The Hyphen House

My mom still has her electric typewriter from college. It currently lives in a cabinet and serves to prop up a TV, but she still has it. She likes to remind me that "back in her day" all papers had to be typed. There were no computers to make it easy. As a layout editor for her university newspaper, I'm sure that was painful. But so are computers.

Anyway... I have little to no creative outlet at present b/c my dissertation is sucking the life out of me. So sometimes I get an uncontrollable urge to make something. Anything. I drew inspiration from several websites to create these valentine cards for my family.  I used Mom's old typewriter, some card stock, stickers, double-sided foam squares, and stamps.

When I create, I like to take things that evoke one feeling and combine them with something totally different (like the sports/bridal magazine collages). In this case, typewritten notes seem office-y or harsh to me, so I wanted to capture the nostalgia I feel for typewriters by making something romantic. (Yes, I even over-analyze my DIY projects!)

I started with scrap white card stock and fed it through the typewriter. The size of the type-written portion determined the size of the card. I folded the red card stock in half and glued the white on top of it. The insides are stamped with white ink to stand out on the red. I x-ed over the parts where I mis-typed and I think it's a bit more artistic that way.

 

 

Eric and I saw Julie and Julia tonight, which is a delightful film that I actually found really inspiring. I love that Julia Child didn't discover her passion in cooking until her 40s, and worked on her book for over 8 years before it finally was published. Julie Powell gained her notoriety by cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook - 500 something recipes in 365 days - and blogging about it.

After the movie, I asked Eric what he would blog about for a year. We didn't come up with something right away. But plenty of people have done it. Like the "Year of Slow-Cooking" blog by a woman who made something in her crockpot everyday - from casseroles to breads to desserts. Or Kevin Roose, whose "Unlikely Disciple" blog followed his "study abroad" year at Liberty University.

I've actually had some pretty good ideas, but I'll keep them to myself in case this whole doctorate things doesn't work out. (haha) It's just fun to think about.

I've been inspired by the creative projects of Shauna Maness, so I've been dabbling a bit this week. I love to do collages. It doesn't require too much artistic talent but stretches my creative juices. Normally I save the same sorts of magazines, but this time I decided to branch out.

I don't follow sports at all. Apart from attending the occasional Astros game and becoming quite the patriot during the Olympics, I'm just not into it. So I took Eric's last ESPN magazine and cut out some of the sports metaphors. (I will give the mag credit, though... in March they featured a pregnant WNBA player on the cover and dedicated the issue to Women's History Month. Three cheers!) Anyway, I don't connect with sports metaphors generally, so I thought it would be a fun experiment. I cut them apart and wove them into poetry I created as I went along. Here's the result:



Then, I took a great article cover shot with a baseball, stuck it in the center, and surrounded it with flowers from an old bridal magazine. I wanted to blend two completely different publications, marketed with such gusto to two very different crowds:



And tonight for date night, Eric and I "collagabrated" as he called it to create what I think is an awesome collage. We used mostly travel magazines, and he had the idea to write poetic lines inspired by the "Color of Love" clipping. For example, I wrote, "Shine like the deep orange color of the earth that cradles us." Together we can be quite clever:



I hope you'll do something creative today!