Clarissa Explains It All valentines!

When I was in third grade, my teacher taped all of the valentines she received to the front of her desk. That year, one of her past students gave her a Clarissa Explains it All valentine and when I saw it, I FLIPPED OUT. It was (and still is) one of my absolute favorite tv shows, and ever since that fateful day in 1994 I have wanted to find some Clarissa valentines for myself. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating and just being dramatic, BUT NO, I have been looking for these ever since my dad signed up for ebay, and I've had a saved search for these ever since I got my own ebay account. It is, in a word, an obsession.

A few years ago I managed to get like 5 valentines that somebody was selling unboxed. It was a dream come true at the time, but little did I know that in the cold, frigid winter of 2019 it would get EVEN BETTER.

First, in January, somebody listed a complete box of cards from 1996. It was an auction-style listing so I had butterflies in my stomach for six days waiting to see if somebody would outbid me, but I ended up snagging it! Many happy dances ensued. And then, magically, last week somebody else listed a complete box of cards from 1993! And it was a buy it now listing! I have never added-to-cart-and-checked-out so fast in my life.

And now here I am, in possession of the treasure I have sought for a quarter century.

I decided to just keep (and FRAME. I'm insufferable!) one complete set from each box, plus the boxes. The rest of the cards are available in my '90s valentine sets right here (I take requests!)

Happy Valentine's Day, friends!

ps. my t-shirt is from hot topic

DIY girl power protest sign

The annual women's march is coming up this weekend and I'm here to help if you need an easy last minute sign! I feel so much more optimistic and excited about the march this year. In 2017 it was a really solemn occasion. It was cathartic, but I felt so hopeless. But now that Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker again and we have over 100 women in Congress for the first time (!!) and we're getting SO close to the 2020 election, I just feel so much more energetic and hopeful!



Materials you'll need:

2 sheets of colored poster board
1 sheet of foam board
My free template (download here)
Scissors
Utility knife

You'll also need either sticker paper, white paint, or white card stock and glue depending on which method you want to use and what materials you already have on hand if you're doing this at the last minute :) Be sure to read through the whole tutorial before deciding how you want to make your sign since I have a few different ways. It's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure protest sign, lol!



If you want to make a double-sided sign with a handle, you'll need to use all three pieces of board. If you're just going to make a double-sided or single-sided sign to hold with your hands, you can leave out the foam board.

Start out by cutting a large circle out of the board. If you have a garbage can lid that you can trace, that's probably the easiest way to do this. I didn't have one (our garbage lids are rectangular, darn it!) so I tied a piece of string to a pencil and drew it that way (there's a tutorial for this method on youtube here.)



If you have white sticker paper, print out the template onto the paper and then cut out each letter. Lay out your design and then stick each letter to the board one by one.

If you're going to paint the letters onto the sign, print out the template onto plain paper and then cut out and trace the letters onto your board.

And if you're using paper and glue, print out the template onto white card stock, cut out the letters, and then glue them onto the board.



If you're using a handle, tape it to the bottom of the foam board and sandwich the foam board in between the two pieces of poster board. I also edged my foam board with red masking tape to make it look prettier ;) Most cities only allow cardboard for sign handles, since wood or metal can be dangerous, so make sure whatever material you're using is OK before attaching it!

ps. This design is also available on t-shirts, totes, mugs, etc. in my Threadless shop right here, and it's included in my new feminist button set right here.

try a little kindness #4

This week's free printable is a photograph that I took (with my trusty new camera! yay!) with a wonderful quote by Amelia Barr. The dimensions of this one also make it suitable as a desktop background, too, for most monitors. You can download it for free here (just right-click and save) and it's also available on society6 here.



A group of high school students went around late at night and put happy, encouraging messages on every locker in their building. I think this is such a beautiful idea, especially in high school when a lot of kids start off each day feeling blue (at least I know I did.) The students got the idea from tumblr after another group had done the same thing. It would be so cool if this idea spread and more and more school kids were greeted one morning with a sunny note pinned to their locker.



1- Have a bit of a knitting addiction? Knit some hats and scarves and donate them to local shelters.
2- Think of someone that you've lost touch with and send them a sweet note, asking how they're doing.
3-Clean out your cabinets and donate any non-perishables that you aren't going to use
4- I've been noticing Girl Scout's selling cookies outside the grocery store lately -- feed two birds with one bagel by supporting young girls and getting yummy cookies at the same time!
5- When you're at the store and someone has a lot less in their cart than you do, let them go ahead of you.

One of the easiest ways to show kindness is with patience -- letting other people go ahead of you in lines, when you're driving, etc. I tend to do this whenever possible with one major exception-- if I desperately have to go to the bathroom, kindness takes a backseat to getting home immediately, lol!

try a little kindness #3

I was a bad blogger and just whipped this up really fast to make sure I still got a kindness post up today. Oops! I was up until 4am working on a different project (I'm sharing it later this week, it was definitely worth the sleep deprivation!) and was just way too tired to work on this post until this afternoon.

This download includes a set of printable notecards that you can hand out to show your appreciation to the kind human beings in your life. Sometimes the best random act of kindness is acknowledging and showing appreciation for a different one.

If you'd like you can download an 8.5"x11" free printable of this design right here (just right click and save!) They print two per page.



You probably already heard about this but I think it's pretty awesome and wanted to share.

Ok, so Jezebel offered $10,000 to anyone who would send them the unretouched photos from Lena Dunham's Vogue photo shoot. Then someone gave them the pictures and they presumably forked over Ten. Thousand. Dollars. And then the awesome Nicolette Mason and Brad Walsh stepped in and decided that that much money could be much better spent.

They started an indigogo campaign to raise $10,000 for women's empowerment -- specifically Step Up Women's Network. You can see their campaign page (and contribute, if that floats your boat!) right here. I absolutely love this story and I hope so badly that they meet their goal. It's wonderful when a crappy internet thing turns into an inspirational internet thing :)



1 - Shovel your neighbor's sidewalk
2 - Slip a happy note into a library book for a stranger to find
3 - Go on a loose-change treasure hunt in your house and donate the money. You can take the change to a coinstar machine if you don't want to manually count it out.
4 - Next time you're at the grocery store keep an eye out for donation bins near the exit. Mine has one for donating animal food and one for canned goods, so I usually get an extra can of cat food and an extra can of beans and drop them on my way out. It's less than a dollar per shop but it makes a small difference.
5 - If you have a friend that's feeling blue, make them cookies or send them a card.. give them a call or order a surprise pizza! It's amazing how much one small thoughtful gesture can brighten someone's mood :)

try a little kindness #2

I'm really excited about this printable, I've been wanting to figure out how to do faux cross stitch in photoshop for a while and I can't wait to make more designs now that I learned how. I want to learn how to do physical cross stitch too, I just need to find the right pattern to start with (I'm thinking one from kitschy digitals will be perfect, though!)

If you'd like you can download an 8"x10" free printable version of this design right here (just right click and save!) It's also available in my society6 shop here.




Last week this Pennsylvania pizza shop owner offered to deliver food and medicine for free to any elderly residents in his town who were trapped in their homes because of the arctic vortex. I've read so many heartwarming stories about people helping out during the storm. There's also this story about a man who put his snowblower to good use and cleared the snow from his neighbors' driveways in below-freezing weather.



1- If you have netflix or hulu plus and pay $7.99 a month for those services, maybe consider signing up for a monthly charitable contribution in the same amount. I'm by no means rolling in money but I figured if I can find $8 every month for reruns of The Office I can find it for the ASPCA :)
2 - Put some of your spare change in a parking meter that's running low
3 - Let someone know how much you love their work. I tweeted an author today to say how much I loved his book. Hopefully he'll see it and smile :)
4 - If you follow me on twitter you know I'm not the biggest fan of USPS but I do admire the individual mailmen who have to battle this weather to deliver our mail. A little "thank you" note in the mailbox wouldn't be a bad idea!
5 - Go out of your way to say "hello," smile, and say "thank you" every time you're at a cash register (thank you to Mary for this one!)

try a little kindness #1

I've really been enjoying reading the comments on the January giveaway post! So many fantastic random acts of kindness -- I get the warm fuzzies every time I approve new comments :) If you have a chance definitely read through some of them, both for ideas and for renewed faith in humanity.

Part of my new kindness resolution includes this new weekly series, kind of like Friday Favorites except everything is related to being kind :) Each post will include a free printable, a happy news story and ideas for random acts of kindness to perform during the upcoming week. Ready? Here we go!





First up, my first free kindness printable! The quote is from the series Derek (if you haven't watched it yet, it's on Netflix and I highly recommend it!) and I just thought it was the absolute perfect one to start with! Kindness really IS magic. You can download a free high-res PDF of my illustration here (just right-click and save!) and it's also in my society6 shop here.



You may have already heard about this but just in case you didn't, it's a pretty awesome news story! One web developer decided to give a homeless man a laptop, 3 textbooks and 1 hour of coding instruction each day for two months. The result? His student is now the proud author of an app that debuted last month. It's a carpooling app and it hit #1 in the travel category after only being in the iTunes app store for five days! Isn't that awesome?! You can read more about them on their Facebook page here.

And some random act of kindness ideas that are super easy and free --

1 - give a compliment to a stranger
2 - leave a positive comment on a blog that you usually only stalk
3 - call your mom and thank her for something
4 - let another car into traffic ahead of you
5 - collect your old towels & donate them to your local animal shelter

If you have any ideas for random acts of kindness (inexpensive or free acts are preferred) let me know in the comments and I'll include them in my next post! :)

Christmas freebie

Last year at Christmastime I got really discouraged by the number of people who were sending me very rude e-mails asking where their etsy orders were, completely out of their minds with worry that their presents might arrive late. As any internet seller can tell you, we do our best to get our orders in the mail as quickly as possible, but once we pass the package into the hands of the post office the delivery date is out of our control. Instead of getting unreasonably upset about snail mail living up to its name, this year how about we all just take a deep breath and enjoy the season of goodwill. Let's be kind towards one another and consider the feelings of everyone we come across during our shopping adventures -- be kind to the cashiers, the clerks, the baristas, the internet sellers, and keep in mind that our loved ones will appreciate the sentiment of our gifts whether they are given on the 25th or beyond.

I made this free printable & I'm including links to it on my invoices -- if you're an etsy seller or blogger I hope you'll consider passing it along, too! Way too many people let themselves get so overwhelmed by the stress of shopping that they forget the reason they're doing it to begin with -- to show love and appreciation for another human being. You don't need to do that on December 25th, you can do it on December 29th or January 2nd. You can do it every day of the year! :)

Freebie // 50 sixties hair scans

My new closet has a 60's beauty parlor theme, so I thought it would be really cool if I used vintage hairdo portraits for the artwork! I bought a 1965 mini purse book on etsy called "50 Styles for Problem Hair" and scanned the photos at 800 dpi so that I could have enlargements printed. So far I already had one printed at Staples as a black and white architectural blueprint (24" x 24" and it only cost me $3!) and it came out terrific! I mounted it with spray adhesive on foam board and it's already hanging up in my closet.

Anyway, I thought these pictures were so fantastic I just had to share them! You can do whatever you'd like with them. Combined the file size was way too big to upload as a zip file on my server, so instead I put them on flickr and you can download whichever ones you'd like individually. Here is the link to the set on flickr! :)