Bumper crop

Well, the other thing I was messin' with while I was home with the flu was new variations on the "I heart" cards in the "Body Language" line. It began with "I heart Cincinnati" and "I heart Kentucky," then, a few Cincinnati neighborhoods were added: Over-The-Rhine, Northside, Hyde Park and Clifton.

Well, a new shop in the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood - the Dandy Haberdashery - is carrying a slection of "Cards With a Past" and requested an "I heart Pleasant Ridge" card. Once that was done, it seemed time to create one for my own neighborhood of Oakley.

Generally, the heart colors - sometimes, the type, too - are geared toward how people think of the neighborhood. For example, Hyde Park is deemed to be "preppy," so its card has a lime green heart and pink type. For Pleasant Ridge, I picked up on the colors used in banners hanging in the neighborhood. The Oakley card plays on the oak part of our leafy neighborhood.

The cards are sized to fit long, No. 10 envelopes. And, yes, being a compulsive type, I try to find envelopes whose colors match the cards. Well, I was so enamored with the cards above that I decided to add one for Columbia-Tusculum. It's well-known for its "painted lady" Victorian houses. So, I pulled out all the stops ...

But why is this post headlined "bumper crop"? Well, all the heart cards are becoming bumper stickers. In fact, four already have: Cincinnati, Kentucky, Over-the-Rhine and Northside. More are on the way. MiCA in Over-the-Rhine has all of them; NVISION in Northside has the Cincinnati and Northside; and, all are available at my studio ($5 each).

Next up, Downtown and Mt. Lookout ... gotta go, the card factory beckons. Wait. The image of the heart is from "Young People's Physiology," a book from 1888 in my archive - as are all the images on all my cards. It happens to have been published by The American Book Co., which was headquartered in downtown Cincinnati.