Friday, November 15, 2013

Foul Words

So yesterday I reminded you that it is not too early to start thinking about holiday cards. Now if you have been with me for several years this is an annual thingy which sort of explains why I said it was an annual thingy in the first place.

But it does need repeating every year or so, artists being a very focused and centered lot, they tend to ignore anything less than a slap in the kisser or a large object falling out of the sky.

Not having a large object handy and being a terribly cowardly sort I’ll stick with nagging and nudging and let the bold and the beautiful do all of the physical interventioning.

So it's that time of the year when you ought to be giving some thought to what image you are going to use on your holiday cards. Yes, you know you will even though the post office keeps raising the rates and you don’t really like that branch of the family that moved to Waukegan and you’d like to forget about them all together but then you’d have to explain to the sister who was bitten by Emily Post sometime around high school and never recovered and who will get royally pissed and will do the most terrifying thing in the whole world, she’ll rat you out to your mother.

Now you don’t want to start the new year with mother mad at you so you’ll trudge down to Wally World or Freddy’s and buy that ten dollar box of cards with scenes of New England, (Aren’t you ashamed? New England when the foliage around here is as turny and colorful as any New Englander and just because Currier and Ives convinced everyone that fall only comes in New England is no excuse for not using scenes of the fall in Oregon and why don’t you just give up and turn in your webbed feet and buy a New England Pats sweatshirt and then see how people treat you when you run into them at the mall when you are out shopping!) or with the jolly old elf himself and go back to the house and dig out the list and send them to all of those people that you don’t really like but you don’t want your sister to get and edge so you might as well and starting the new year with your mother mad at you is a whole lot worse than trusting in Congress to do the right thing so you’d better get a move on before all of the good boxes are gone and you are left with nothing but a choice between the Simpson’s’ Santa and those snowflakes which never look like snow flakes so you’d better get the lead out.

Now here’s a thought, why not pick out something you have already done, get it digitized, either by taking a high quality picture with the digital camera you bought at Goodwill cause you read yesterdays post or scanning it in on the scanner you bought way back when I told you to go out and buy a scanner cause they are dirt cheap and the flatbeds that everyone wants to get rid of make so much better scans than the Mouse-centric all-in-ones. (Had to say it that way cause Disney will get you if you use the mouse’s first name when referring to something that is less than good and might actually be ticky-tacky.)

And with that digital file you are ready to make up your cards.

But wait, there’s more…

You can take that file to Staples or send it to Vistaprint or Zazzle and they will make beautiful seasonal cards out of it and then you won’t have to run the printer night and day and use up ten dozen ink cartridges and have the Long Sufferin in high dudgeon about how much ink you are squandering.


That’s Vistaprint…


and that’s Zazzle…


and this is Staples.

And while you are there you might even glance at all of the other things you could do with those digitized files of your art work and maybe you’ll come up with an idea or two and get in the spirit early and get all of your presents made up for a change and not have to run out to the mall on the night before you know what and miss the football game because you don’t have a present for Uncle Ebenezer and you know what happens to you if you do that so if you don’t want to spend the whole night with a bunch of self-righteous spirits get the ball rolling and see if you can eat, drink and be Mary, no I suppose even though you can be Mary if you want to be in twenty-six states and Hawaii it really should be Merry.

And…

Oh give it up, you knew there’d be one more whinge, when you have done all of that and are ready for some serious sugar plum dancing and deep nestling, think about this…

If you do get cards made with your art and if you do use Zazzle they will let you make the design for sale so maybe you can recoup some of the scheckles that you dropped getting the cards made but even better if you do this for a coupla years then you’ll have two or three or maybe even four designs lying around which you can have reprinted and boxed and then you can sell the boxes just like they do at Wally World and Freddy’s and then the reindeer will leave something besides guano on the roof and while you can make a buck or two from reindeer guano wouldn’t it be nicer and more sanitary to take the bucks from selling seasonal cards, seasonal cards with real art on them done by a real starving artist who would very much not like to be so starving in the next year?

And then you can turn up your nose and that designated finger when someone says those foul words, Currier and Ives.

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