This is the second year we’ve put on Color For A Cause. You can participate wherever you are! All you do is draw (or print out and color) cards to be distributed at a local hospital or nursing home. We even have free artwork you can download, print and color (available for any non-commercial use, meaning no money changes hands), on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/IdeaJones
This year, we’re donating cards to the local Shriners Hospital, to be given to kids who’ll be in the hospital over the holidays. Coloring makes a good break from holiday stress, and it’s also a good way to keep kids busy. Charities like Girls Love Mail (http://www.girlslovemail.com ) love cards created by kids (even toddlers — you can always print the artist’s first name on the card).
White cardstock (available in any office supply store) works great, and you can fit two on a page. Envelopes aren’t necessary, but if you want to include them, size your cards 3.5″x5.5″ and add a box of 4″x6″ envelopes.
Messages? The basic guidelines are: nothing obscene, nothing overtly religious (you don’t know the recipient’s beliefs), and keep it positive. Short messages are just fine.
Thanks to this year’s participants, Sarah, Micaela, Eva, Mila, Harper, Patti, Antonia and Mark! The cards will be going to the hospital in a day or so.
There’s still time to do this wherever you are — a fun break for you and a nice surprise for someone else!
“Guv’nor,” our donation to the PAWS fundraiser, Petitecture, inspired by the auction winner’s beloved dog.
Waiting for the address to mail this to the person who won it at auction at the Pets Are Wonderful Support fundraiser in San Francisco. It was inspired by her dog, Guv’nor (who is, from the photo, adorable). PAWS is a great organization, helping people who are chronically ill keep their beloved pets. From their website:
“PAWS believes that the healing impact of the human-animal bond is one of the best supports available for medically vulnerable individuals, and mounting evidence indicates that this bond can yield valuable health outcomes. For many people, having a companion animal is part of living a happy and fulfilling life. For some individuals, especially those who are chronically ill, frail, and isolated by disease or age, having a companion animal can be central to their health and well-being. Animal companionship becomes even more important when our human contacts diminish because of aging or illness.”
I don’t make a lot of jewelry now (if you don’t count the 1,000+-and-counting Love Bead Safe Harbor Pins we have given away this year). Writing takes up most of my time, and artwork that I create for Redbubble.com and other online businesses. But we’ve been supporting PAWS for years now, and the mission is one we really believe in. Once, I stopped in to drop off jewelry for an event. Ahead of me was an elderly couple with their dog. As I waited, I heard them explain that they were checking in because their dog needed to see the vet. As they checked in, they told the receptionist how important the dog was to both of them. “He gives us a reason to get up in the morning,” the wife said. They expressed how grateful they were for PAWS, who helped with food and vet care they couldn’t afford.
I was so glad to be a small part of what they do. PAWS is now partnered with another organization, Shanti Project, still helping those who are ill keep the pets who give them comfort and support, and keeping those pets out of shelters.
Love Bead Safe Harbor Pin set honoring “girl geeks” and “maker mamas!”
The big push is done (the large-scale pin giveaways) after three cities, but LBSHPP is far from over. Here’s what’s in the works (so far):
A free workshop at a charity in Sacramento. Date and time TBA, but probably in July;
Pins for Progress, a fundraiser. We’ll be offering sets of pins in our Etsy shop (which is under construction right now). You can buy a set of pins *and* make a donation to charity! Each pin set will be $10, with 25% being split between Opening Doors, a charity helping refugees resettle in their new homes, and Mustard Seed School, helping kids from homeless families. One note — we can ship up to 8 sets in one envelope for one shipping price ($5 in the USA, message for the shipping rates outside the US) and more in a box (message for shipping rate). Date TBA, but within the next few weeks;
A video showing how to make your own set of pins. Date TBA, probably by the end of the summer;
We’ll continue to carry a few sets with us, so if you meet us, ask for a set of pins!
In the first phase of the project, we gave away over 1,000 pins (wow… it became larger than I ever expected), but the project was largely self-funded, so we had to look at how we could continue. This way, we can keep helping others and spreading the word!
Available on zazzle.com or redbubble.com. Just search for “ideajones” and you’ll see it.
The 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love” is this year. Maybe that’s why I’m drawing so many peace signs, or maybe it’s just that everyone seems so angry and worried. It seems like a good time to remember that how we respond is always our choice.
A portion of our commission goes to charities helping people or pets in need.
Mom was always involved in projects for charity. When I was a toddler, she and my grandmother hand-made beautiful doll clothes for an annual toy drive. I wasn’t that much into dolls, but seeing my mom and grandmother so focused on making them, and seeing how beautiful they were (mom really could sew), I wanted them. I must have been about three when this happened. I told her I wanted (pointing) that one, and she handed it to me, but explained it was made for someone who had no toys. Someone who was going to have a very sad Christmas. Did I want to take that doll dress away from her?
Let’s be honest — I did. Because mom made it, because it was beautiful, and because I was three. But I put it back.
Later, she had our Girl Scout troop make presents for kids in hospitals (little paper chimneys full of candy and a little toy), and we grew meal worms for birds recovering after an oil spill. My dad, who ran a furniture store back then, organized employees into refurbishing furniture returned to the store for distribution to halfway houses. I trick-or-treated for Unicef.
My parents weren’t hippies. Far from it. But they remembered The Great Depression and mom used to say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” She used to tell me that if you’d been really poor, if you’d been hungry, you knew what a kind gesture could mean.
Whatever our leaders do, on a day-to-day basis, our world is in our hands. Yes, there are things our government should do, things that take all of us together. But if we (you, Mark and me) give a recent immigrant a bus pass, or a bowl of kibble to someone who’s having trouble feeding his dog or cat, or give art supplies to kids from homeless families, we don’t fix all of the world’s problems, but we make one thing just a little bit better.
So if you’ve ever bought a onesie, or a tee shirt, or a cell phone case, or anything else from us, thank you. You supported a small business. You were a patron of the arts. You were a philanthropist helping someone in need. You hippie, you (lol).
This poster, just finished, celebrates some great 60s memories.
This is the 50th anniversary year of a lot of 60s stuff:
The Monkees tv show (and band) launched September of 1966;
Star Trek (the original) debuted the same year;
The Chevrolet Camaro, The National Historic Preservation Act (preserving sites with historic significance in the U.S.), the last official Beatles concert, the Batman tv series, and Francie, the Barbie doll’s “hipper” cousin, all made their bows in 1966.
I was in kindergarten and Mom said that my older sister would be taking me to see The Monkees in San Francisco, CA the following January. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement. They were playing The Cow Palace and I hadn’t been there. They were playing San Francisco and I hadn’t been there (even though we lived in Santa Cruz, which isn’t that far away). And they were The Monkees. I played their records until they were so fuzzy it sounded like static.
Then Mom told me the concert had been canceled. Someone was sick. That was that.
Well, that wasn’t really that — Mom lied. I think she got a look at the chaos that was the audience at a Monkees concert and decided that she didn’t want her five-year-old daughter to be trampled to death. Or my sister, who was a hippie, adamantly refused to take me. I’ll never know. Either way, it would be years before I’d hear them live. I got to see “the Threekees,” which is any three members of the band, a couple of times in the 80s. Those times it was Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones. The shows were a lot of fun. I even got pranked by Davy, which is a very special memory for me.
This year, Mark took me to see “the Threekees” again, in Monterey. Initially it was to have been “the Twokees,” in this case Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, but Mike Nesmith came onstage for the last part of the concert. It was in an old “golden age” movie theater, The beautiful Golden State Theatre in Monterey, and we got to meet up with friends. Thanks to our friend Janice, we even ended up center stage, second row, and we had a lot of fun. And while I didn’t get to see them in San Francisco, I will be seeing them in Paso Robles, CA with Janice — which is why Mark and I made this poster.
Davy Jones died suddenly, leaving his daughters and a herd of horses, some of them rescues, behind. Horses are expensive to maintain (I grew up with them and it’s both labor-intensive and expensive to keep a horse), and his daughters set up a charity to keep their father’s little herd together. As my time in fandom comes to a close, it seemed like the right note to do something to support the Davy Jones Equine Memorial Fund. So Janice and I will be out in front of the theater before the show, passing out information.
This poster of Davy Jones is also a nod to one of my favorite artists of the 60s, Peter Max. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a little kid. It’s colorful, flowing, and when I was a kid in Santa Cruz, psychedelic art was everywhere. Of course, I was much too young for the “tune in, turn on, drop out” 60s, but the aesthetic was in magazines, on tv, in the music, clothes, movies… Since Max’s work and The Monkees both came out of the 60s, it seemed right to mix a bit of Peter Max into the style. I’ve also got a thing for stained glass. Most often associated with churches, there’s something about stained glass that makes the subject more of a statement.
Stained glass is bold in its use of color and light, but fragile. It also forces the eye and brain to do one of the things they do best — find patterns. The face here is rendered minimally, but it’s clear what and who it is.
So I’ll be standing around this weekend in Paso Robles, hoping this encourages people to approach us and get information about Davy Jones’s charity (yep, official charity, 501(c)3, I checked), and making people smile. If you’re in the area I hope you stop by!
