As a dreamy pre-teen, not exactly a collage artist, I’d pore through McCall’s, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen Magazine cutting and pasting fashionable images of hairstyles and clothing into my scrapbook using scissors and LePage’s glue. Little did I know I was learning skills that would last a lifetime, even morphing into the digital age. Now I cut and paste pretty much every day of my life…be it in an email to a friend, a story for Retrospect, or an image for one of our prompts.
Here’s the “before” of our featured image. Notice any difference?
Goodbye and good riddance, crusty rubber-tipped glue bottle!
///
100 words/RetroFlash
*Re my title, any guesses?
Barbara BucklesArtist, writer, storyteller, spy. Okay, not a spy…I was just going for the rhythm.
I call myself “an inveterate dabbler.” (And my husband calls me “an invertebrate babbler.”) I just love to create one way or another. My latest passion is telling true stories live, on stage. Because it scares the hell out of me.
As a memoirist, I focus on the undercurrents. Drawing from memory, diaries, notes, letters and photographs, I never ever lie, but I do claim creative license when fleshing out actual events in order to enhance the literary quality, i.e., what I might have been wearing, what might have been on the table, what season it might have been. By virtue of its genre, memoir also adds a patina of introspection and insight that most probably did not exist in real time.
Characterizations:
been there, funny, right on!, well written
No Bebe, I don’t get your title, will wait to hear everyone else’s guess and your explanation!
But meanwhile love your gluey story and now you have me thinking about the soul collages I did several summers ago and wrote about in my story SOUL COLLAGE. which I remember you especially liked!
(And BTW, I let drop your offer to help me post links in my comments, must bug you again about that!)
Dee, I’m waiting for Suzy’s comment before I tell you about the title…if anyone will get it, she will. If she doesn’t, I’ll explain.
Happy to help you add links to your comment any time…if I can still remember how!
Good Bebe!
With our time-zone difference when is a good day and time to do our tech attempt? (If you remember how!)
If I remember correctly, all you have to do is go to whatever it is you want to link and
1) click on the long window at the top of the screen and it will highlight the url
2) then in the very top menu bar go to Edit>Copy,
3) then go to your comment and in the top menu bar go to Edit>Paste and it will insert it.
I’m going to try it here and see if it creates a link to your story…here goes:
https://www.myretrospect.com/stories/pickled/
Everyone, but you…you stayed home to work on your hobby. And a great one too, that has stood you in good stead throughout your life. Thanks for getting all the great art that adorns our images as we write for Retrospect. They inspire us to write better stories.
Happy to help, Betsy…my newest hobby!
Cool picture! Love the “Hobby Shop” font.
For me the small of “airplane glue” snaps me right back to my days of making models of ships, planes and racing cars. When I made ship I’d incorporate some fireworks into it. When I tired of it, or needed room for a new one, I’d set it on fire, send it out into the shipping channel near our house, and pretend it was 12/7/41.
Oddly enough, although I’m kind of a font addict, I didn’t even notice the Hobby Shop font. I love it too…it’s kind of Art Deco. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out. And, what a remarkably creative way to make room for another piece in your collection, Dave…very impressive!
Barb, thanks for the memory on that glue! You’ve inspired me to do collage, which I’ve done from time to time. I confess to Googling the title and was stunned at the glue reference … ’nuff said.
Cut and paste indeed. Wonder if the young’uns even know where that term came from. The title reminded me of the song “everyone’s gone to the moon”, but not sure how the movies fit in, unless it is that people go and watch things instead of do things. What’s the answer????
I’m in awe of your artistic talents, Barb. Your collages are amazing. I also enjoyed making them in the old fashioned cut and paste manner, but never mastered the tools needed to use photoshop or to transform boys into girls like you did in the featured image. I am obsessed with creating photo books and have integrated stories into some of them lately. What’s the best way to learn to do more of this on my computer?
Ah, now I see it!
Thanks to suggestion to google “everyone’s gone to the movies” Marian. The featured image is still the glue bottle–maybe I am missing the one that transformed the boys at the hobby shop into girls?
I meant the featured image on the prompt itself on the home page, Khati. I should have been more clear and probably should have included the “before” and “after” within my story. Sorry for the confusion! And as I mentioned to Suzy, Steely Dan’s lyrics are often obscure and there are numerous interpretations of this one, but they’re all pretty creepy.
Ah—now I get it. Thanks!
Barb, what a perfect RetroFlash! And I love that you divulged the “before” picture we used to make the prompt image. It was fun to figure out together which boys you should turn into girls.
As to the title, I know there’s a Steely Dan song called Everyone’s Gone to the Movies that mentions Mr. LePage, so I guess that refers to the glue? I never understood the lyrics, they seem vaguely sinister to me.
It was fun, Suzy…we actually spent a fair amount of time deciding where the blond’s pigtail should be placed and how long the other one’s hair should be. And yes, that’s the song. Who knows whether it actually refers to the glue…so many of their lyrics are open to interpretation ranging from simply sarcastic to truly disconcerting.
As others have noted, Barb, a great RetroFlash. I admit googling to find the LaPage reference (though I at least remembered that it was a Steely Dan song about porno movies) and not catching your gender “corrections” in the photo the first time. But I sure remember that damn glue bottle — and usually having to work with a pair of scissors to re-open the crusty slit every time I wanted to use it.
More substantively, I think it is just great that what started out as a hobby for you turned into a life-long passion. Had I done the same thing, I might own a railroad — or at least be an engineer or conductor — today.
Thanks, John, and ah, yes, that crusty slit…you brought it back to life with just a couple words. Then there’d always be a few specks of that crust in the application. Now I kind of miss it. Not.