Bring the Fairy Tale In

"The Knight and the Lady," Master E.S. c. 1460/1465
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program

Hello friends,

People who know me will tell you I'm a practical person.  I don't get caught up in fantasy or delusion or daydreams.  I think about the practical realities of the here and now, sometimes to an extreme.  My favorite story that illustrates this is from several years ago when my best friend told me about a visualization exercise in which you're supposed to imagine you're walking through the woods, and different things you encounter along your journey represent facets of your real life.  At one point in the exercise you come to a container, and you have to describe the container.  My friend, on her first run through, had encountered a beautiful, ornate porcelain vase. Me?  I came to an old dirty used Tupperware container somebody had left in the woods.

Apparently the container is meant to represent our attitudes toward love and romance.  Whoops.

I wasn't having any trouble with my imagination or ability to visualize.  Everything I encountered on my mental journey through the woods appeared in vivid detail.  It was a veritable Bob Ross painting. It was just incredibly realistic.

Living in Washington D.C., I feel, is a lot like the world in my incredibly realistic walk through the mental woods.  Everything is practical, structured, purposeful, no nonsense.  The people are like that, too.  So I guess maybe I'm in the right place. But clearly, clearly I'm missing something. And it seems likely that all the other buttoned up, 9 to 5 business professionals roaming around this painfully sterile city are missing that something, too.

That thing we're missing is a sense of fantasy. Of whimsy. Of fairy tale magic.

Before continuing, reader, if you need an immediate fix, take a moment to stop and appreciate David Bowie right here:

(If you're unfamiliar with the movie The Labyrinth, it's about a baby who could have spent his whole life in a magic fairy tale world with David Bowie and a bunch of Muppets but then his sister went and ruined it).


I've been contemplating about how to add a little bit more magic into my very gray, very corporate DC life.  And, being me, my attention immediately turned to aesthetics.  Not too long ago I had the delight of spending time in a backyard garden in Georgetown that feels like being transported away into a fairytale:

#fairygarden #outdoors #evening #georgetown #gardeninspiration

A post shared by Emily S (@bostoniensis) on Oct 23, 2016 at 5:20pm PDT

#fairygarden #outdoors #evening #georgetown #gardeninspiration #homeinspiration

A post shared by Emily S (@bostoniensis) on Oct 23, 2016 at 5:23pm PDT

The owner of this home also has a knack for pulling the elements of her garden into the house itself so that it's unclear where the house ends and the garden begins.  I felt like I had been transported, and it was a feeling I decided I would like to recreate in my own home, one day, when I have the time and the resources to actually buy a house and spend serious time perfecting it.

After all, isn't home supposed to be a secluded, magical safe haven away from the rest of the world where we can shut off and just be content and alone for a while?  For the longest time, as I fantasize about home ownership, I have bounced back and forth between decor styles I like such as Southwestern, art deco, Hollywood regency, beach chic, mid-century modern, etc., and how to combine them without seeming like a crazy person.  I've realized now that I haven't been thinking crazy enough.  When I move into the next apartment or condo or house - you know, the one, my for-real-this-time big girl home, I want it to look like something out of a freakin' fairytale.  I want to be completely transported, with flowers growing out of the ceiling and a four-poster bed in the middle of the room and a hall of mirrors and chairs that look like thrones.

Naturally, I've been compiling Pinterest boards.  Here's my Pinterest board of fairytale home ideas, which seems to be heavily dominated by pixie lights:




I also have a Pinterest board that's more for inspiration and aesthetic appreciation, where I have compiled (and continue to compile) all my favorite fairy tale Instagram posts:




And, finally, my board "Zen Time" may not be fairy tale themed, per se, but it certanily embodies the ethos of escape, surrealism and being somewhere out of time.




I've also been trying to incorporate just a tad more whimsy and fun into my dressing.  Whereas I used to consider myself a chic, professional, edgy, contemporary dresser, with lots of black and gray and clean lines and angular, streamlined silhouettes, over the past year or so I find my wardrobe transformed, replete with botanical prints, soft flowy fabrics, feminine details and many shades of hunter, emerald and jade green (green!  Two years ago I would have told you I don't wear green).

The necessary Pinterest board for this, obviously, is "Flower Queen."




Other ways to incorporate fairy tale whimsy?  That's simple: by putting yourself out there.  I've been attending monthly salons in strangers' houses!  No joke.  And going to crafting classes.  Learning to make flower crowns and paper flowers.  Instagramming everything.  And I want more!


How about you, readers?  Do you have a place or a niche or a facet of your life in which you incorporate the whimsical and fairy-sparkled?  Where do you go to escape the gray, humdrum angles of the city?  Would you ever consider going full throttle with a weird (fairy tale inspired or otherwise) decor theme in your home or do you feel like that would just be way too much?  Do you ever escape by looking at pretty, otherworldly things in books or online, and is that enough for you? Is there somewhere you go in your head with your eyes closed?  Have you ever thought about bringing it to life?  Do you incorporate fairy tale inspiration into your crafts or other artistic pursuits? Discuss in the comments.

The Corporate Homogenization of Retail

"Street Scene," Jacobus Vrel, about 1654 - 1662
Digital Image Courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program

Hello friends,

I recently stumbled across this Washington City Paper article discussing how independent retail businesses can barely make it in D.C.   It explores in greater depth a phenomenon that I have long noted.  In fact, the sterile, corporate feeling of D.C. immediately struck me the minute I moved here. It's one of my biggest criticisms of the District and surrounding area and a big part of why I think it's so important to really invest in building a creative niche for myself.

Unfortunately, though, this is a trend that's happening in cities across the U.S. as more and more people decide they want to live downtown and rent prices skyrocket. It's just happening in D.C. faster than most cities because D.C. rents already started high, and its role as the seat of national government tends to insulate it from economic downturns that would normally drive prices down in other places. Cities, which have traditionally been centers of artistic innovation flowing from communities that operate outside the suburban mainstream, are now becoming homogenized playgrounds for the wealthy.

It's palpable.  We can feel it across our entire culture.  The movie and music industries are just reproducing the same rehashes of old, already-been-done hits.  Lunch hour is dominated by the same ten chains that let you order at the counter.  Women across the country get all their work clothes at Ann Taylor, J. Crew and Banana Republic.  It's only due to the death of big box book retail (i.e. Borders) and nostalgic Millenial coffee yearnings that the independent book shop (with cafe) is enjoying an urban renaissance right now.  Yet half of online sales occurred through Amazon last year, for books and for everything else, so how long will that last?  The only businesses capable of competing with online shopping while also paying anywhere-near-a-city rent are corporate chains, and that's usually because their online sales bolster their brick-and-mortar presence.

To an extent I blame Washington D.C. government.  The article goes into the city's policies somewhat, and the city's lackluster attempts to encourage the growth of independent business.  I personally think that, instead of developing new programs the District should work to improve existing services and to refine and/or clarify regulations that place large burdens on small and independent businesses.  One D.C. agency stands out to me in particular: the Office of Tax and Revenue.  OTR is so notoriously difficult to deal with that I'm surprised any small business in the District knows how to comply with D.C. sales and business tax requirements.  I have some stories of my own regarding OTR, but they're not that entertaining and would require a series of six blog posts to tell fully, so I'll spare you.  But it's safe to say that I gave up on even trying to start a side business in the District because OTR was so miserable to deal with.  I am not alone in this sentiment.

The death of independent retail also seems to have killed off another honored pastime: the shopping trip.  Only a few years ago I used to love the idea of taking myself out shopping and spending a day seeing, smelling, touching, trying things on, falling in love with an item I would never have known to shop for had I not spotted it.  But I can't actually remember the last time I took a stroll down M St. in Georgetown or went to the mall (the shopping mall, not the Mall) just for fun and without a specific errand in mind.  Because all the stores are the same chains I can find online, and if that's the case I may as well just enjoy the convenience of buying through their websites.  So I have become accustomed to shopping online, consequently skip the physical trip, and then the few independent stores that are out there never get my business.  It doesn't help that the independents are scattered throughout the city rather than being focused in one small shopping district so that it isn't a giant ordeal to shop independent.

I think it's a chicken-and-egg scenario.  The notion seems to be that small businesses can't maintain the kind of online presence that corporations do and thus can't compete, but I would argue that it's the other way around, and that the lack of independent stores is what drives online shopping in the first place, by diminishing the joy and fulfillment of the physical shopping experience.  So consumers shop online, and never even discover the little independent guys.

I enjoy the hunt.  I enjoy getting out of the house.  I enjoy getting to actually touch things and make a day of it.  Peapod is a thing, and yet urbanites still love to go to the farmer's market.  So, too, with retail.  It is nice to be able to put in the exact search terms for what I'm looking for and have it immediately pop up on my screen when I'm shopping online, but what about the lack of discovery and curation and uniqueness that would occur in an independent retail shop where the items before me are not predetermined by a set of search terms or an algorithm?  The homogeneity of corporate retail begets even more homogeneity.  And as corporations die off, what independent stores will even exist anymore in order to grow into corporations that take their place?  Will we one day live in a world where the same three companies are responsible for everything we buy (kind of like how Clearchannel owns all the radio stations and completely dictates what music we hear)?

So the next question I ask is, what does this trend mean for the future of handmade, independent and artisan products?  In some ways it appears to be having a renaissance, in no small thanks to Etsy.  But even Etsy has gone corporate and, post-IPO, it now allows its sellers to work with production partners and outsource their labor.  Gone is the handmade requirement.  So, while Etsy may be an incubator for small and independent businesses, the emphasis on diy is gone.  Nor is Etsy a local phenomenon. Etsy's website connects buyers to sellers all over the world (thus requiring US based sellers to compete with sellers in countries with lower valued currency and cheap labor).  It does nothing to foster the development of independent brick-and-mortar retail that can give a city its soul back.

I want to believe in a city where small, independent artisans can rejuvenate brick-and-mortar retail by offering items that you simply wouldn't be able to get at a corporate chain or online.  Or, that you could theoretically get on Etsy but would never actually be able to find in its highly saturated market of millions of sellers and by slogging through hundreds of search results per keyword.  I want to believe in a city where local shop owners play the role of curator and tastemaker, cultivating a unique and uniquely local style.  The city should have a signature look, a signature vibe, in everything it makes and sells, rather than the same rapidly homogenizing wave of corporate soullessness that makes people in LA dress and style their homes the same as people in Austin and in New York.

I was just in Austin, having heard tales of its weirdness and unconventional combination of Southwestern style with modern liberalism.  So you can imagine my dismay when everyone was dressed like they are everywhere else, all the restaurants had the same small plate nouveau nonsense I've become accustomed to here, and the gift shops carried all the same brands as my favorite gift shop in DC.  I found the same suede clutch that I had bought in DC a few months earlier, no joke. The same Rifle Paper Co. greeting cards.  I've discovered this is happening in Boston, too, from my recent visits.

Is this what we're doomed to, readers?  The same indigo dyed woven wall hangings and cutesy mermaid greeting cards and edgy jacket earrings in every store?  Everything is taking on a veneer of artfulness and whimsical woodland botanical global hipsteresque streamlined Millenial chic, inspired by the Etsy aesthetic, but even Etsy is corporate now.  That artfulness is superficial, set by an algorithms and bots that crawl Google for search terms.  Owls, arrows and chevrons are out.  Now it's monstera leaves, cacti, succulents and moon phase calendars, nationwide.  Next year it will be something different, but it will all still be the same.

What are your thoughts?  Do you feel that the convenience of corporate brands and online shopping at large retailers outweighs the curation and uniqueness of independent however pricier and less convenient retail?  Is there room for both, and if so, how do you balance?  Do you also find that even independent retailers are starting to carry all the same brands?  Has Etsy let you down, or do you still feel that it is relevant and helpful in locating new, interesting, artisan, handmade products? Have you found a replacement for Etsy that is truer to Etsy's roots, whether online or elsewhere?  As retail has become more homogeneous do you find yourself turning more toward your own handmade stuff, swaps, vintage, friends who make stuff, local popups or other alternatives?  Discuss in the comments.

On Instant Gratification

"Arctic Hare." John James Audubon. c. 1841
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open access Program

Hello friends,

I want to share with you a new guiding principle I have stumbled upon for creating balance in my creative life.  That principle is to make sure that I have a healthy sampling of both long-term and instant gratification projects going on.  I think this is what I was missing up until now.

I'm one of those people who has to work on some type of creative or artistic project every day to feel sane.  In the past I've relied a lot on longer term creative projects that I worked on a little bit every day.  Long knitted lace shawls, for instance, where I'd knit a few inches each night for weeks or even months.  A layered acrylic painting that requires lots of steps, with time to dry inbetween, to get the texture I want.  Handmade perfumes that required lots of trial and error and letting scent sit for long periods of time to see how they age.

But then a few months ago, when I discovered dying with indigo, something changed.  This new skill let me watch a project go from absolutely nothing to completely finished in only a few hours.  At the time I didn't quite identify it as instant gratification; I just knew that there was something really rewarding about it and that I wanted to keep dying scarf after scarf after scarf to see how they'd each turn out.

Fast forward to this past weekend.  I'm signed up to sell a bunch of my handmade items at a Mother's Day Pop-up Market in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington D.C. on May 13 (stop by and say hi if you live in the area!)  Knowing this, I decided it would be a good idea to use some blank cards I had laying around anyway to make mother's day cards.  Needing a quick and dirty way to produce some cards fast, so that I wouldn't take too much time away from building up my stock of my more standard merchandise for the show, I turned to the block printing skills I learned at a workshop I took several months back.  I sat down, carved out a "Mom" print in about an hour, and set forth quickly block printing about 20 cards. The printing process itself was super speedy, taking maybe 15 minutes.

Something about that process was super satisfying.  I was having so much fun, in fact, that I found other experimental blocks I had carved out after my class but never worked with and started just printing on printer paper, for fun, to see how they turned out.  I ended up producing tons of prints!  I won't picture them here because they are political in nature and contain some colorful language about a particularly controversial figure who is in power at the moment and whom I shall not name.  The point is, unlike the meditative and calm feeling of slowly contributing little by little to my knitted projects, it was exciting.  It was exciting to be able to quickly produce several different finished items in a short period of time.

As it happens I showed my prints to a few friends and it seemed like everybody wanted one, so being able to just hand them over to anyone who wanted one because they were so fast and easy to make, and have everyone enjoy them certainly added to the satisfaction.  Compare to a beautiful knitted piece that takes me 3 months to make and can only go to one friend.

Same thing with the indigo scarves.  Once you have your dye vat prepped, you can dunk many different scarves either simultaneously or one after the other, making finished pieces in great big batches.  Block printing evoked the experience of doing my first indigo dyes: wanting to do more and more and getting excited to see how each one turned out.

So then I realized, that's what made both these experiences different: instant gratification.

Even compared to jewelry-making, which might only require an hour or two to do a completed project if it's small and simple, these were fast and addictive.  Jewelry is methodical.  You're slowly building the piece at a constant rate.  With printmaking and dying, boom, there's one.  Boom, another. And a third, a fourth.  You get to instantly enjoy pieces and compare them to one another, and experiment quickly and with ease.  It's a totally different pace.

And so I've realized that I need to incorporate more instant-gratification arts into my repertoire on a more regular basis.  I love knitting and painting and jewelry-making, and I consider them skills I have finely honed over time.  The pieces I create are beautiful and intricate, and the amount of time and meticulous effort that goes into them is evident and a large part of what makes them beautiful.  But the flip side is that the time it takes to make a single project can make them seem daunting, lead to burnout and even feel more like a chore than a hobby.  They're satisfying, but not necessarily fun.

On occasion I think it's worth it to spend a day, or even just a few hours, enjoying the feeling of having produced lots of new pieces in a short period of time.

How about you, readers?  Do you find that you tend to gravitate more toward longer-term or instant-gratification projects or a balance of both?  Do you find that the speed and frequency at which you're able to produced finished items has an impact on your overall creative satisfaction one way or the other or is it more about the journey for you?  What are your favorite types of hobby for a fast creative fix or last minute gift?  Discuss in the comments.

Emily