First International Sale + Tech Central + Buehner's Office Supply

Monday morning begins.

I prepare the package to send out to my second online sale customer. This lady is also my first international sale! Hallelujah, holy shit! Thank you Miss Reis, from The Netherlands. Apparently the Netherlands are more than just a breeding ground for great synth-music as in the likes of Trumpett Records or Nine Circles, but they also love the X-Files!

Thank you Netherlands! International love. 

I see you Miss Reis, maybe you'll make it to a sick show at the OCCII in Amsterdam where my group "Pleasure Leftists" played in May sometime. And maybe some universal-all-seeing force will be tickled at the true-smallness of our world.

Sale number deux also gave me more opportunity to work on the packaging, the branding. I went a little crazy stamping "Memorabilia" all over the place, as I tend to not like to waste ink. 

Amazingly enough I managed to make this bad boy mostly myself. It feels good to feel like you have the resources at your finger-tips to do this stuff. What it cost was time, patience, and maybe a handful of coin for parking between Thinkbox at Case Western University & Downtown while I figured out how to do it. ADVICE: In the end, if you are an able bodied individual, it is much better to bike or walk/ RTA to either Thinkbox or Cleveland Public Library if you're not carrying a lot. You won't spend the whole time stressing out about getting a parking ticket instead of focusing on your project.

Stamp made from "SPECIAL RUBBER FOR LASER ENGRAVING" (laserbits.com) scrap that friend and director of Thinkbox Ian Charnas gave me (thanks buddy!), glued to a chunk of sample hardwood flooring (thanks Mrs. Metter!), and finally attached to a gimpy peel-n-stick stamp handle I ordered by mistake from laserbits.com (truthfully this is not very helpful). You need special rubber for making stamps with the Laser engraver FYI. This stuff is non-toxic as opposed to some rubbers. Although it still makes the Library managers think someone is smoking cigarettes in the department like a 16-year-old girl in a high school bathroom.

I must thank the folks at Tech Central down at the Cleveland Public Library main branch downtown for their assistance and patience in helping me finally through hours of pulling my hair out, laser etch my very own stamp. I must inform you, this is a very invigorating thing. To take your own design and see a laser blast it out of rubber or wood or whatever it is. And it's all fairly simple. These guys and gals at Tech Central are really doing a public service to show people just how productive they CAN be with a little self-motivation. You don't have to send out to some company far away, or spend lots of money to have a graphic design graduate do up your design, Tech Central at CPL can show you so many methods of making your artwork and ideas look totally professional and sick!

Since I opened my etsy shop, I have been down there at least every other day working with the Laser engraver, Corel Draw, & Photoshop. I am NOT a computer savy person by any means. I am stubborn and old fashioned and tend to get a little impatient with these things especially. I have little to no understanding of Adobe or Photoshop etc etc. I must testify however, that since spending more time at Tech Central, I have been feeling a lot smarter, and able, and motivated, and self-confident. It's like having a free little graphic design/art school down there at the Maker Space. And this is an insane plus for someone with like me, having the philosophies on education in this country that I do. Please, if you're into creating things of any kind, do yourself a favor and go down there. It is an infinity valuable resource for all people alike. Libraries.... the "people's university", it's completely true.

So ... after stamping all kinds of scraps (namely lovely vellum leftovers from old projects.. finally very happy I always save that crap), I am ready with the little extension of myself to send out to the lady in the Netherlands, who I hope will be happy with her purchase.

I've been throwing in little extras for my first orders as well which is fun I hope! More materials from my scrap vault. Little tokens of wood that I lasered out of a piece last year to create a bottle cap holder when I etched "Rising Star Coffee" logos into them. I knew they would be useful someday, and now they are! One day, for those of you labeled as hoarders of this kind of thing, you like me will be able to say the same. This is for you!

Little "Memorabilia" totem pins I call em'. Logos also laser-etched into these, then stained, then pin backs glued to them. Totem's of my appreciation.

Now is about time I highlight another place of operation that is very special to me. Often overlooked, and dusty in the abyss of things, technologies, and methods now obsolete in our "Ghost World" is Cleveland business Buehner's Office Supply Co. Since my humble beginnings as a collector of oddball stationary, cool printed paper, & notebooks/journals of all kinds, I've mostly made these discoveries in thrift stores and some Japanese specialty shops. In particular Buehner's first brought to mind the first accounting book with columnar-ish paper I found at Unique thrift years ago I filled as a journal. But boys and girls there's a whole world of this stuff still sitting dead-stock on shelves. And in my geographical case Buehner's Office Supply Co. @ 5818 Detroit Ave. right across from The Happy Dog in Gordon Square.

Buehner's has been in operation since something like 1952. It has seen some of the glory days of office supplies. However the nice gentlemen behind the counter often recounts to me how soon we're looking at the death of the envelope industry and sad things like "people don't buy pens anymore". This man is a hero to me. I walk around this shop and I'm filled with inspiration. Me, I love textures, and smooth flawless printed lines, and colors, and stamps, and empty books for writing in. In it's 50 + years of operation Buehner's has accumulated all of these kinds of things, and most of what is on it's shelf right now is goes back nearly that whole time. You need address books, or columnar pad, or accounting books, or price tags, or mailers, envelopes, pens, pencils, sharpies, continuous feeding paper, office-signage, old stickers, or more? You will find these things here.

I picked up my first book I'm going to use to catalog all my buttons made and sold here! I'm a big fan of damaged-classic-red-marble-secret-diary-of-Laura-Palmer texture. This really stole my wool. And I'm gonna scan this mother-father and make prints of this texture to cut up in future buttons. How's that for self-sufficience?! I also grabbed my "ORIGINAL" self-inking stamp here as well. I'm gonna be putting that on all of my uber-time-spent-being-made one-of-a-kind ish button packages!

Now maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot by giving away all of my secrets. Scanning textures, my personal treasure chest of "vintage" office supplies... but it would be greedy of me not to I feel. I live and work in the name of integrity. I try to anyway. WWTWD I want on those weird grade school woven bracelets that mean for me "What would Tony Wilson do?". Well he would give it away I think!

There is a real problem in our world today (Not washing over real human issues like war and destruction, but in this smaller case) when we don't write anything down anymore. I get being "green" and all paperless society but... I think it's scary. Satelites, World Wide Web.... they are not invincible. Thank goodness people are buying and pressing records again! You can actually hold something in your hands! This is something I am very protective over. I will not stop writing on paper until I am pure energy with no body god %#$#$@#. I like analog. Taking something off a shelf and opening it to words, pictures, sound, blah blah will always be en-vogue! But another point I'm trying to make is the "small local business" thing. Buehner's has been and is still around! Please folks, especially to my friends making and doing stuff in the greater Cleveland/near west side area, check these guys out! Staples & Office Max make prints, sure! But they're in a sea of parking lots and to me not very convenient. It makes me sad to think possibly Buehner's may go out of business. Most of their orders are from catalogs the gentleman said. And everything they have is so up to interpretation as far as the many uses you could employ.

The "think local" thing may be really easy to make fun of, hell I'm not exempt from it, but there is definitely a point some of the time. Not all local businesses are as bad sport, pathetic, and rely on gimmicks like Ohio City Burrito! Local businesses still owe it to their community to sell a good product thanks very much. Get your tags and paper, postits, folders, pens at Buehner's folks! And then go put a hot dog in your face!

- H

Welcome to Memorabilia Productions!

Hello there!

I am a mam of many blogs as you can see. I saw "Memorabilia Productions" as a necessary way to talk about my latest project in badge-making! I'll give you updates, new ideas, new products, new lines, and maybe some of the concepts behind all of these things. In addition I'll be informative on the progress of the business and where and when you might be able to buy some/see some in person at markets and whatnot.

You can visit the store page at any time to see the latest wares : www.etsy.com/shop/memorabilia1

This is a blog in the life of running a small business with big ambitions. I don't want to sell buttons, I want to sell ideas and experiences! In the words of Corinne Drewery, "BREAKOUT!" You will know!

I am a mam of many ideas, too many ideas. As a person weighs whether or not to dive into the world of a college education, careers, jumping cities, trying to make the right decisions, I have remained mostly the same in what I think about all of that. I have come more impatient and full of unrest these days out of these conversations I have with myself. I know I'm not alone, but we all exist first and foremost in our own heads. I remain true to my views that a person should never stop holding themselves up to their own criticism. You should never settle for being great for ... "a woman" "a man" "a small mid-west city" "a person who didn't finish college" "a middle class person or poor person" "a minority person" or anything ... I hold myself and my work up to the challenge of being truly good, and truly meaningful, on the grand scale of anyone and anywhere. Down with mediocrity forever, EVERYONE deserves better. To a world where it's celebrated and top, I will never be party. Maybe you feel this too.

It's very important to believe in your own ideas, however big or small, because however dark it sounds, you cannot simply assume anyone else will. You are their only chance for survival. Don't lay them to rest in your body!

It's dark, it's damaged, it's "so chill". I'll celebrate imagineers, and special ladies, and heavenly bodies of my very own decree! Dig?



This is for you! MEMORABILIA!

- H