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Collage Design Square 1 - #219-001F
road kill
The Art Continuum in Cleveland was even better than last year. "Practice makes perfect," says Ginny Carter, doyen of the show. Many said that the "goodie book" was worth the price of admission all by itself. It has already become a collectors item and I honestly expect to see a complete set offered for sale one day on Ebay.Deb Shipley and I handled the booth duties and the Friday night, Saturday format proved itself again as the way to go. Seems that most people will squeeze their spending into the available hours and this allows the vendors to take Sunday off along with the Big Guy. Oh yes, a note from Ginny - next year she has not allowed the hotel to book an early affair for the ballroom (no silly wedding or Bar Mitzvah) on Saturday night and thus she will have normal hours, starting the show at 9:00 AM and ending around 4:00 PM. I felt so sorry for the poor guy who drove in with his wife from Pittsburgh only to arrive at 1:45 PM and find that they had only 15 minutes left to peruse the wares!
Only one week to Queenfest! I will be teaching my Amulet Spirit Guide Vessel class on Thursday, November 11th. Tisha and Kat tell me there are a few spots left, so contact them quickly to sign up. There was a waiting list for the class in both Daytona and Cleveland and a number of crafters were sorely disappointed. Due to demand for teaching spots, the producers have limited each teacher to one class only, thus I will not be giving my Fetish Pin class. And Laurel it is FETISH not FETUS as I am an artist not an OB/GYN. (Hey guys I don't make this stuff up, I'm not that good.)
Queenfest, the show, runs on Friday and Saturday, the 12th and 13th respectively. No rubber from me this time as I will be taking an artist's table only. Less work for mother and I get a chance to concentrate on my other passions, like beads and polymer clay. This will also give me more time to chat, so stop by and say "hello." I am bringing the Hun along to run the register so you can chat him up, too! (I am firmly convinced that he was a senior lieutenant to Attila and primarily responsible for the poor attitude evidenced by the Mongol hoards.)
I will be teaching several classes at Stamptacular in Las Vegas for Mary Senn in mid-January, including the Spirit Guide Vessels and Fetish Pins. This will also offer me a chance to rape and pillage Quartsite (or is it Quartzite?) on the way back. I shutter at the thought of the Hun roaming the Vegas strip while I am sweating it out over a hot toaster oven. I have already taken away his credit cards in anticipation of the trip. He has told me that he is saving up his allowance for a really big run at the Black Jack tables. I have no idea how far he thinks $38 will take him.
The next big show for me after that will be Lori Blaauw's State Of The Arts 2000 in Oakland, California in April 2000. (It feels so weird to write that number.) This one is going to be a winner and is patterned along the lines of the mixed media event that Tisha Moore innovated in Seattle and Donna Kazee and Ginny Carter have refined in Daytona and Cleveland. A continuation of the original West coast venue.
Collage Design Square 2 - #219-002F
que sera (ok, ok i had to say it just once)
My saying for the New Millennium - Everything on the calendar takes longer than anticipated (wait until you see what I have to say about the new catalog.) Sheila and I are working diligently on the new bead kit designs. And working and working...As readers of the last newsletter will know we have decided to offer super high quality, limited edition bead kits, with antique and/or specially designed focal beads. Between Embellishment and the follow-up orders, about 65% of each edition is now sold. For the full story and great photos check us out at: http://Beads.ERAGraphics.com (I do not know why I capitalize this since web addresses are case insensitive, but I do) and tell us what you think.
the new new catalog
How ever long you estimate a job to take, double it and add on 200%. As of the last newsletter is was only a 100% add-on. I accept the public embarrassment of my failure to meet the September deadline. Now this is a reason not an excuse, but the Art Continuum in Cleveland, the flood of new orders (twice that of last year at this time), several new plates and the odd logo design for new businesses, and something had to give. Sorry it was the catalog but the behemoth is sitting there in this big folder staring at me just waiting to suck up every last erg of energy I have left. I will get to it but this time no promises.
get ready to grab!
grab bag alert! check the web site now!
For those of you who did not read the last newsletter, and that seems silly since all of you signed up for subsequent newsletters after reading the last newsletter, so let's say for you new readers (since this is posted on the web site) and those of you with short memories, I will repeat what I said last time on grab bags.The grab bag specials posted on the web site were popular beyond my wildest expectations. Contrary to popular belief, and contrary to that of many of the other stamp companies out there who offer grab bags, I do not throw in junk, doubles and/or seconds. OK I do put in on occasion a few of the dies that are overstocked at the moment, the result of being on the same plate as an out-of-stock stamp and thus is pressed at the same time. I offer a variety in size and style, the only limitation being that I do the selection. I have even, on request, made up bags with no duplicates for multiple bag orders.
Please understand I really do not make money on this deal (12 dies for $10) but do it to keep my inventory at a manageable level and to provide an occasional special to my great customers. Thus, grab bags are a special event and they will appear sporadically AND FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. When the expiration date arrives they are no more. To all of you who wrote, E-mailed and called, all I can say is keep watching the web site for the next offering and act fast.
By-the-way, no guarantees of no duplicates with previous grab bags. If you happen to get one or two dupes, please still consider it a good deal and give the duplicate dies to a friend.
Also check out Diane Miller's A Monthly Rubber Stamps Club. Each company offers a monthly special.
Collage Design Square 3 - #219-003F
chez hun
Due to overwhelming reader demand I have decided to continue the inclusion of a recipe from the Hun in each issue of the newsletter. He wants to say thank you to both of the readers who wrote in to say how much they like his creative effort, especially his mother.The following is actually a condiment that he has developed and is continually refining. It is spectacular with chicken, fish or meat. He says it is simple to make, but to him anything less than three hours in the kitchen is fast food. I'll let him speak directly to you below - his one chance out of the cage.
ONION MARMALADE
Caramelized onions are one of the true glories of the kitchen. Cooking eliminates the volatiles in the onions which cause the sharpness and bite. The longer you cook the onions, the more the acids are driven off and the sugar is revealed. I use red onions for this recipe because they have more sugar than the white or yellow varieties. This recipe is great because it keeps for a very long time in the fridge, so the effort is worthwhile. This recipe uses three ingredients you will probably have to go out and buy. Don't worry, they are inexpensive and you will like this marmalade so much your family will ask you to make it again and again. When anyone asks you for the recipe leave out the bitters and they will go crazy trying to duplicate it.The only tricky part here is caramelizing the onions. You have to get them as brown as possible without burning them. There are two way to go about this - long and slow or fast and hot. I have done it both ways. In the restaurant you set up a rondo (a big round brassier pan that covers four burners) and let the onions cook for five or six hours on low heat. At home I almost always use the hot and fast method. You must watch the onions at all times with this method and cannot get lost stamping or some such. Rather than continuing to keep adding oil to keep the onions from sticking to the pan, I add small amounts of water or wine (white or red). This also serves to deglaze (liquefy) the wonderful brown bits that form on the bottom of the pan.
Last point - after caramelizing the onions, let each of the liquid additions cook down to an almost dry pan before adding the next. This is called layering and is a trick I learned from a terrific chef. This technique creates distinctive layers of flavor that you cannot achieve when you add all the ingredients at once. It takes a little longer but is worth it in the end result. The final consistency of the confit is established by the amount of reduction you do to the last addition, i.e., loose or stiff. I like it a bit on the stiff side.
- 3 lb. Red Onions, peeled and thinly sliced
- 1/3 cup Pomegranate molasses*
- 1/4 cup Honey
- 3 Tablespoon Rice Wine vinegar**
- Tabasco Sauce
- 2 teaspoon Ginger Juice (peel and grate raw ginger. Squeeze the grated ginger in the corner of a kitchen towel to extract the juice. Ginger juice is also now sold in bottles.)
- 1/2 teaspoon Angostura Bitters***
- Caramelize the onions in a neutral oil such as peanut or canola.
- Add the Pomegranate molasses and cook down on a medium high heat until almost dry.
- Add the honey and cook until almost dry.
- Add the vinegar, Tabasco, ginger juice and bitters and cook to final consistancy.
** Rice wine vinegar is a Japanese vinegar that is very mild and sweet. I use it all the time in my cooking. It is generally available next to the soy sauce in most markets. Also Ethnic Grocer carries several brands.
*** Angostura Bitters is a condiment developed in the 1830s, made with water, alcohol and vegetable extracts. It has long been used to make a Manhattan (cocktail). It is a wonderful item to experiment with in various dishes and a little goes a long way. Around $2.50 in the sauce section of your market, next to the Tabasco and Worcestershire.
new books i love
I am not going to go into a long and drawn out review of new craft books here - just not enough time. However, here are three new books I just flipped over. They are truly a cut above the rest of the field and are definitely worth a look.Stamp Art by Sharilyn Miller, Rockport Publishers, $21.99, paper. This is the very same Sharilyn Miller who edits Somerset Studio magazine. And the same verve and quality is brought to the book that she evidences in the magazine. All I can say is WOW! Luscious pictures, great projects, wonderful artists.
Making Memory Books By Hand by Kristina Feliciano, Rockport Publishers, $21.99, paper. Finally something different in memory books - a real art book approach. Loved the great ideas, breath of different projects and clear instructions.
Making Books and Journals by Constance E. Richards, Lark Books, $14.95, paper. Very well done!
Collage Design Square 4 - #219-004F
new rubber economics
Believe it or not over half of my new orders specify unmounted dies. We have been over this in previous newsletters, but it seems to me that this approach is really catching on. Sammi Smith was turned on to this approach from the newsletter and she called me and we had a real heart to heart on the subject. She now orders more than twice as much as she did before because unmounted are so much cheaper. Right on!
kerchunk!
A great zine for online stampers, Kerchunk cannot be beat. (As for the name it is the sound the stamp makes when hitting the paper.) Want to find something about art rubber stamps on the web? Well, Kerchunk has a link to it no matter what you're looking for. The editor is Christina Gibbs, our very own web mistress, better known as Xina the Terrific. You can find this great zine at: www.Kerchunk.com.
bead tips
Great glass beads at a wonderful price are coming in from India. However, they are very poorly finished and the raw edge around the hole will often cut the thread when stringing or when wearing. However, do not pass on these little beauties for their faults can by tamed with a little clear nail polish (the beaders best friend) around the hole on both sides of the bead.
never mind!
To make a long story short we now accept Credit Card orders with no minimums. (It's against Visa and Master Card rules to set a minimum.) To those of you we have inconvenienced in the past - Sorry. However, we still cannot accept credit cards for just a catalog, we lose money on each one as it is. A check or money order will do the trick.
collage packs - boola, boola!
OOPS! That's collage not college. Oh well, I keep getting it wrong. Web Mistress Xina (Christina when she is not on Zoron fighting the dark forces) is a champion pack rat. She has a world class collection of some of the greatest ephemera known to man or beast. Wondrous postage stamps (used, of course), scraps of hand made paper, maps, and on and on. She is a great collage artist and, being the careful person she is, cannot bear to throw anything potentially useful out (the stamp She Who Saves Everything #50-004 was inspired by her.)After almost getting crushed by a falling pile of stuff last weekend she has come to her senses and is packaging up a portion of her stash for sale. You are the winner if you collage! The prices are modest and the loot is huge. Order through ERA Graphics when you order your stamps and such. The Silver Pennies Collage Collection includes four types of packs and because of the quirky aspects of the collection process, each pack is unique.
* Maps - about a dozen different types of map pieces: countries, city streets, topographical, historical, nautical charts - $2.00.
* Words - 16 pages from non-English books, about 12+ languages including Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, French, German, and two using Arabic scripts - $2.50.
* Stamps - postally used from around the world in a variety of themes - $2.00 each:
- 75 World Mixed - big & small, old & new
- 25 Flora - mostly flowers, but a few trees & mushrooms
- 25 Fauna - animals, birds, and some insects
- 25 Oriental - from China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, etc.
- 25 Buildings - lots of churches and famous structures
- 25 One Color Family - Blues, Yellows, Oranges, Reds, Pinks, Purples, Greens, Browns, or Greys.
That's all for now!
Roberta
