Issue #8
March 12, 2006

When we started our newsletter, we hoped for many subscribers, and just naturally thought the bigger the list grew, the better it would be. In so many ways, that has been true. We love you all!

However, this newsletter now has the biggest subscriber list we have heard of in this industry, and has outgrown all free methods of sending announcements to you - except two.

One is our own mail list software on our site, and one is Yahoo. Our own software works perfectly, but takes 36+ hours to send an email to all of you - and we have to keep a browser window open the whole time! This is daunting to say the least.
To remedy this situation, we are asking you to embrace a 2-part subscription. We still want you to subscribe to our own mailing list - which you have already done if you got the email announcing this issue. The second part is to join the Yahoo Announcement List we have established for this newsletter and our brand new Cre8it Art Blog (see below).

NO MAIL will come from this Yahoo Group except announcements of new issues of this newsletter and new posts to our Art Blog which is like this newsletter only much shorter, and which you will like just as much. With the Yahoo Group, we can notify all of you of a new publication within minutes - instead of days.

Why keep both lists? Because if something should happen to Yahoo, we would still have our mailing list. So, if you would like to see more issues of Whatever . . .

Please go here and join this Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cre8itartblog

And we will have 36+ more hours to use the computer for writing articles!!

As everyone knows, Blogging is the new big thing in internet communication. There are blogs on everything - and plenty of them on nothing at all.

We started an Art Blog because we see it as a great resource for bits of stuff that's important to the multi-media and paper artists we know and love - and write for - and that would be you.

Our blog is only personal in the same way this newsletter is - we just can’t seem to keep our personality from bubbling over into our writing - but it isn’t about how our hair turned out this morning or how we wish we hadn't eaten that whole pint of ice cream last night.

Rather, it’s about art, and living life as an artist, and the tips, techniques, and new art parts that make our lives so darn interesting.

The February entries are centered around our trip to CHA in Las Vegas and what we found there. What we found there will be written about for awhile because there was a lot!

New entries for March are coming right up when this newsletter is done, and all older entries will be archived for your reading pleasure. We will post as often as we can and let you know through the Yahoo Group whenever we do. It will be like getting little pieces of Whatever between issues - how cool is that? Here’s the link to see what’s in the Blog right now: http://www.dotcalmvillage.net/artblog/artblogarchives.html
Studio storage is always a challenge, and we have all come up with clever ways to put this or that in its place - or some place anyway. But the biggest challenge, around our studio at least, is the little bitty leftovers of fibers, papers, and other beloved flotsam. If you stick them in the box or drawer with the bigger bits, they will surely be lost and forgotten. So, we thought of this . . .

Office supply stores sell binder pages with pockets made for holding business cards. These pages are three hole punched so they can be kept in binders - and they are the perfect place to store what a friend of mine calls “fiddly-bits”. Everything is fully visible and kept safely in a pocket of its own. You can even store them accoding to color as we have here.