A new but already dear friend, Emily of Emprint, owns her own letterpress studio.  We’ve had mutual friends for years who keep saying “oh, why don’t you two chat about letterpress” but, knowing that she’s a pro and I just adore it and only took one class I tend to steer the subject to something else.  This response may also have been motivated by my own deep but more-or-less harmless jealousy.

At any rate, we finally spent enough time in one place, cooped up together on vacation for almost a week, that we could really chat about her profession and my pseudo-hobby.  She asked me about my Etsy shop and immediately said, “oh my gosh, I’ve seen these before, your stuff is so cool!”  I was kind of shocked but really thrilled.

Small world no?

This coincidence gave me a little more faith in my own talents.  So much of what I struggle with in terms of creativity is my own constant fear of not being “good enough.”  In fact, I think I have a hard time in art classes because of this overwhelming sense that whatever I do will never be good and that making a few (or a lot) of mistakes along the way just isn’t acceptable.

Part of starting this blog was confronting that, and sharing with you the good, the bad, the horrid mistakes, and even (maybe) some of the triumphs.

I’ll be in Emily’s neck of the woods (er, plains) this summer and she mentioned doing some kind of collaboration– I really hope it happens.  Finding a press to play on is hard, after all who would give up control of their fancy (and expensive) machine to a near novice?  More importantly, though, I’d like the chance to work with a woman whose art and technique I respect– it’d be good for me to step out of crafting in secret.