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| In 1978, I took courses in commercial art at the Keefe Vocational Technical School in Framingham and the Art Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. This opened up the world of publishing to me. I found that my ability to design. cut and use stencils was very helpful in designing pages. I put together a small catalog of stencil designs (stencils which I planned to sell cut) and advertised it in Yankee Magazine. I received 400 requests for catalogs but had neglected to ask for a stamped self-addressed envelope. Sending out the catalogs was quite costly. |
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1988 I was asked to design a series of wildflower stencils for a friend who owned an Inn in Vermont. I planned and promised to do fourteen of them, but only produced five. Above is one of them, a strawberry stencil.
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| I received orders for many of my stencils. Later, I placed another ad in Yankee Magazine for a second catalog of stencils. I noticed that now there were other ads for stencil catalogs. Apparently I had given others the idea. The number of competitors increased. I did many custom jobs - designing and cutting special stencils from an idea of a customer. I taught many of them how to stencil. I sold my ready-cut stencils in wallpaper stores, gave stencil designs for gifts, and did a few stenciled curtain jobs. I decided to call my second stenciling business Pineapple Graphics because the pineapple makes such a fine stencil and is the hospitality symbol. (The first was Custom Craft Cafés-1961.) |
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| With my newly acquired ability of preparing material for publication, I also began designing local advertisements for Pineapple Graphics. From these ads, I received orders for various stencils and stenciled items. One of the orders was for Marion Heath, the famous greeting card designer. She wanted three pairs of tall window length curtains stenciled to match the pineapple design on her wallpaper. I did them and she was very happy with the result. |
| After learning the basics of preparing material for publication, (paste-up and layout) at the Art Institute in Boston, I applied for a job as an entry level paste-up and layout artist. I worked for one summer at the Town Crier in Wayland, Massachusetts, where I lived. It was not easy work. I dropped the X-acto knife quite a few times - on me! I also worked for a time doing pasteup and layout at a company which published thick catalogs of medical supplies. At that company it was mandated that on holidays one be able to drink a Peppermint Schnappes and work, too. |
| That summer I used my paste-up and layout skills, plus my drawing ability, to design a small flyer about sea shells for a yacht club social occasion. (I wrapped shell favors in the flyer.) I received many compliments about the flyer and that gave me the courage to apply to a small local shopper-newspaper (Bentley's Calendar, Sudbury, MA) offering to do whole pages of illustrated information. I was hired as a free lance writer-page designer for this paper. Once a week for three years, I created an illustrated page of various topics - cooking, sewing, woodworking, dollhouse and furnishings, etc. I designed the items for the pages as I went along. |
| At the end of the third year 1982-83 the owner of the paper said she would like to publish a cookbook of my cooking pages. Each page had to be newly prepared for the printer, with new typesetting. I reused the artwork I had already done. Most of the layouts remained the same. It was an arduous task - eighty pages. Gradually, one by one, they were finished. I chose the name "The World is So Full of Good Things To Eat", borrowing part of the phrase from a poem of Robert Louis Stevenson. I used my pseudonym "Elizabeth Anderson" as author of the cookbook. I was invited to be 'Author of the Month' at the local library, and had to give a talk about myself. Also, I was asked to appear on a radio station for an hour's interview. Somehow I got through those things! In addition, I was featured on an almost full page article of the Middlesex News of Framingham, Massachusetts. |
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After learning how to prepare a whole book for publication, I now decided to produce a book about stenciling. This took about six months to complete. The book was called "Pineapple Graphics Book of Stencil Designs". My husband published it for me in 1984.
This book contains twenty designs with tracing, cutting and stenciling directions. The designs are mostly entirely original; a few were new renditions of classic patterns. Each design was named after a relative or friend.
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