their online store and wanted my help. I went in-person to observe their process so that I could see if I was the right person to help them or not.

The previous owner had put together an ASP web site linked to a database. As it turned out, the actual process of entering product information was pretty easy, just time-consuming. The big hangup in the process was that they didn’t know how to use or leverage Photoshop properly to create the web versions of product images.

I told them that they should find a cheap student to help them enter in product information but offered a half-hour of paid training to show them how to streamline their Photoshop setup. Rather than have me come back another time, they opted to have me do the training right then and there.

I created an action that would crop an image and save three versions for the web site. I showed them how to reorganize their product image folders so that they had two folders to use for “processing.” Then I stepped aside, had the husband sit down, and walked him through the magic of automation and batch processing. I also gave some other gentle tips for being more efficient with the computer in general — changing the Explorer view to “thumbnail” so that he didn’t have to try to remember the filename but could look at the picture visually, using the keyboard to flip through Photoshop commands instead of tedious point-and-clicking, how to Shift- and Ctrl-click multiple files at once, and uploading multiple files at once instead of three at a time. At the end of 30 minutes, his eyes were alight. “This is sooooo cool!!!! I can’t believe how much time this is going to save!” The energy and enthusiasm in the room were palpable.

This experience affirmed a relatively recent Thing I’ve been learning about myself: I like to design, but I love to teach. I like helping others to get better at things, get more efficient. I like sharing knowledge — and getting paid for it was nice, too. I’m not dropping all my current work to dive into teaching, but I can see myself moving more towards situations which would involve some teaching or training.

I’m reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit and thought it would be fun to “blog through it.” Early in the book, she encourages you to answer 33 questions that help you to form your “creative autobiography” to help understand your creative identity. So here goes!!

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
   I have a hard time remembering back… so I’ll go to first grade, where we were putting together a booklet about ourselves and our school. I remember being very proud of the drawing I made of the front of the school.
2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?
   Again, hard to remember back. I’m sure my teacher and family complimented it, and my sisters added it to my scrapbook. I still have it.
3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?
   “Idea” could be interpreted in so many ways…
   Best idea for my career was choosing to pursue web design (instead of becoming a math teacher).
   Best work-of-art idea I’ve ever had was a design for a stained-glass box that I made in high school.
   Best original invention (there aren’t many of these), I made a one-page piano-page turner out of scrap wood and string when I was nine or ten.
   Recent best idea was to pursue my dream of playing the harp.
   Best idea(s) for life: Saying “yes” to God, and saying “yes” to UC Davis instead of UC Berkeley so that I could meet Steve and say “yes” to him when he asked me to marry him.
4. What made it great in your mind?
   Web design: I don’t think I was really cut out to be a high school teacher. My career path has led me to great friends, a daily job that I love, and a published book.
   Stained glass box: What can I say, it’s gorgeous.
   Piano page-turner: It was practical while being silly, and I came up with the idea all by myself.
   Harp: Why wait to pursue a dream?
   Life: These were some of the most important decisions I could have made, and I do not regret any of them.
5. What is the dumbest idea?
   To be a math major in college.
6. What made it stupid?
   I was trying to prove to others that I was “smart,” not just “creative,” and to prove to myself that I could meet the challenge. What a waste of thousands of dollars of tuition and books! I’m not saying the education wasn’t valuable, but I count this as “stupid” because of my prideful motives.
7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?
   In the book, Twyla Tharp answers this question for #3, but I think it’s a bit ambiguous so I will answer for both 3 and 6.
   Web design: My sister Leslie and her husband generously flew me out to Boston the summer of my junior year in college and lined up an internship for me with an online educational company. I had to learn basic HTML and use Photoshop to help put together some educational materials and I was hooked. I came home, bought a PC (to replace the old old Mac Plus I had inherited), and started learning more.
   Stained glass box: We had to sketch the design for the top of the box. I can’t connect the dots – the idea “just came to me.” (With the way I’m hyping this thing up, I’ll have to take a picture of the box someday.)
   Piano page-turner: I was trying to think of an easy way to turn a piano page while playing, and imagined a lever/pulley system.
   Harp: A book I read in junior high (I don’t even remember the plot or title now) had a girl as the main character who played the harp. Part of the plot involved her wheeling her harp out somewhere on the street and playing it. I’ve wanted to play the harp ever since. For the rest of the story, see my Harp Adventures post.
   Life: God – Growing up in a strong religious family started me off, and my own personal experiences have helped to cement my faith. UC Davis – A fat scholarship tipped the balance. Steve – We met playing pickup basketball at 6:30 in the morning my senior year of college and became friends. The next fall, we both happened to move into houses a block apart which also happened to be a bit far from campus and everything else. We both only had bikes, and started hanging out A LOT. It finally became official. A year later, he proposed, and then we got married.
   Math major: I wasn’t especially “into” math in high school, but in my freshman year of college, I had The Best Teacher Ever for calculus. I thought I would like to be a teacher like him, but at that time didn’t have the clarity of seeing that I was inspired by the fact that he was a good teacher, not by mathematics itself. Then I started noticing the awe and surprise that came into people’s voices when I would mention that I was “thinking” about majoring in math. “Not design?” Sick of being put into a box, I went ahead and tried to break out of it.
8. What is your creative ambition?
   I might have a few. I’d like to play harp well enough that I could perform (weddings, perhaps?). I’d like to write and publish another book, although I don’t know on what. I’d like to successfully start this side business I’ve been trying to get off the ground and break even sooner than later. In an overall and slightly vague summary, I suppose my creative ambition is to continue to refine the skills I already have and to keep growing and learning by trying new things.
9. What are the obstacles to this ambition?
   Time is limited, as are finances. For the side business, I get easily confused by sales tax rules and the plethora of forms I have to fill out.
10. What are the vital steps to achieving this ambition?
    Harp: Practice, practice, practice!
    Book: Keep blogging to practice writing and continue to develop my skills and obtain new experiences. Perhaps a topic will come.
    Side business: Get the nitty-gritty details worked out. Find one of those free small business help centers.
11. How do you begin your day?
    I wake up when Steve does, which is between 4:30-6 depending on his job. I make his lunch, then start my routines. See #12.
12. What are your habits? What patterns do you repeat?
    After Steve leaves, I’ll usually check email/read blogs, then walk or run, shower, spend some time reading the Bible, journaling, and praying, eat breakfast, and if I’m lucky, remember to brush my teeth and hair. Then, back to my desk to plan my day and start working. Usually I blog before I start paid work. I usually take a lunch break, and read while I eat (either a library book or blogs). At the end of my workday, I practice harp and then make dinner and hang out with Steve. On weekends, a common pattern that shows up on Saturdays (when we are in town) is going to the library, video store, and thrift stores.
13. Describe your first successful creative act.
    Hm. How do you define “successful”? I’ll narrow this question to “financial success.” I think the first time I got paid for a creative act was my junior year of high school, during the “scratchboard” unit (silvery metal overlaid with black ink, and you scratch it away with a sharp stylus). I did some pretty realistic cat pictures, and my art teacher said that someone (his wife?) wanted to commission me to do another one. I think I got paid $20 or $25, which seemed like a fortune to me at the time.
14. Describe your second successful creative act.
    I’m probably forgetting some things in between, but the next time I got paid cash for creative work was winning a multi-cultural poster contest my senior year of high school. The poster had faces of people of various ethnicities around a globe with some slogan on it, done in colored pencil. I won $50.
15. Compare them.
    Commissioned art vs. winning a contest… I don’t remember having any fears of failure in either situation. Mediums were different (scratchboard vs. colored pencil) but both involved illustration. I worked from photographs for both.
16. What are your attitudes toward: money, power, praise, rivals, work, play?
    Money – Feel guilty that I should “be managing it better.” Happy with charitable giving level.
    Power – Uncomfortable with the idea of having power. Often seems like people with power are not very nice.
    Praise – Can’t accept it unless I accept myself.
    Rivals – Do I have any?
    Work – Fun. I feel blessed to be able to do what I do.
    Play – Important.
17. Which artists do you admire most?
    Reference favorite authors. Specifically picking a few: Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, Madeliene L’Engle, C.S. Lewis.
18. Why are they your role models?
    They clearly express themselves through words. They craft engaging stories that have an authentic core that resonates with me.
19. What do you and your role models have in common?
    Not sure. I don’t know much about their personal lives.
20. Does anyone in your life regularly inspire you?
    My two older sisters. Also reference “Designers I Admire” in blogroll.
21. Who is your muse?
    Reference #20.
22. Define muse.
    According to online dictionaries, a source of inspiration.
23. When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond?
    Usually, “wow.” However — iff they are clearly more intelligent/talented than me, but the rest of their life or character is not admirable, then I’m probably not going to be overly impressed.
24. When faced with stupidity, hostility, intransigence, laziness, or indifference in others, how do you respond?
    Stupidity – Slightly frustrated, but have to shrug it off.
    Hostility – Run away if possible.
    Intransigence (I had to look this one up — “stubbornness” is how I understand it) – Deal with it.
    Laziness – Work even harder. Maybe they’ll catch the fire, and if not, at least I’m getting my stuff done.
    Indifference – Drop it, and find someone else who cares.
25. When faced with impending success or the threat of failure, how do you respond?
    Impending success — Not sure if I’ve been faced with this in a way that is memorable.
    Threat of failure — Want to hide. It takes a lot of work to process through why I’m afraid and what lies about my identity I might be believing.
26. When you work, do you love the process or the result?
    Hmmmmm. Hard choice. Am I allowed to say both? I get very engrossed in the process, but I also find myself grinning over the results. (Embarrassed to admit this, but sometimes I will go back and re-read blogs I’ve written that I thought were especially good!)
27. At what moments do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?
    When I want to start new hobbies or other activities that take up time. For example – I would love to get back into stained glass, drawing, and get better at painting and guitar. I want to make my own hand-made cards. I want to also learn to play a hammered dulcimer, while continuing to take harp lessons. I’d like to travel more w/ hubby, go backpacking more, go to the ocean more. Not enough time….
28. What is your ideal creative activity?
    Making something pretty or cool or tasty.
29. What is your greatest fear?
    Not sure if I have one…?
30. What is the likelihood of either of the answers to the previous two questions happening?
    Highly likely to the first one.
31. Which of your answers would you most like to change?
    #29, because I like to fill out answers properly.
32. What is your idea of mastery?
    Becoming skilled enough at something that you can teach others.
33. What is your greatest dream?
    To have lived well and loved well.