Matisse Inspired Print

New Textile Design

New Fabric Design

New Textile Design

New Paintings

Tara Shoes received an invitation from MTV to be a part of their "MADE" show. They want shoes for a young woman who wants to be "made" into a salsa dancer. So exciting until I remember that right now I have no shoes in stock.

The good news is that I've found a guy in the area who can help me make the kinds of shoes I've always wanted to make. Now we need a bit of seed capital to purchase a leather sewing machine and some supplies. As soon as we have our first pairs available, I'll let you all know.

Painted Drawing #3

Painted Drawings

Got inspired by watching a video about how to make a drawing

http://drawing-drawings.tumblr.com/

So I decided to try the technique using color.

I was inspired by some antique "patio prints".

I'd love to make shoes like this -

flowery, but a step beyond

just clipping a posy to the toe of your shoe

and losing it during a milonga!

The shoemaker has no shoes

 

I always loved this photo taken in my friend's beautiful garden. 

But it always gives me a tweak because

I am a shoe designer with no shoes to sell.

People will always say to me,

"well, times have been hard for sales."

However, I could sell as many shoes as I could afford to buy.

The customers are calling everyday to buy Tara shoes

because everyone tells them that Tara has the best quality and comfort. 

They did.

But with factory prices doubling and more,

export taxes from Argentina at 23% and import taxes to the US at 10%,

PLUS air freight and insurance and ground shipping,

it has become impossible to make shoes in South America

and have a viable business.

What to do?

Sketchbooks

There are notebooks all over my house. I have a couple in the car and crates of old ones stored in the basement. In them are drawings of shoes, clothes, notes about marketing and new business concepts, grocery lists, floorplans, numbers, poetry - you name it.

Something needed to be done. Now there are piles of things to scan and share. I will be adding the sporadically to the "Sketchbook" page. If you're interested in shoes and what may be coming to Tara someday, this is the place to see and comment.

Discoveries

It's such a thrill to discover a new idea. I say discover because that's how it seems when it happens to me. Or maybe it's that the idea discovers me. At any rate it seems to be unavoidable - it just happens. It happened this Spring when an old idea crept back and began haunting my thoughts. I had an "Uncle" Morris - at least I think he spelled it Morris. He was a kind of inventor - he had developed a foul, yellow salve that he called "Bickmore's Fly Dope". It came in an equally appalling yellow, screw-top can (like shoe polish) and smelled like nothing else I've ever come within ten feet of. I guess the black flies stayed away, too.

When I was about 8 or 9, he arrived at the house with some tube shaped things that he called "Go-Sticks". They were heavy, waxed, kraft-paper cylinders filled with a mixture of sand and road salt, meant to provide traction on an icy road or driveway. The concept was that the tube would split open when cracked against a tire, and spew its contents where needed. They worked. My Mother thought it was a genius idea and bought dozens to give to the drivers in the family for Christmas. She always admired a good idea and had many of her own.

I don't believe Uncle Morris ever did much with his ideas, beyond making a short, test run or two. But I always liked the Go Sticks idea and presented it to a manufacturer of road salts and chemicals who thought it was a great idea for his company, Bare Ground Solutions. Then the fun began. He would do all the manufacturing and marketing - the works, pay me 10% on sales and my only responsibility was to figure out how to make it work in a large production run. Cakewalk, right?

More later . . . .