As much as I love the celebrations and family/friends gatherings of the Holiday Season, I have a special feeling for the day after - when all is said and done and eaten, and given and received, and the craziness of every day life actually seems a welcome retreat!

Many folks talk about a “let down”, but I feel very
energized at this time of year - loving the idea that a New Year is beginning - full of exciting new ideas to try, and maybe some wintry days when it feels just right to be in the studio making art instead of out in the garden making flowers.

Heaven knows I need to make some art because my first piece of news for this “newsletter” is that I will again be involved in the gallery business come Spring.

I say “involved in” because I will not be taking the lead role this time - due to my full time responsibilities at Cre8it, but I am very excited to be a partner in what is sure to be an incredible art space. More about that as the time approaches.

There is a lot to share this issue:

Decisions have finally been made regarding the magazines, and we will talk about that in a bit.

We have managed to solve the problems with the mailing list for this newsletter (we hope!).

And the Holiday Season has provided some creative ideas that I am eager to share, and . . .
I got a “Great Find” Christmas present that you are bound to like as much as I do.

Lots of wonderful Christmas presents this year. Some were pretty expensive - like the three tiered stone planter & fountain for the garden (which did not fit under the tree by the way - but I made DH wrap it anyway - that was fun to watch!)

I loved all the gifts, but actually got carried away about one of them, not because it was expensive, but because it is so clever.

I get excited about words in art - and therefore, about alphabet stamps. Cre8it has even been an innovator in this area - being the first to offer alphabets with multiple characters so you can set whole words and phrases at a time.

But, I think my favorite thing is that, with no background material, you can see exactly where you are placing the letter. Having been in graphic design so long, I just can’t
get with the haphazard look of rubber stamped words. With these, stamps, you can create an even baseline like you would with traditional typesetting. One of the rules of typesetting is that rounded letters should sit just slightly lower on the baseline so that the eye perceives all the letters to be even. That’s about impossible to do with most stamps.

I used these new stamps with chalk ink in the example on the left. The handles made stamping the letters very easy. Cleaning the chalk ink off was a little difficult, but I find that to be true with any stamps. I wonder what’s in that stuff, don’t you?