Look, Ma, I’m making porn!

…um – tasteful, classy, sex-positive, feminist and respectful porn. That I’m not in. That makes it PC, right?

Get ready for some really elegant smut:

I’ve finally started printing and binding these little beauties! I’m doing a limited printing of 100, they measure 5.25×8.25in (13.3x21cm), and are done on 24lb recycled ivory parchment paper. 34 pages, including a handmade paper end sheet.

During the most recent trip to a local paper shop, I found this AMAZING matte black paper: I wish I knew what it were called – it’s smooth, pitch-black and …. rubbery? Kind of smooth like that. I turned it into protective casings for the books by simply folding, cutting holes, and corseting up the back with red embroidery thread, the same thread used to bind the books.

So yesterday, at the copy shop, I sat down at one of the self-serve computer/printer stations, arranged and collated my sheets according to whether they’d be printed in black/white or color, and happily plodded away on my own for about half an hour (for just the first 10 copies). Afterwards, after asking the sales associate for a receipt, he balked a little at the quantity of printing I’d done and asked what on earth I was doing. “Making books,” I said, proudly.

“We can do that for you. It’d save you a lot of time, and a little money – just bring it in in one file next time and you can just drop it off and pick it up later!”

Of course I imagined that was the case, but even I am a little too shy to let someone else print these. Also, I enjoy being able to handle the printing myself. I then went over to their slide-cutter (3 pages at a time – MAX!) to cut and trim all the sheets. After about half an hour of this, said associate comes over, amused, saying that, you know, we could cut that for you for, like, six bucks. “No, you don’t understand – this is what I do for fun,” silly.

So, at Daniel Smith the other day, upon checkout, the super-friendly and helpful sales guy tried to sell me on a rewards card: “Are you a student?”

“Nope”

“part-time?”

“Nuh uh”

“…Teacher?”

“Uh, no”

“On an arts committee?”

“No, uh, maybe I should be.”

Man, I feel like such a slacker. It’s kind of irking that you can’t get discounts when you’re simply an artist. And also weird to no longer technically fall into the “student” category.

I’m so happy with how the print job came out! It’s glossy and saturated.

(photo of the print job)

These books are available in the etsy shop. 🙂 You know you want one.

big mouth

A word on the mouths of my little girls.

What was initially a simple design decision turned out to be much more interesting than expected when, after the first Cute Girl show, I was confronted mainly with questions about the fact that none of the girls had mouths. Of course this was interpreted by many as some kind of feminist statement on voicelessness, anonymity, a state of powerlessness, etc… etc… to my horror! I just thought they were cuter without having obvious mouths: notice they also don’t seem to have noses, fingernails, upper-lip hair, and in many instances, bones.

The mouths are there, indeed they’re quite monstrous!

I think there’s a lot of power in hiding the secret weapon. Maybe that’s why I’m old-fashioned and a fan of long skirts, mild manners and recently the whole idea of “cute” … it’s possibly a distraction from the fact that – ah! – I’ve got a pistol/uzi/ninja star hidden in my handbag (figuratively speaking, of course)!

And then again, maybe I’ve just watched and been influenced by too many studio Ghibli films growing up.

My Neighbor Totoro