Inspiration: Vintage Family Photos

Are digital cameras impacting the American tradition of the classic family portrait?

Selected photos from my family album: My mom, Lake Tahoe 1958; my great-grandmother; my grandmother; my dad in uniform; my mom (before her friends had eyebrow intervention-yes really) with my brother and sister; my mom and her identical twin sister, brother and father; my dad and his family looking snappy

I am going to miss the differences in film (bye-bye polaroid... sigh) and photographic style that we all cherish in our favorite photos from the past. I worry that with all the new cameras and software, family photographs are going to look a whole lot alike and the next generation will not be able to see the changes in the world and technology advances through images in quite the same way .

Portland or Bust, How a sticker loving child rode the Internet bubble and burst into the greeting card industry

{ the early years }

Entering the scene, 1976--as a child my obsession with illustration and craft hit hard and fast with the discovery of sticker collecting. My idea of a perfect afternoon was browsing the wall-to-wall rolls of stickers, carefully selecting new items (sparkly unicorns or scratch and sniff?) and digging into an irresponsibly large "Turtle Sundae". This was all a careful ruse by my clever mother--soon enough I was passed out in the barber chair while he touched up my perfect bowl cut. 

Known for asking far too many questions, I was soon enrolled in art and music classes to keep me busy. Bless her heart, my mother already had 3 older kids running the show. I attribute my creativity and passion for handmade to her knowledge of antiques, clever crafting, perfect penmanship, and home-sewn homecoming dresses. My entrepreneurial bent--I can thank the tireless work and support of my father. My business efforts started early, when at the age of seven I hawked hand-painted pet rocks door-to-door (a secret strategy for meeting kids in my new neighborhood). My first art obsession came at nine-- when I built my first pin-hole camera. Once I was even an extra in an After School Special. 

{ experience }

After a short stint in art school I went on to work in 1995 as the seventh employee for a small employee-owned Internet startup located in Atlanta, GA. Soon we were plucked up from obscurity into what would be an international buying spree--and the creation of USWeb. Focusing on Internet site development and marketing, the organization grew leaps and bounds in just a few years. In 1998 USWeb merged with CKS Group (well known for their extremely successful rebranding of Apple - at that time launching the popular candy colored iMacs.) Now known as USWeb/CKS, the Atlanta office grew again to over 200 employees and to include traditional advertising staff and work. Website projects now included marketing analysis, print and radio ads, online advertising and often took a year to complete. My time spent working for my father's software company in high school was influential, and I developed a knack for e-commerce and interface-complex development projects and my workload bloomed to 80 hour weeks.  While working as a graphic designer/art director at USWeb a few of my clients included Coca-Cola, MCI, KinderCare, Royal Velvet, and MinuteMaid. 

5 different company names, 15 different managers, 5 different offices in close to 5 years... ah, the Internet, a story of excess, times of change, unbelievable opportunities and risk taking. Shortly after yet another merger in 1999 (and becoming the company known as marchFIRST) I left and started working with my own roster of Atlanta based start-ups and the couture bridal designer Anne Barge . My consulting and design work focused on branding, information design, developing strategies and assisting in the design and interface for what was usually a very complicated software backend. 

{ Portland bound }
Looking for a change, I moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon in Spring 2001 on a mission-- find a new challenge and pursue the perfect cup of coffee, late-night spots with excellent french fries, and a vintage bicycle. Looking for a way to work with my hands, combining my original illustrations and background in graphic design-- I jumped and started Owen Says; Launching at The National Stationery Show--a NYC based stationery industry trade show hosted at the Jacob Javitz in May of each year--the Owen Says line of hand glittered greetings has grown to include many popular characters and the addition of gift items. Currently I am working on an expansion of the online store with new items not found as part of the wholesale line--like prints, limited edition greetings, and printable calendars and stationery sets. Licensing and custom work inject life and whimsy and provide new ways to expand on my specific style of cute and occasionally the weird.

MEET THE CHARACTERS + PATTERN BOOK |  visit OwenSays.com

info@owensays.com  | follow me on twitter: @owensays

Snowed In

It's a wintery blast here in Portland and most of us are snowed in with more snow on the way. Internet connectivity is spotty and I have not experienced a power failure yet. I am thankful for my new fancy phone so I can continue to check email when the wireless bars are strong. There is always work to be done and my pantry is full.

Reading for all!

Lizzy the studio cat wants more naps and reading for this rainy day after a serious heat wave in air-conditioning challenged Portland.

There have been some fabulously written posts over the past few months by more prolific bloggers than myself. Lots of answers to stationery industry questions and inspiration to boot. Check out "I'm Reading" in the navbar on the right. New items are added often while I do my daily browsing online. Enjoy!

NY Brings New Friends

The National Stationery Show was a blast and I loved making some new friends along the way.. Especially Portland's best Darkhorse ladies Erica and Liby who I had the pleasure of sharing an Indian dinner and a bottle of wine and a long flight home. More on the show and the never-ending support of Carina as well as some photos and thoughts soon.

Watch my That's Clever segment on HGTV!

Get a chance to see me on TV!

That's Clever!
segment on HGTV
airing starting June 18 2007
Episode 348
Encaustic Picture-Gram Card - Jennifer Erts Wyatt embellishes her encaustic picture-gram card with a bear and photos.

photoblog: a view from the window

Reminisce about childhood water toys and water parks

Water slide.,
originally uploaded by Morgan Nichol.

In my last entry I posted a photo of a terrific inflatable water slide I saw in somebody's yard. Therein lives a parent that is super dedicated to childhood fun and spends a whole lotta time filling that thing with air.

Most of all I remember the water parks. Glorious tubes of plastic reaching down from the sky to the concrete jungle below. The aromas of chlorine, sunscreen and over cooked hot dogs filling the air; a sea of red chubby masses and tiny over-stimulated natives in constant motion. Time spent waiting in line to get to the top, eager for a water trip that would last less than a minute, clutching a giant blue foam mat and considering how many more times you will get to slide down the water slide before you have to all cram into the car for the 45 minute trip home.

Wouldn't you know that two of the toys I remember best have since been outed as dangerous!? Both the wonderful Wham-O Fun Fountain with clown face and the nostalgiarific Slip and Slide are on the block.

I have sorta become disinchanted with the slip and slide since I found out how easily it is to break your neck or incur other serious spinal injuries. Read more about it here and here.

water slide

Some lucky kids have this excellent lawn water slide.. this is huge improvement over the water spouting clown head from my childhood.

chalkboard teddy Zzz

Chalkboards are really neat. The hard part comes when it is time to erase one picture and start anew. This is a really large chalkboard I found recently while digging at my favorite Portland thrift store.

It was a fantastic day for finding great stuff. I also picked up a wonderful 70s blue floral chair that is in amazing condition and oh-so-comfy. It is my new sitting-by-the-window-chair.

PAPERCUT

PAPERCUT

New paper cutter how do I love thee, let me count the ways.

• I love that I did not pay full price for you
• I love the hours you will save me
• I love how you cut through a stack over an inch high

I look forward to the years together we will spend. I wonder how long it will take until you need a good sharpening. I love that the guy I bought you from offered to fix my lawnmower. Welcome to the family, trusy paper cutter. I HEART YOU.

Crafty Wonderland - what I did this sunday in Portland

Today I visited Crafty Wonderland @ the Doug Fir in Portland, Oregon. A monthly showcase of kickin artists and crafters.

I coveted these gorgeous layered resin pendants made by a really talented lady by the name of Faryn Davis from Seattle. Check out her website Fernworks to see her very special jewelry and artwork. They are definately one of my next purchases. I love the new colorful hand painted layered bird and grass themes. (not shown)

Unfortunately I spent all my loot yesterday on mother's day gifts (retro black and lime travel umbrella, special no-sweat garden gloves and a chocolate cupcake) and the most beautiful pair of shoes I just had to own, an unusual occurance for this very picky and usually cheap girl.

My mad-money budget being only $5, I decided on the 3 hand painted button pins made by painter Madoka Ito. She also had some really great original artwork on display in the style shown  here.

Today I will also visit Post Secret -- an online art blog project that intended to be temporary, but instead has spawned art shows, books, and a cult following. Always facinating and updated every Sunday.

A website more committed than work, friends or family

oh Amazon.com Wish List, let me count the books i will never buy. 85 in total dating back to November 29, 1999. my longest stretch of employment did not last this long.

Here's to the next wonderful years of my life - may it be full of Dr. Phil books that tempt with suggestion that life can be fixed with a car-mechanic-like workbook, GenX novellas, collections of random things by theme, illustration books by people I want to be, and recipes I will never make. a list filled with people who have written books i have never read. gone from the list are my favorite authors -- i already read all their books. I "borrowed" them (permanently) from my brothers or bought them at Good Will, or on impulse, at Powell's Books.

oh Amazon.com Wish List. maybe this will be the year I add items of deep literary substance. thought provoking works, classics, books that fill the deeping gap of where education failed. well, maybe not.

View My Amazon.com Wish List

friends don't let friends go on television

Coming to a television near you -- me dancing with my childhood teddy bear and other disastrously wonderful cheesy moments brought to you by Jenn (that's me!) and the Home & Garden Network (that's cable!)

Today I taped a craft themed how-to segment for the HGTV show, "That's Clever!" because yo, I am the cleverest. No, um, scratch that. Talking to a camera is freakin difficult. And I am happy that the format of the show is fun and silly and that they were super nice and lead me like a trained monkey dressed in people's clothes. Bless every single one of the crew. They couldn't have been any nicer or accommodating to me. According to them I did a pretty good job and managed to look not too shabby on video.

I am the girl who says strictly forboden phrases ("Now I will" and referring to the viewer as "you".) over and over without ceasing - instantly destroying at least 50 takes. OH and I can't forget how the mild speech impediments that I manage to get away with for the most part were magnified and so obvious. I come from a Georgia McEducation and frequently channel Yoda (and not necessarily in a good way). My Yodisms have been joked about many times, but I always shrugged it off. Try shrugging it off when you hear three people repeating the words that you just uttered just so they can relive how awkward you just sounded and puzzle over it for themselves. I fear it has put an abrupt end to my television career. (HA!)

Who is the girl who inverses words? ME! Who is the girl who combines two words into one nonexistent word? ME! Who is the girl with weird enunciation? ME! Who is repetitive? Who is repetitive? Who is repetitive?

Seriously, most days this girl can talk. Usually I can do a fantastic job communicating ideas and dotting my chatter with descriptive words. Get the camera in front of me and it was like.... der, um, what was I talking about? I had to be told very specifically what to say and I made the worst parrot EVER. I needed direction like a child does to tie his shoes. And I needed instructions cut into tiny pre-cut pieces, thankyouverymuch.

When the show finally airs in the fall I fully expect for my older brothers to tease me for the rest of my days with the numerous cheesy quotable ammunition they will have. Guess I will have to wait until Fall 2006 to see it myself. It was a fantastically challenging opportunity and I am really glad that I got a chance to experience it! I expect to have more to share once I have stopped internally siezing long enough to eat and sleep normally again.

So I am going to be on TV... hello insomnia!

So I got the call today that I have been picked to do a craft segment on the HGTV cable show called That's Clever! 

I am very excited, but memories of how difficult high school speech class was keep coming to mind. Thankfully I am fully committed to letting go of old fears. But there is no way I will be able to sleep until it is all over and I will prepare in the way that only a complete control freak can so that on the day of the shoot I can just chill.

Curiously enough last weekend I also found myself on the end of a camera, sans makeup with serious morning hair, to film a segment for a clip that should appear sometime online. It gave me a chance to see what it is that I do when you stick a camera in my face:

I babble
I nod A LOT, seemingly agreeing with everyone and everything
I glance at the camera
I become the person who compulsively winks at the cameraman
I added the host's name at the end of sentences with a hard syllable. "Thank you, LIZ."

And this is all for a bit that lasted maybe 60 seconds. But it was eye opening and I have some work ahead of me. The segment people will be around to film for five to six hours!

I worry:

That I will start talking and never stop from beginning to end
That somehow I will do something so horrible and so cheesy that it will be played back in my head like a doofus home movie clip forever more
I will mispronounce a word, or even worse, use it incorrectly over and over again
I will become supremely southern like I do when I drink too much or talk with lower state customer service reps
That suddently I will become bad-madonna british. This is something that has never happened, but what if it could happen. 
What if I fall and get a head injury? 
I can't think of anything to say at all
I say something completely wierd (this is not out of character for me
I say something that horrifies my mother
I wear something my mother dislikes so much she mentions it every five seconds any time the TV show is brought up forever
Something about my craft goes crazy like the time Martha Stewart's Berry Wreaths kept exploding all over the front doors of homes across america whenever it got too hot

I will keep everyone posted as the hilarity unfolds!

rummage this weekend:

I came across this adorable little ewok in the coffee shop.

 

The trees have popped all over the city.

This hat was a distraction from the old lady furs I not-so-secretly
coveted and modeled in the mirror like Lindsay Lohan.

But the hat's off to the bazaar cobra in a bottle of liquor. Drink that.

Sadly I had to walk away from a perfect condition fur cape and a fur shawl combo that included the most-amazing-muff-in-the-whole-wide-world-with-a-little-pocket. But I did come out with a few things; the highlights being a lucious burgandy eel skin clutch, a dainty ceramic dish with a sleeping pig on the top, a ceramic owl for my collection, and a tiny painting of a ship.

what's more odd than being the new kid?

what's more odd than being the new kid in jellies?

what's more odd than being the new kid in jellies and a miniskirt?

what's more odd than being the new kid in jellies and a miniskirt and a pink flashdance sweatshirt?

what's more odd than being the new kid in jellies and a miniskirt and a pink flashdance sweatshirt in the garden state?

what's more odd than being the new kid in jellies and a miniskirt and a pink flashdance sweatshirt in the garden state surrounded by izods?

Answer:
Being an adult doing your day-to-day and realizing you are standing next to somebody you recognize from their blog and who do not know who you are. Or that you know who they are. And you feel like you are violating their invisible chalk circle of anonymity.

How curious - the social structure of the internet and how it works out in the real world. It is really odd if you stop and think about it.

You could be standing next to somebody you talk or read and is part of the everyday world you have constructed for yourself and not know it. Not actually have to deal in the real world. Sorta weird huh?

a trip through music past...

the early years
Ohio and California
My parents were into road trips. And Babs. And Neil Diamond. And I am one of those people who catagorically memorizes lyrics. And I was also desperate for attention so would sing REALLY REALLY LOUD. enough said. Memories was my favorite. Oh the horror. 

 

christmas 1985
Summit, New Jersey
I actually still have my wish list from this year. Eventually I will get around to scanning it so others can share. I was in the 4th grade and wanted 1) A-HA cassette tape (and i included a little illustration of a casette just in case my aging parents weren't sure what i wanted) and 2) a boom box. I got both. The boom box was pink (i think) and looked like a transformer. It was totally sweet. I remember going to LA to visit my aunt sometime later and listening to The Hooters (aka Cyndi Lauper's backup band) over and over and over again. I also remember having a hissy fit outside the Pirates of the Carribean ride.

 

1987-88
Alpharetta, Georgia
By this time I was full swing into rollerskating and also at the height of my top-40 phase. I liked to couple skate to Tiffany's "I think we're alone now" and skate super fast to Salt-n-Pepa's "Push it". I admit to purchasing a Debbie Gibson tape and going to my first concert, George Michael. Two moves which almost got me disowned by my older brothers. (Seriously, as a side, going to a concert when you are 12 where the singer is belting out ballads about sex and your friend's dad is standing next to you and some drunk girl falls on him is life alteringly.) Thankfully Dirty Dancing came out and I got distracted by oldies long enough for my brothers to retalliate by gifting me U2 and mix tapes to sway me to their side of things. They really went out on a limb by including Dinosaur Jr.'s cover of Just Like Heaven.  While I am sure they take a lot of credit for my future improvement in musical tastes, actually the credit should go to a boy I met on the bus who had a shaved head and a punk rock attitude.

1989-1990

Alpharetta, Georgia

Ah, these were the years. Before the internet finding new music was an art form. It involved detective work, bin rummaging, music label connect-the-dots and luck. Mix tapes were the alcohol of my youth. The term "Alternative" DID NOT EXIST. But MTV's 120 minutes did. I was into The Cure, The Smiths, Camper Van Beethoven, The Descendants... I will keep adding to the list because all I did was absorb music and trade with my friends. It was our Pokomon. We were obsessed.

1991-1992
Alpharetta, Georgia
Once in high school the music obsession had not subsided. I had access to people with cars, friends in bands and Atlanta 30 minutes away where I could see live music. There was not much else to do and not being one into sports or extra curriculars I was seeing a lot shows. Thankfully at that time there were a lot of venues that allowed under 18 babies like myself. I added The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Fugazi, The Church, and a lot of terrible punk. (OK, breathe. I did not say I was punk. And many people would say my eclectic tastes prohibited me from being punk. This is a debate in itself. I remember a few times in high school people went ape because I was wearing fishnets with birkenstocks or combat boots with a flowered dress. Like I was a dress code felon or something. I always thought it was stupid and funny. Everybody always running around trying to catagorize everybody else.)

Ok. So you are thinking, "I've heard of all these bands. They are not obscure. I could buy their album in Walmart." That's fair. During the time I am writing about these bands weren't even played on the radio. They are well known now because they were flipping out suburban kids like me. Some of them way before my time. And the rich kids at my high school thought it was cool to pretend to be a redneck, drive a truck and listen to Garth Brooks. So for me they were delightful. Enough said. (for now!)

ah, the memories. 

portland weather has bipolor disorder

It is bright and sunny at the moment, but earlier it was snowing.

It is funny to see the trees budding, the flowers blooming and it is snowing outside. I love real seasons.

when blogs collide - Urban Honking

Back in November I was walking down the street with my friend Ryan and we came upon his friend in the midst of a shoe crisis, one that was also being chronicled for her blog. You can read about it here and see a funny photo of me in the background.

She did finally retrieve her shoe. I have since figured out that she is also one of the exclusive bloggers on Urban Honking (an invitation only site for those that want to contribute) that is getting a whole lot of attention. Read the article about Urban Honking in the Willamette Week.