January 2012: week three updateWhen I was collecting links for my Image Transfer Squidoo lens I was surprised to find that people are making prints on fabric and paper by transferring pigment from rusty objects. You can find the how-to within the link list here.
And I was going to illustrate this entry with some lovely images I found on Flickr but it seems I can’t add images to this blog. That’s unfortunate.
Grandma strikes again! Who remembers when foil Christmas wrapping paper came in vibrant colors like purple and teal, sometimes with patterns and prints? In my maternal grandmother’s house that paper was treated like gold to be turned into precious paper ornaments like the one you see here. Recycling and being “green” were grandma’s way of life long before it became trendy.
We call them “porcupine balls” and I don’t know for sure where the original pattern came from. My aunt taught Russian and German and was interested in all things slavic/germanic, so I had it in my head that these ornaments were made in the Czech Republic or Poland – someplace like that. I’m not sure if my aunt or grandma (or even my mom) saw them in a magazine or what. It was actually the men in the family who had the most skill in making them.
These take a fair amount of patience and skill and a tolerance for sticky fingers to make. To learn more about them and instructions for making them yourself, see my new Squidoo lens: Make a Paper Christmas Ornament: Porcupine Balls.
My grandma Effie showed her affection for me by giving me things that were designed to keep me from being a bankrupt adult. When I was in my teens (that would be thirty years ago) she gave me gifts like 20 shares each of stock in Levi’s Jeans and some technology company that I think may be Cisco now. My high school graduation present was a lovely piece of diamond jewelry. She figured I could sell it when I went broke.
The fact is, Grandma must have known something because my relationship with money has involved frequent breakups in which the dollars leave me and I’m left with not very much.
One of the surprising ways in which I’ve made some headway is by becoming a Squidoo lensmaster. And even more suprising – to me, anyway – is that grandma Effie’s recipes have become material for some of my most successful lenses. I could swear that sometimes she is calling me from heaven and saying “go ahead, try this, you need the money”. Part of me feels like I’m taking unfair advantage of grandma’s food legacy but the urge to go ahead with it – the sense of supernatural permission, even – wins out.
Countless times I’ve run into that old writer’s adage to write what you know. I can see that that’s true when creating Squidoo lenses as well. Dig into your childhood and see what you find. What family legacies can you memorialize with a lens?
These are my two main Squidoo lenses that are inspired by Grandma. There are more in the works.
