An Art Journey Into Family History Part 2

I don’t know about you but I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I am too much of a free spirit to be boxed in by some goal I think I should go after. I gave up “resolutions” years ago. Fraught with resistance from the “get-go”, they are doomed for early failure even before the ink on my page (yep, I use a fountain pen) is dry!

OOPS! You’re probably wondering already what New Year resolutions have to do with my art and this blog post. I confess! I am about to digress. Just a tad. Bear with me. I promise it won’t take long. There is a rhyme and reason to this brief, little “side trip”…

Now…

In January of any given year, I watch how my water aerobics group suddenly gets very large as folks flock to the pool to fulfill some New Year resolution of losing weight or getting more exercise. Occasionally, some of these folks last through March but the majority have all but disappeared by the end of the shortest month of the year. March always comes in like a lamb… our group becomes manageable again. I often wonder how many of them have abandoned a resolution they made. Something that seemed like a great idea on Jan. 1 that quickly deteriorated into a lot of hard work until finally they just gave up! We’ve all been there… Giving up is a crappy feeling …

Well if there is one thing I hate, it’s feeling crappy! After the umpteenth time of doing the same ole thing expecting different results, I banished resolutions and came up with a deviously simple way to go after stuff I determine is truly important to me. A simple solution that makes me feel good and for years now, has never let me down. Yep, I am about to share it with you…are you ready?

Getting Serious…

Sometime in January, preferably on a day when the sun is shining, I get serious I swing by my favourite coffee bar (aptly named “Serious Coffee”… LOL... a Vancouver Island based coffee chain) and get a BIG cup of coffee “to go”. Armed with my daytimer, my pen and a warm, comfy quilt, I head to a sheltered spot on the beach for a chat with ME, MYSELF and I. The only question on my mind is this very simple one: “What three things do you want to focus on this year?”

I rarely have any trouble coming up with an answer. As a matter of fact, I find it pretty darn easy coming up with lots of ideas that makes my heart go pitter patter. The hard part is sorting through all of the possibilities that dance in my head to settle on only three. In spite of being wrapped up in my beach quilt, the cold, north wind blowing along the beach on a January day definitely speeds up the decision making.

Once I know what they are, I whip out my trusty pen and write “the chosen” down in the first pages of my daytimer. I don’t spend any time making a plan, setting “goals” or “soul searching”. It’s too darn cold down there LOL. I just get on with my life and let whatever I write down percolate in the background trusting that when the time is right, it will surface for attention.

In 2007, “ART” … in its many forms (computer and otherwise) was something I felt personally important for me to focus on and wrote it down.

OK, end of digression. That wasn’t so bad now, was it? LOL

A Serendipitous Moment...

A few mere days after writing down my three focuses for 2007, I overheard one of the women in my water aerobics group talking about the “scrapbooking memory program” she had received for Christmas. My ears perked up and my curiosity GPS kicked in.

“What the heck is a scrapbooking memory program?” I wondered out loud. “BOY! I must really be behind the times.” I said quietly to myself.

Well… I didn’t get a satisfactory answer but then again that’s what we have the Internet for isn’t it? I fired up the computer when I got home and went surfing.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was “digital graphics made easy” through templates, etc…she was talking about. Hmmm…some ideas for how I could use this in my art started floating through my mind.

To make a long story short and so as not bore you to death with trivial details, I decided, in the end that a “canned” program was not for me. I absolutely did not want yet another program taking up precious space on my computer!

Now, as many of you already know, I like a good challenge and the thought occurred to me that perhaps this “new bit of information” was really an invitation to get "down and dirty" learning some graphic techniques. It was, after all, right in line with one of my “focuses” for 2007!

I had an old copy of Paint Shop Pro installed on my computer. Even though I dabbled with it from time to time, I rarely spent a concentrated block of time finding out what I could really do with it.

My research into “scrapbooking” had uncovered some free PSP tutorials that looked interesting. I took a crack at trying some of them out. Well WHOOPEE… they were both challenging and fun! Aaah… two experiences that will snag me in a heartbeat!

I upgraded to the latest and greatest version of PSP. Set some time aside every day to mess with it. Hey, I learned how to play piano by setting aside 15 minutes every day to practice. I could do the same with this!

Fast Forward…My First Pages…

As I sat at the computer looking at the photos of gramma’s grave, the farmhouse, barn and old school that Jackie sent me, I contemplated how I would set up the graphics pages for the photos. My initial thought was to try a design out digitally before I committed to creating it on “paper”.

Heck, I had all the time in the world. I was only going to do, at the most, four or five pages. I had already decided that they would make a lovely little Christmas gift for my aunt.

I popped a chocolate in my mouth.

“Hmmm… I do love those Roger’s Victoria Creams,” I thought to myself.

Hubby, bless him, surprises me with some on occasion during the year. It’s just one of his sweet ways (no pun intended LOL) of letting me know he loves me.

“I wonder if gramma liked chocolate as much as auntie Flo and I do?”

I laughed to myself at the thought that perhaps her mother and my grandmother had passed down a “chocolate gene” of her own to both of us.

EUREKA!!! It was perfect. A “chocolate” coloured background. The colour for the background of my first graphic would be chocolate. I chuckled. My dear auntie would roar laughing when I told her how I came up with it. At 86, she deserved some good chuckles!

The graphics for the page with gramma’s grave photos came together in the wink of an eye! I “doctored” the photo… adding some calla lilies to her headstone. Flowers that (to me) mean simplicity and beauty. I was sure gramma would be pleased to have flowers placed on her headstone again.. even if it was digitally!

The quote between the photos reads: "Death leaves a heartache that no one can heal but love leaves a memory no one can steal." The photo of my paternal grandmother was digitally placed inside a scan of a gold watch case that belonged to my maternal grandmother. I just thought that was rather fitting!

Even though you can see the narrative section on these first pages I created with the photos from Jackie, the “story” part actually was added later on in the process.

A number of questions arose as I thought about what was to go in this section.

Who was my grandmother? What was she like? Who were her parents? What was important to her? What had happened to cause her death at 34? What must it have been like for these young children to lose their mother?

Questions… floating through my brain demanding an answer. Answers I wanted to have before even attempting to write anything in that blank section. Some of those questions eventually received an answer. Some could never be answered. It still brings tears to my eyes just thinking about some of them.

The BIG Nudge…

I didn’t know it at the time but these few pages and the questions swirling around in my head formed THE nudge towards researching the genealogy of the Burnett family. I love historical research. I jumped at the chance to indulge myself in it… Time well spent of course… it was, after all, for a good cause. LOL

I was amazed and fascinated by what I found on the Internet. It was a treasure trove of digitally scanned original documents from U.S. border crossings filled out in the hand of an ancestor to handwritten census reports, death, birth and marriage records and actual scans of certificates.

Imagine how excited I was to find newspaper clippings about long ago members of the family. A little bit of long forgotten (and new to me) family members scandal spiced it right up!

Here's the newspaper page I created, fashioned after a newspaper of the day, to record some of clippings I found from the 1890's....







I was absolutely flabbergasted the day I discovered that our ancestors are listed in the “First Families of New Brunswick” publication in the New Brunswick Provincial Archives. Our family roots are planted among some of the oldest families in Canada long before Canada became a nation in 1867.

The road ahead…

What you will discover in subsequent posts, will be many of the “story art” pages (now you know where the name of my blog came from LOL) I created as I researched our family heritage over a five month period in 2007. The “story” of getting there and the publication of the pages I created into an actual book for current members of our “far flung” family.

My aunt, of course, did not know that I was creating these pages for her. But my sister and some of my cousins were “in the know” keeping it a secret. It was easier than what you might think. My aunt lived in sunny California and the rest of us are scattered… miles upon miles apart… all over Canada, the U.S. and England.

When some of my family members saw a few of the first results, they began “hinting” (in a very good natured way) at the possibility of making more than one copy of each page. They wanted pages too! Well so much for doing "one off" art on paper. I decided I would continue creating the pages digitally so I could share them with those relatives who wanted a peek!

As I neared completion of the graphic and photo phase of the initial pages and was knee deep in the research end of this “project”, I had an experience that pointed out to me that the countless hours of research and art so far, sometimes working from early morning to well into the night, but never less than eight hours a day, deserved to be acknowledged and shared. The thought of just putting all the information, photos, and mementos I had gathered thus far in a binder and squirreling it away in a filing cabinet to be forgotten just didn’t cut it with me. It was important for me to somehow honour my own process of doing the work to get to this point but how? I really didn’t have an answer.

One morning I woke up at the crack of dawn with an “itch” on the brain. Something in my psyche was bugging me, demanding my undivided attention. As I lay quietly in bed, it bubbled up into consciousness. It was my creative muse. Dropping by to remind me that it was important for me to honour my own process of creating as well as producing a result. These pages deserved to be published on the best paper I could find with the finest binding available.

“Probably end up being one of the shortest, most expensive books ever published!” I thought, laughing to myself.

My next thought came like a jolt of lightning out of nowhere. The name of the book just tumbled forth. I started to argue with my muse about the time and work that would be involved in expanding the pages to include my aunt’s siblings, maybe her grandparents. We argued back and forth… but in the end, my muse won. OK. I got it. You win. Fine. Let’s get on with it. I got out of bed. I knew exactly what I needed to do next.

Join me again next week, as I continue the “show and tell” journey of “Scraps of Memories, Slices of Life”.

Yep, that’s the name my muse gave our family book that morning! Little devil. it neglected to put the years in the ”from and to” spaces. BOY was I in for a surprise.

Sharon

An Art Journey Into Family History Part 3

Before I get into the thick of things today, I want to thank all of those readers who have taken the time to send me lovely emails or left comments on the blog about this series of postings. Your words mean a lot to me… and it tells me that there are people out there who are actually reading my blog! Without feedback from you, it makes it very difficult to judge whether or not what I am writing is of interest. So please continue leaving comments or sending emails… it is very much appreciated.

Jumping right in…

When I found the actual U.S. entry documents on the USGenWeb, I knew for sure that in August 1920, my great grandparents, Commela and Henry, along with their son and daughter in law (my grandparents) and their four children left New Brunswick and moved to a bustling little farming community called Cricket Corner (I love that name!) just outside Amherst, New Hampshire.

As I started delving into gathering information for the narrative part of my pages, I casually began chatting about it with my aunt.

“I was going through some old photographs”, I began “and I came across some photos of Dad when he was a baby.”

I described the first photo. She knew exactly the one I was talking about.




“I’m curious… where was it taken?” I asked.

This casual question came as no surprise to her. For years, she had called me “Nancy Drew, my mystery detective” when I related tales of my latest dance with historical research.

This casual question provided my entrée into talking about our family history. It was also a precursor to openly broaching the subject of doing family research. An idea I knew she would love!

“That was taken before I was born. I think it was after Mom and Dad moved to New Hampshire.”

An aside note…

This turned out not to be the case. Cross border documents I found in my research later on indicated that my dad was nearly two when they moved to N.H. My best guess: the photo was taken sometime in the spring while they still lived in New Brunswick. How do I know that? I studied the picture. My Dad was born in November and looks about six months old in this casual, back step photo. Six months from November would make it April. I will never know but I am guessing that it could have been taken on my grandmother’s birthday in mid April.

I described the second photo. She wasn't sure she had ever seen it.

"Send me a copy." she said.

I did. In a conversation a few weeks later, she was able to tell me who was in the photo. She had never seen it before.

After the book was published and my Aunt Joy (an aunt by marriage) saw the photo of her husband (my uncle Wilfred) as a young child, she was absolutely amazed. "My goodness, we never saw that photo. That picture of "Bamp" (their family nickname for my uncle) is a carbon copy of our eldest son at that age."



Nancy Drew and the Mystery Case of Family History…

Aunt Flo chuckled. “Ah, is my Nancy Drew about to go on another mission?” she said. “It would be wonderful if you did this and we found out more about where we came from.”

Yep, the gateway to mining her family knowledge and memories was definitely now open! It was, after all, her idea now wasn’t it? LOL

She reminded me that I had a “jump start”. My Dad and one of my uncles had already done some “detective work” before they passed away.

I knew my dad’s were on “slips of paper” in a big envelope (he died unexpectedly in 1984) that my sister had. My uncle, who passed away in November 2006, had managed to create a family tree of his immediate family.

Two good places to start.

I called my sister and asked if she could dig out the information and send it to me.

I tracked down the last known whereabouts of my cousin David (I had never met him or his wife). I must admit I was rather nervous picking up the phone to call him. I had never spoken to him and I didn’t want to sound like a “dork” when I did. I needn’t have been nervous… the conversation went very well.

I fired up my computer. The quest for family information began…

Who was my Grandmother?

All my life, I had believed that my grandmother’s middle name was Bertha. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was Bessie. Bertha, it turns out, was the second name of her youngest daughter who was my grandmother’s namesake.

I wondered where these names had come from. Traditionally many of the same family names are passed down from generation to generation in many families. Fortunately I had a copy of my grandmother’s maternal family history I could scour for clues. In the end, I never did discover either of these names in my grandmother’s maternal family history. I can only surmise that they may have come from her paternal side.

Born in 1891 to Amelia and John Nugent, Ina Bessie Nugent was the fourth of five children. Her parents had met at the wedding of her mother’s sister in 1877 and they were married in October of the following year.





(This photo collage of Amelia and John was not part of "Scraps of Memories, Slices of Life")

Born in Ireland in 1842, John Nugent was a young, recently graduated doctor from the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery with a successful medical practice in Briggs Corner and Chipman, New Brunswick. No doubt, for the times, he was classified a “good catch” by Amelia Jane’s father and didn’t encounter any resistance when asking for her hand. Well read, he also had a side job. He was a newspaper correspondent for a Saint John, New Brunswick newspaper.

Tragedy strikes…

As a child, my grandmother was termed “delicate”. Like her mother, she was a wisp of a child and often battled with her health. But be that as it may, she managed to attend and graduate from the New Brunswick Provincial Normal School (teacher’s college) and become a teacher.

She was in her first full year of teaching in a school not far from her birth place of Chipman when her eldest brother Arthur, a strapping, athletic young man with a penchant for the “manly” art of boxing, was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

She returned home to help her mother and younger sister Alida nurse her ailing brother. Arthur died within a few months at the tender age of 31. The family and particularly her mother Amelia was devastated by his early demise.

According to Dr. Nugent, who wrote the obituary that appeared in the newspaper, Arthur had taken one box to the head too many.

A popular sport among young men of his age at the time, the “obit writer” went on to rail against boxing and the matches being held in town. He concluded that the sport (and the beatings boxers take) had led his son to a weakened state causing him to come down with influenza. This bout with the “flu” further weakened him to the point that the TB “bug” could invade his body.

Reading between the lines of the obituary, I could hear the sobs of grief coming from a man who has just lost his eldest son.

Romance…

While teaching in Blissville, Ina had been swept off her feet by a handsome, well read and established “army man”, Major George Thomas. Their romance continued, albeit at long distance (at least for those times... today it would be a hop, skip and jump!) once she returned home to Chipman.

Perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder, for soon after returning home, George proposed. Although there were some family concerns over their age differences (she was not yet 20 and George was 37), Ina was determined to marry him. After much discussion, a wedding was planned and they were married in June 1911.

Ina’s happiness was short lived.

In February of the following year, George died suddenly of a heart attack. The tragedy occurred almost to the very day her brother had passed away the year before.

Ina, seven months pregnant, in shock and disbelief at this tragic turn of affairs, returned to live in the family home.

Her mother was not well. The stress and strain of the past year was taking its’ toll on her health Run down from all the grief of the past year, she fell gravely ill.

Tuberculosis. That dreaded disease had struck his family again. My great grandfather knew that it was akin to receiving a death sentence. This time it would take his beloved wife. Very few people ever recovered from this disease, much less survived during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Determined to live to see the birth of her first grandchild, Amelia Jane Nugent passed away in 1912 when my aunt Georgia was but two months old.

Piecing the story together…

Over the years, I have studied, researched and written “stories” about the lives of women who lived in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I find this period in our collective history to be a fascinating study that provides some interesting insight into “who we were as a people and nation” before we became “who we are” today

As the puzzle pieces of my grandmother’s early life began to come together, my heart ached for her.

I had a pretty darn good idea what she must have been up against as fate handed her some painful blows. I could only imagine how helpless, hopeless and painful this time in her young life must have been for her. Many a day’s “work” of unearthing information left me feeling sad at the end of the day. The pain and grief in my grandmother’s early life touched my heart deeply. I felt vulnerable and fragile. Tears, always close at hand, tumbled.

I toyed with the idea of giving up. I knew there was more tragedy to come for my grandmother. I consoled myself with the thought that it would be okay because I already knew what it was. Well, not quite, as I was about to discover….

To end today’s post on a happier note, I’d like to leave you with a few notes and tips on gathering family information. Even if you don’t plan to ever do a family tree or delve into researching your family, you’ll find some ideas of things you can do today with your family information to make it easier for future generations.

But first, here’s the page I made with the photo of my Dad and uncles first school. It was such a fun page to put together!




Being “farm kids”, they all had chores to do before they left for school. As I studied the photos I had of their farm and thought about my visit to the area some years before, I found myself imagining those three young boys sauntering off to school picking up rocks, kicking at the dirt and playfully punching each other as they made their way to school.. It made me smile….

The narrative reads “Their morning chores on the farm done, Wilfred, Guy and Willis washed behind their ears, put on their school clothes, ran their fingers through their hair, spit on their shoes when their mother and grandmother weren’t looking, then trotted off to school just down the road.”

Some Thoughts and Tips on Gathering Family Information…

The conversations with my aunt Flo as well as gathering old family photographs from the past 100 plus years gave me a true appreciation for the importance of keeping good family records.

It very quickly became apparent to me that we all need to encourage our elders to write down or tell us about their lives and what they know about family members who have passed on. Memories, dates and names fade. They are lost forever when your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins are no longer here to supply the information. Get them talking! Offer to write it down or record the conversation if you aren’t into writing. Just get the information in any way that feels comfortable for you!

Even if you never plan to do your “family history”, I’d like to suggest that you take a few minutes to record current events for future generations in a small notebook. I am as guilty as the next person for not writing down family events as they occur. Now, not everyone in a future generation will be interested but I can guarantee you there will be someone who wants to know!

At a minimum, keep a record of birth dates, places, countries, marriages, divorces, deaths. Speaking of deaths… now that cremation is becoming more the norm, where are the ashes of loved ones residing or in many cases, being scattered? Someone will be curious and if it is not recorded, it will be lost forever.

Tuck family ephemera away, preferably all of it in the same spot! When I was a child, I remember my mother telling all of us where the “family” stuff was and how important it would be to “grab” the box in the event of a fire or flood. It was good advice… think of all the family stuff that was lost forever during hurricane Katrina! As much as many of those folks displaced by the hurricane were devastated by the loss of their homes, many of them mentioned feeling heartbroken at losing “family” ephemera and photographs.

Newspaper clippings, certificates, awards, your children’s drawings, family bibles, school records and special cards are just some ideas of what to keep. While you are it, make sure that your photographs list who is in the picture! Today, we may know when the photo was taken (it’s usually stamped on the photo) but often we forget to include the “where” and “who”!

Have a great week…

Sharon

My latest "creations"...

I've been playing in my jewelry sandbox this week!  I am scheduled for eye surgery later on this morning so wanted to get some playtime in before I am forced into art withdrawal. Not sure what to expect but my guess is that until all the surgeries are over in May I won't be doing much new art until June.  Guess I'll have to be content with finishing up some of those projects that need some extra touches!

I have had a polymer clay project in mind that I have wanted to do for awhile now.  I found it in the book, "Faux Surfaces in Polymer Clay" by Irene Semancuk Dean.  I did not use the "recipe" for jade in her book but one I found some time back (don't remember where now) and had written down in my clay recipe book. 

Working with polymer clay always reminds me of baking.  Out came the "recipe" I have for jade, got my ingredients together (clay from my stash, my "utensils", a match book to make a pattern, some chinese coin charms for decoration and gold wire for embeslishment).  Put on my "art apron" and got started mixing, chopping, rolling, dicing, slicing and  baking up a new pendant.

I have always liked jade... green is a favourite colour of mine...and I am always drawn to "something" oriental.  It wasn't nearly as difficult to do as I had imagined in my mind and went a lot faster than I had thought it would.

The tricky part was making the clay matchbox, getting it to fit snugly and still be able to open it.  It ended up being a little looser than I really wanted so I decided to glue the two pieces together.  It probably would have been just fine the way it was... it seemed to stay in okay... but I know that if it ever decided to slide out on its own when I least expected or wanted it to, it would bug me to no end.  So once it was cooked, "vintaged" with burnt sienna paint to show off the chinese characters, buffed and the embellishments attached, it got the E6000 treatment as a final step!


I finished it yesterday, just in time to write this post and show it off!    The charms were somewhat brighter than I wanted after I had darkened the clay with the paint, so I just tinted them with "latte" alcohol ink.  It toned them right down and flowed into the "nooks and crannies" of the coins very nicely.   I am absolutely thrilled with the way it turned out. Whatcha think??
 

Digital Media as Artistic "Add On" Materials

Have you noticed over the past year or so  how many artists are using more digitally created media in their art?  

The art world of the mxied media, collage and craft artist has quietly expanded to include more and more print outs of digitally enhanced photographs, digitally created "background" papers, alphabets and scanned ephemera such as old letters and labels in their creations,  Whether it is an altered book, beeswax collage, ATC, bookmark, greeting card, polymer clay pendant transfer or those adorable "moo" cards so popular with artists as mini "works of art" business cards, digital media "add on" material for art is here to stay simply because it expands the realm of artistic creativity with an explosion of possibility.

Last fall, my art bud and friend, Cindy Powell (Latest Trends in Mixed Media mama and co-author of two fantastic "how to" mixed media project books and a mxied media jewelry techniques book) and me started chatting one day about how artists were moving towards using more digital print outs in their art. 

I told her about how, when I couldn't find an antique typewriter ribbon tin for an art piece I was working on, I decided to make one myself using a digital print out and a piece of wood shaped like an old typewriter ribbon tin.  By the time I was finished painting, collaging and distressing it, you'd swear it was an old metal typewriter tin I had found in an antique store. It was definitely a moment where "mixed media" met the digital world... a "Hands On Digital" creation... the name we decided to use for our "art partnership" and blog.  Since then, we have welcomed two more wonderful women into our group, our  talented artists and friends, Cecilia Swatton and Sherre Hulbert (the mama of Art Techniques). 

One of the projects I was working on before I left for Art Fest in March was designing"mini workshops in a kit" ... faux typewriter key jewelry using digital letters, digital label kits for the kitchen and bath using recycled jars and containers and digital art alphas for ATC's, bookmarks and altered or mixed media art.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words... that should keep this post much shorter... LOL  so here they are...

Recognize that bookmark?  I made "moo" cards for ArtFest using this alpha that I designed.  The moo cards were so popular (I gave folks a choice of whether they wanted a moo card or a poker chip) that I was out of them in no time flat!

I love this vintage type jewelry set... with the "Hugs" and "Kisses" earrings, the necklace with my initial and two "function" keys and the bracelet with one of my favourite "texting" shortforms "LOL". They cost literally pennies to make and the full "how to"  instructions including a supply list and tips are included in the package. They are fun to wear and I get a lot of chuckles from people when they notice the X and O earrings.  They always want to know where I bought them.  It just tickles me to no end to see the look on their faces when I tell them I made them myself.  The digital letters are protected by resin... which also makes them look like glass keys! 

Here's an ATC I made by cutting out the letters in the "Just My Type #3 Vintage

Typewriter Keys" package, gluing them on chipboard and then to the background.

The combination of white keys and black keys from the

Just My Type Jewelry kit in an art piece is very stunning!

If you are interested in more information about any of these kits, they are currently available for sale (some for less than the cost of a latte at your favourite coffee shop) at DigiScrap Station.

I hope to get back to blogging as soon as I can.  With any luck (knock on wood) I'll be back writing away in a couple of weeks. 

Happy Arting...and have a great weekend.  See you soon!

Sharon

 

 

A Thank You Gift from me to YOU...

Yesterday afternoon my curiosity got the better of me. I checked my blog visits for the past two weeks and discovered it was over 1,000! WOW! I nearly fell off my chair LOL. I adjusted my "specs" thinking I may have misread it (or needed a quick trip to the eye doctor to get my eyes checked) ... but nope those were the numbers!

My goodness gracious (ah! you can tell that I once lived in the southern U.S. can you?) in my wildest dreams I never expected all the tremendous warmth and support, wonderful visitor comments and lovely emails I have received since starting the blog a few short weeks ago. I am just delighted, humbled and (slightly... well that's an understatement) overwhelmed at such a response... it is a wonderful gift and I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I pondered all yesterday afternoon as to what I could do to show my appreciation. I must have thought of a million things... some doable... some not.... my brain was definitely working overtime. I finally settled on a download of some scans of very vintage pages from an 1889 Delineator Magazine for you to use in your personal art.

This particular issue of the magazine is very special to me. It was given to me by my storytelling friend Lori who lives in Portland, Oregon. It belonged to her grandmother, who, judging by the date of the magazine probably inherited it from her mother. Lori told me at the time time that it had sat in a trunk for years and years and even though it was literally falling apart from age, she wanted me to have it. It was such a wonderful, generous gesture on her part to gift me with this magazine... she knew in her heart I would treasure it and I surely do.

The old ads, recipes, stories, "common sense" suggestions and fashions in this publication are absolutely priceless! For someone like me who loves Victorian dresses, hats and "old stuff", it is a goldmine of information. There is even a "Studies in Fine Arts" column.

Here's something that will sound familiar to us "artsy fartsy" types:

"Glazing and Scrumbling"

A mention of Glazing and Scrumbling being made in a former chapter, we give here instructions how to do them.

Glazing is done by laying on a thin film of one color to modify the tone of the second painting. The finishing tints must all be warm in tone, light or dark, as occasion may require. Do not paint too fast and always use small brushes. Use scrumbling where it is necessary.

Scrumbling is passing an opaque tint lightly over the work. Use a bristle brush for the purpose, mixing white with whatever that is required. The brush should be lightly filled with color and drawn quickly over the surface. (Sounds like a form of dry brushing to me!)

A love for the work, a constant and faithful study of Nature and her examples and much practice and careful attention to details will insure good results." (Boy, ain't that the truth!)

There was, of course, in every magazine of the day, advice columns. The lady who wrote for the Delineator, anonymously of course, certainly had a sharp tongue in spots and she didn't mince her words either. She'd be hunted down and strung up by her pigtails on the nearest clothesline if she tried getting away with it today!

It was her "job" to warn the ladies of the day against "participating in idle talk or gossip" or giving them a "scolding" about the perils of "lacing too tightly", admonishing them in no uncertain terms for their "poor etiquette and manners" or just chattering on about everyday "acceptable" fashion to give the wearer the appearance of the "demure and dignified" and suggesting they adopt the "Puritan girl of long ago, a style that is becoming to most women... "


So there you have it ladies... I don't know about you, but I think I'll stick to my blue jeans and t-shirts for "daywear". Can you imagine sitting at a computer in a full length dress (sometimes with up to 10 yards of material in it), a dustcap (oh my!), two or three heavy petticoats, a corset, corset covers, drawers and chemise? Puritan Girl be darned... I love comfy! GRIN!

Below you will find three smaller photos of the pages I selected with the download link for the zip file. Because the magazine pages are large, I re-sampled them down to a smaller size that will fit a standard sized printer. Enjoy!!

Before you download, please remember these pages are for use in your personal art ONLY. I respectfully request that you do not post them on any website, forum, flicker, etc.. If you would like other art buddies or friends to have them, please send them a link to mystoryART and this post. Thanks for your cooperation.




Download here



Thanks again for stopping by for a visit today. May the Chinese luck of the "8ths" be with you today. See you next week...

Sharon