organized chaos

Apparently not everyone has heard of Etsy.com.

Since I finished the drawing for the winner of the Fall Drawing Giveaway a couple days ago, I decided it was time to part, and send it off. It was a bit painful, as is everytime I send off one of my babies. I get a little attached to them. Sniff, sniff.

But really, I was happy to send it to it’s rightful owner and move on. And there I was at the post office walking back and forth down the small counter trying to find the right tube, then a pen that worked, and hey! Where exactly do you write an address on a round tube? There’s no center!

All the while three gremlins and a baby threatened to rip every cute teddy bear off their pegs. Which begs the question, “Why do they sell teddy bears at the Post Office anyway?”

And Jackelope whined that he really wanted one of those new Star Wars stamps to put on his hand. And Socrates was forced to hold a heavy Cuteness while I scrambled around trying to figure out, on the fly, how exactly to send that drawing without inflicting any damage to it.

Finally, I got up to the counter all prepared and asked the nice lady postal worker if those tubes were indeed free on the website. (Something I had heard from a friend. You know who You are.) She confirmed that little nugget of gold. Yippers.

Then in a moment of nervous rambling I blurted out that I would love to get some free tubes because I was selling my drawings in my Etsy shop.

“Oh,” she said. “Your Etchy?”

I mumbled back, “Uh, no. That’s ETSy.”

She looked embarrassed and out of the loop and for some reason I felt really dumb just then, like some kind of internet freak trying to explain HTML to her 80 year old grandmother.

But when I left I thought, “Well, Etchy is close to Etch a Sketch, and maybe in her mind it was some kind of new fangled way of describing art?”

I’m all about giving folks the benefit of the doubt.

So now that the drawing is mailed off, I can now show you the results. The winner was very pleased with her preview and I’m pleased if she’s pleased.

I’ve included the photo I worked from, which pains me only because I just know someone out there will pick apart the differences. Mainly me. But that’s drawing. It’s not reproducing detail for detail. It’s capturing the essence and character of a person. And that’s what makes the likeness happen visually. That’s what I’m all about, capturing invisible things like rainbows and leprechauns and quiet moments.

And don’t forget, another giveaway is coming soon in commemoration of my turning another year older.