On September 2, MPs will debate the impact of the 2016 EU membership referendum on the UK in Westminster. The debate will be led by Scottish National Party MP Pete Wishart, who represents Perth and Kinross-shire. A long-standing pro-EU campaigner, Wishart supports Scottish independence and Scotland’s return to the EU and has also consistently spoken out on refugee rights.

The House of Commons Library research briefing prepared for the debate sets out the timeline of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, including the triggering of Article 50, the finalisation of the Withdrawal Agreement under Boris Johnson’s government and the UK’s formal departure from the EU on January 31, 2020.

The briefing also examines the consequences of the end of free movement. Since the end of the Brexit transition period, UK citizens have been treated by the EU as “third-country nationals” for the purposes of travel and mobility within the EU and Schengen area.

Migration is another significant part of the debate. One of the central objectives of the campaign to leave the EU was to enable the UK to exercise greater control over migration from EU countries and reduce the number of EU citizens moving to the UK. Yet while net migration from EU countries fell after Brexit, this has been more than offset by a substantial increase in migration from non-EU countries.

Between 2012 and 2019, net migration of non-EU nationals rose relatively modestly, before dipping in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It then increased sharply in 2021 and 2022, reaching a peak of 1.05 million in the year ending March 2023, before falling again in subsequent years. The figures therefore raise questions about the extent to which Brexit achieved one of its principal political objectives on migration.

The economic consequences of Brexit are also addressed. While the precise impact is difficult to isolate from other economic factors, the broad conclusion among many economists is that Brexit has reduced UK GDP relative to the level it would otherwise have reached and had a negative effect on UK trade.

The briefing also highlights the UK-EU relationship since the Labour government came to power in July 2024 and began seeking a closer relationship with the EU in several areas. In December 2025, the UK and EU announced an agreement on the terms of UK participation in the Erasmus+ youth and student mobility programme. A UK-EU summit is now expected to take place in autumn 2026, providing a further opportunity to discuss the future relationship.

Against this backdrop, pro-EU campaigners have urged people to make sure their MPs are aware of the debate and to encourage them to attend.

“On 2 September there will be a debate on the impact of the Brexit referendum on the UK. Might be an idea to encourage your MP to attend,” the campaign group Bremain in Spain posted on social media.

The suggestion prompted a joking response from one commenter: “What, Lee Anderson?”

The post Brexit’s impact to face scrutiny as campaigners urge MPs to attend Westminster debate appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Amazon wants to grow its Prime Air delivery drone service sixfold to reach nearly 500 cities and towns across the United States by the end of 2026. The planned expansions from Amazon and its rivals could make the convenience of delivery drone services available to tens of millions more people in the coming months—but will also test more communities’ tolerance for increased noise from daily drone flights.

On August 19, Amazon announced it would soon launch Prime Air in the metropolitan areas of Chicago; Cleveland; Atlanta; Syracuse, New York; and Boise, Idaho, with more to come later in the year. Each Prime Air site offers delivery drone service within an area of about 175 square miles, with delivery times ranging from half an hour to an hour.

Prime Air already operates out of Amazon warehouses in 10 cities across seven states. Those include primarily suburban neighborhoods of Phoenix; Tampa; Kansas City; Omaha, Nebraska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Detroit; Houston; and San Antonio, Dallas, and Waco, Texas.

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© Amazon

Although shredded iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell restaurants has been a prime suspect in an explosive outbreak of the diarrheal parasite Cyclospora, a new report from the Food and Drug Administration finally reveals where all the contaminated lettuce was sold—and only a sliver of it went to Taco Bell locations.

The feces-tainted lettuce was sourced from Mexico and sold by Taylor Farms, a mammoth produce provider based in California. Taylor Farms has drawn scrutiny for its ties to the Trump administration and reluctance to provide information amid the outbreak, which has now sickened over 23,000 people across 47 states, killing two and sending over 500 others to the hospital. Taylor Farms reportedly attempted to delay issuing a recall amid the illnesses and, since then, has refused to clearly report how much tainted lettuce it recalled and where all of it had been shipped.

The FDA's Enforcement Report finally provides some answers: Taylor Farms recalled 236,192 cases of lettuce due to potential Cyclospora contamination. Of those, only 5,900—just shy of 2.5 percent—were sold to Yum, the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC. The other 97.5 percent of the lettuce that potentially sickened Americans was distributed elsewhere.

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Giovanni Kanter goes to at least one art museum whenever he visits a new city. That’s on top of his regular exploration of galleries in New York, where the 25-year-old ICU nurse lives and studies. He typically discovers new artists and gallery openings through word of mouth, though he has recently started curating his social media feed to serve relevant content (he’s currently in what he terms a “surrealism phase”).

He was raised on visual art; he's the son of painter Marianne Gargour and nephew of mixed-media artist Heather Hutchison and painter-printmaker Mark Thomas Kanter. His “exposure-oriented education” featured childhood visits to galleries and shows in and around Dallas, where he grew up, and in France, where he spent time with his grandparents.

But Kanter is an exception. Many other young people have a less immersive artistic education, perhaps shaped by occasional school trips or family visits to museums. If they haven’t internalized an instinct for what Kanter calls “moving through the art and absorbing it,” the museum experience is central to how they learn about and understand art.

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The web isn’t dead—it’s just weird, and that’s a good thing. Experimental websites, from playful portfolios to surreal 3D worlds, aren’t pointless gimmicks—they’re the R&D labs shaping the future of design. Here’s why the strangest sites online are secretly the ones pushing the web forward.

The 90s web was loud, ugly, and alive — and that’s exactly why we miss it. Before design systems and AI templates, every page had a pulse and a personality. Today’s web might be faster, but it lost its soul — and maybe it’s time we brought back a little chaos.

You also have to jump through hoops to sell it and account for it.

When was the last time you bought something from the person who made it? A piece of pottery, a wooden jewelry box, a framed painting, a hand-bound notebook, a leather wallet, a pair of earrings?

Do you have any idea what went into that item, from the moment it was imagined by the artist to the moment you took possession of it?

Let’s look at the skills required, which is probably the least considered piece of this puzzle. Babies don’t emerge from the womb knowing how to make things. Their ability to creatively design and then construct a piece of art is something learned over years. Sure, some of it might be natural — lots of people (but not me) seem to have an eye for drawing or making music. But most folks, no matter what their natural skills seem to be, need training and practice to hone those skills. A kid has to come a long way from drawing with crayons in kindergarten to painting fine art images with acrylics on turkey feathers.

The next time you browse an art show, take a moment to consider the kinds of skills the artist needed to hone to make what you see in her booth. Think about how she got them. Maybe it’s self-taught with years and years of practice. Or maybe she took often expensive hands-on classes. (I did a bit of both.)

Now consider the often specialized tools and equipment. I bet you can’t even imagine half the tools a potter or a woodworker or a jewelry artist uses to make their artwork. Next time you’re at an art show, if an artist you admire isn’t too busy, take a moment to learn more about the tools and equipment they use in their studio.

Here’s a photo of a pendant I finished yesterday, and here’s a run-down of the tools and equipment I used to make it:

• Jeweler’s bench (homemade)
• Adjustable jeweler’s stool
• Cutting mat
• Metal shear (tabletop)
• Metal sheer (handtool)
• Steel hammer
• Weighted nylon-head mallet
• STERLING stamp
• Custom Makers mark stamp
• Flush cutters
• Flex shaft (basically a foot-controlled Dremel)
• Sanding wheel
• Bail template
• Bail-making plyers
• Chain nose pliers
• Smith Little Torch setup
• Propane Tank
• Oxygen Tank
• Quenching bowl
• Pickle pot
• Neutralizing solution
• Silver patina
• Tumbler with ceramic media
• Tumbler with steel shot
• Strainers (two meshes)
• Bezel setter

All together, this is about $2,000 worth of equipment. And it doesn’t include the the thousands of dollars of other equipment I use in other work. Not only did I have to acquire all of these tools, but I had to learn how to use them properly. (I’m still working on the Smith Little Torch.)

And then there are the materials. I had sticker shock this morning when I checked the price of sterling silver; it’s up more than 100% in two years. Thank heaven I stocked up earlier this year and have enough to take me through the winter. I’ll need to have a few good shows before I stock up again. I’m fortunate that I now have enough cabochons in my collection to last the rest of my life. (Buying stones is a bit of an addiction for me.)

Now I’m getting into monetary costs and I really didn’t mean to go there. So let’s take a turn back to what prompted me to write this post: updating my jewelry business online shop.

The point is, it’s not enough to be creative and have the skills and tools and materials to turn ideas into a piece of art. Today’s artists need to be able to sell that art to keep making it. And that means they’re usually in charge of marketing and sales — after all, how many artists can afford to hire someone to handle that for them?

Marketing, to me, means mentioning my work on social media, trying (and mostly failing) to keep a website up-to-date, photographing all my new work. I’m lucky (or stupid) because I’m only on one social media platform — Mastodon — so I’m not dealing with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tik Tok. (I occasionally put videos on YouTube, but since losing my login information for my jewelry account, that’s been a bit difficult.) I simply can’t see spending hours of every day promoting my work on social media when I should be making the work I have to promote.

Sales means applying to and then attending often costly art shows with setup and teardown that suck the physical life out of me. Even just sitting in my booth all day, eating snacks out of a little cooler and having to rely on other artists to keep an eye on things when I run to the restroom to take a leak can be exhausting. Heck, when I do the Leavenworth WA show some weekends, my day is 11 to 14 hours (long door to door), depending on whether it’s a setup day. The show I’m attending in Seattle soon is costing me more than $800 for a 10 x 6 foot space; do you know how much jewelry I have to sell to cover that? (At least it’s indoors.)

Sales also means updating an online shop. I know a lot of folks use Etsy and depend on it for sales. I don’t. I’m tired of them taking such a large chunk of my revenue and displaying my work among so much cheap crap. I’m tired of having to maintain two inventory systems that I have to manually sync up when I make or sell something. I’m tired of giving money to an organization that misleads buyers and sellers. And when you shop there, have you ever stopped to consider how much sellers have to jack up their prices to make a profit after Etsy takes its fees?

So I have my own Square-based shop. It’s free to set up and use; the only fee is the standard credit card fee I pay when a sale is made. But it still takes time to update the site with photos and descriptions when I make new items or sell items outside the square system.

Did I mention that I have to be a photographer, too? Yep. I have to take decent photos of all of my work. I do the best I can, but I’m not pretending it’s good. It’s passable. (Yesterday I considered hiring someone to do it. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the budget to pay someone else to do it.)

And did I mention that I also have to account for all my sales? And file sales tax returns for every state I sell in? So yes, I have to be an accountant, too. (Good thing I got that accounting degree back in the 1980s.)

So I guess that what I’m trying to say is that unless an artist is independently wealthy and can make art for fun, there’s a lot more to making art than just making art.

Think about that the next time you see original artwork available for sale.

I take an objective, dollars and cents look at the various ways I can sell my jewelry to see how they stack up financially.

Last weekend, I made the nearly 5-hour drive to Sequim, WA to attend a 3-day Lavender Festival that featured, among other things, artists and vendors selling their wares. I was one of those artists.

I’ve done plenty of art shows before. I’ve done a handful here in Washington State and a handful down in Arizona. I’ve had mixed results, mostly depending on the stage I was in in my silversmithing journey and the kind of show I was attending. Some shows are good for low-end items, other shows are good for fine art items. My work straddles those two worlds, for a variety of reasons.

But rather than talk about the evolution of my work, I want to talk about something I know well: the finance end of things. After all, I do have a BBA in Accounting with Highest Honors from Hofstra University. (LOL.) And even though I don’t use that degree in my daily work, I haven’t forgotten a lot of what I learned along the way, including marketing and finance. It is, after all, what makes it possible for me to handle the financial records and do the marketing for all of the businesses I operate, even if I can never really count how many there are.

And here’s what I learned about the various ways I sell my work.

Item Costs

When you’re making something for sale, you need to get a good handle on what each item costs to make. Costs include a few things, some of which are more obvious than others:

• 
  Remarkably, these wire-framed pendants still sell. I make them when I’m sitting idle in my booth at a show. They are the least expensive pendants I make, but with the price of silver rising 50% in the past two years, I’ve had to raise my prices on them, too.

  Materials cost. I’m using sterling silver and gemstone cabochons for most of my work. There was a definite identifiable cost to acquire these materials. I try to record the cost of materials where I store those materials. There’s a cost code on a sticker on the bottom of every cabochon in my collection. I also write the cost per square inch on flat pack silver packages and the cost per inch on the spools or coils of silver wire. Although I’m not quite anal enough to track the exact materials cost for every item I make, I do have a fair idea. I can tell you this: bezel-set stones on backplates cost a heck of a lot more for materials than wire framed pendants.

• Supplies cost. I use a variety of supplies when making jewelry. Solder, flux, torch fuel, sanding and polishing wheels, etc. In most cases the amount of supplies I use are minimal, but they were purchased at a cost and I need to keep that cost in mind when calculating what an item costs to make.
• Want a good idea of what kinds of tools I use? Watch this YouTube video tour of my shop.

  Tools cost. Tools are the things I use to manipulate the metal and can include hand tools like pliers, wire cutters, hammers, and saws; desktop tools like my flex shaft, rolling mill, metal shear, and torches (Big Shot with butane refills and Smith Little Torch with propane and oxygen tanks); and other tools like mandrels, templates, soldering boards, annealing tray, third hand, anvil, etc. There are literally too many to list. Tools can be used over and over — often for years and many projects — but they still cost money to obtain. I have literally thousands of dollars invested in shop equipment and all of that is eventually paid for with the sales of my jewelry.

• Time cost. Time really is money and my time ain’t cheap. If it takes me 4 hours of active work time to make a pendant, don’t you think I should be compensated for it? I build the cost of my time into my price.

I’m fortunate. My jewelry studio is in my home. I don’t need to rent a space and deal with associated costs. Other folks do. That has to be taken into consideration as well.

These are the costs of actually making items. Selling them is another story.

Cost of Sales is More than Item Costs

Artists can sell their work one or two ways: directly or through a middleman. Each way has its own costs.

Direct Sale: Selling in Person

This is the sweetest way to sell your work: sell it directly to someone who wants it who is meeting with you face to face. This could be a friend or a friend of a friend or perhaps at another place where you happen to be with your merchandise.

The best example I have of this is selling at an Artists Table at a boating event I attend every year. There’s one table for each artist (unless you get there early and hog multiple tables) and there’s no fee. For three hours, other event attendees check out what’s for sale and buy. I bring just a table cover and about a dozen pendant displays. I bring all of my pendants and about 1/4 of my other inventory. And I sell at retail price. My only cost is packaging and credit card fees. My return is roughly 95% at these events. I love them because they’re short and sweet and I’m there anyway. I can set up and tear down in about 15 minutes. Of course, I don’t make very much money at these events, but it’s nice to get compensated for my work.

Direct Sales: Selling online

I have an online shop that I use to sell my work directly to customers. This is actually the least expensive way for me to sell because I use an extremely cost-effective platform to sell on: Square. Square is my credit card provider and when I sell online, it just charges me the credit card fee, which is generally around 3%. I still have to buy packaging (my cost) and ship items out (usually my cost because large sales ship free). But looking at an example, suppose someone buys a $50 pendant, which ships free. I spend about $1.50 for credit card fees, $1.00 for packaging, and $4 to $10 on shipping. If I keep it as cheap as possible, I net $43.50 on that $50 item or 87%.

I should note here that not all online sales solutions are this cost effective. Etsy, for example, will charge a percentage of the sales price after it already charged you to list it and can charge an additional marketing fee if it claims people found your item through one of its Google ads. You can learn my thoughts about Etsy and why I won’t use it here.

I like direct sales through my website. It’s easiest and most cost effective for me to do.

Direct Sales: Selling at Art Show and Other Venues

I do most of my selling at art shows. Art shows have a variety of costs associated with them.

• Jury or application fees, which range from $10 to $50, are non-refundable and you’ll pay them even if your work isn’t judged good enough to be part of the show.
• Booth fees can range from $35 to $1,200 or more, depending on the show. You’ll pay those to get your booth.

But that’s not where the costs end. You still have to get to and from the show, pay for overnight accommodations if the show is more than one day, and cover the cost of fees for credit card sales.

And some shows require you to pay a percentage of sales. One I do quite regularly charges only $35 for my booth for the weekend — which can be up to 5 days, depending on how summer holidays fall — but also keeps 21% of all sales. They also handle sales centrally, so at least I don’t have to pay credit card fees. The good thing about this arrangement is that if I have a crappy weekend, I can’t lose money. But, on the other hand, if I have a kickass weekend, I still gross only 77-78%.

And don’t forget your booth. You’ll need a white fire retardant canopy with zip-up sides, four 30-40 pound weights to hold it in place, and tables, walls, or other display equipment. Just outfitting your booth could cost $1000 or more; mine has a tent, three tables, table covers, dozens of custom pendant display “necks,” bracelet displays, and special boxes to display earrings. You’ll also need a vehicle to schlep all that stuff around. Fortunately, these are mostly one-time expenses, but you need to maintain and replace these items periodically. Before my last show, I re-finished every single one of my pendant displays. And two months ago, I replaced my aging canopy.

Finally, your sales depend quite a bit on a few factors:

• Is your work with your price points a good match for the people attending the show? If you’re overpriced or your work is too highbrow for the people attending, you won’t get sales. If you’re underpriced, your work could be seen as junk.
• What’s your competition like? I sell jewelry, which is often a very popular category at art shows. A smart promoter will use the jury system to select jewelry artists whose work is different. Then they’ll lay out the show so all of the jewelry artists aren’t together. If my work is very similar to another artists, we’ll have to split the sales for work like ours between us.
• Is the show well attended? If people don’t show up because the show was poorly advertised, promoters charge a hefty entrance fee, or the weather was crappy for an outdoor event, sales will suffer.
• Are people actually spending money? One of the things I hate about doing shows in tourist towns is that show browsers might just be walking around to kill time. The state of the economy comes into play here.
• Do you accept credit cards? If you don’t, you’re in the wrong business. Cash might be king, but few customers use it these days.

Either way, you have to remember the other costs of direct sales, which includes packaging. My packaging is simple: drawstring bags for pendants and plastic zip bags for earrings on cards. For multiple item purchases, I have larger drawstring bags. But other vendors might have bubble wrap, boxes, shopping bags with tissue paper, or more. All of these things cost money and need to be considered as part of the cost of sales.

So let’s look at some numbers. I’ll compare a recent weekend at Leavenworth Village Art in the Park with the Lavender Festival in Sequim.

Item	Leavenworth (July 3-6)	Sequim (July 18-20)
Days	4	3
Jury Fee	$15	$25
Booth Fee	$35	$495
Overnight Lodging	$0 (home)	$100 (dry camping)
Gross Revenue	$2,094	$4,064
Commissions	$440	$0
Credit Card Fees	$0	$109
Net Revenue (excluding travel costs*)	$1,619	$3,335
Percentage of Gross	77%	82%

—
* I excluded travel costs because I figure that driving to and from Leavenworth 4 times is about equal to driving to and from Sequim once, despite the much longer distance to Sequim.

My takeaway from this? My percentage return was only 5 percentage points higher in Sequim for the Lavender Festival than it was in Leavenworth (a tourist town) on a holiday weekend.

But the interesting thing to remember here is that my percentage return in Leavenworth will always be the same because of their commission fee structure: 77-78%. If I’d grossed $5,000, for example, in Sequim, my return percentage would have been closer to 85% (even considering more credit card fees). But if I’d grossed just $3,000 in Sequim, my percentage return would have been about 76%. Clearly, the more expensive a show is to attend, the more you have to sell.

I’ll tell you why the percentage return is important in a moment, although I expect most of you to be able to figure it out.

Middleman Sales: Consignment

I want to start out by saying that I hate consignment sales.

In consignment sales, you drop off some of your merchandise with the owner/manager of a shop or gallery and they sell it for you. Sounds good, right? Well here are some of the problems:

• Consignment fees. The shop or gallery keeps between 20% (which is crazy low and pretty much unheard of these days) to 50% (which is crazy high). The average I’ve paid is 35%-40%. (I will not sell on consignment if they want 50%.) Take 100% and deduct that percentage and you get your percentage return: 60% to 65%. To be fair, it’s easy, takes hardly any time at all, and has no other costs like credit card fees or packaging.
• They have your inventory so you can’t sell it. You can’t sell something you don’t have. And if they don’t sell it, it doesn’t get sold.
• There’s no provision for loss due to shoplifting. If someone steals your work from where it’s displayed in the shop or gallery, it’s your loss. After all, the shop or gallery hasn’t paid you for it.
• If they go out of business you might lose your work. I’ve heard these horror stories. A shop goes out of business and the owner/manager disappears with all the inventory, never to be seen again. This has not happened to me, but that’s because I’m very careful about who I leave items with on consignment.
• You have to rely on their honesty. If they’re dishonest, you work will disappear and you’ll never see a penny for it. Again, I don’t think this happens very often.
• Items can be shop worn or broken. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a gallery I work with to give them new items and get items back that are either severely tarnished — we are talking about silver after all — or broken. That means I need to work on them before I can put them back into my inventory and sell them.

The main reason I don’t like consignment sales is because I have to keep track of what’s out there. Letting inventory sit elsewhere, unsold or perhaps not even on display, is also problematic. I currently sell on consignment in only two places and I’m not bringing anything new to one of them.

Middleman Sales: Wholesale

Wholesale is a lot like consignment sales but once you sell it, it’s gone. You don’t have to track it or worry about getting it back in bad shape or worry about it getting stolen. You sell it and it’s gone.

The drawback, of course, is that the buyer wants a deep discount — perhaps as much as 50%. I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve done all of my wholesale sales at 35% with payment by check right on the spot. Although that means my percentage return is only 65%, at least the item is sold with zero additional cost or effort on my part.

Needless to say, if I’m going to use a middleman, I want it two be a wholesale client.

Why the Percentage Return Matters

Let’s put it all together now.

When you make an item, you have direct and indirect costs as discussed at the beginning of this article. When you sell at item you have additional costs. You need to price your item with a profit margin that makes it profitable to sell no matter how you sell it.

Suppose I make a pendant that takes me 4 hours and uses about $15 worth of silver and stones. I price my time at $25/hour (which is a steal). So my direct costs are $115. Add another $5 for the cost of supplies and a portion of the equipment costs. Now we’re up to $120. If I price this item at $199, I’ve got a 65.8% profit margin. (Calculate as (199-120)÷120.) So if I sell it at consignment and they get 35%, I’m barely breaking even.

I have three options:

• Price it higher
• Accept less for my time (or work faster)
• Don’t sell anywhere I’ll make less than 65.8% percentage return

If I sold this at Leavenworth or at the Lavender Festival, I’d still only have a profit margin of 12% or 17%. That means that for every $1 of costs, I’d earn a profit of 12¢ or 17¢. Ouch.

This is the problem faced by all artists and makers. People don’t understand our costs to make or sell. They just see the end product. And then they value it based on what it might cost in Walmart or on Amazon or from an “artist” who has her work mass produced overseas with inferior quality materials — maybe silver plate and plastic “stones”? — and passes it off as handmade.

Advancing My Art

Right now, I’m in an in between world. I’m still making low end items like certain earring styles and wire-framed pendants. These are priced to sell at tourist art shows and festivals. But I’m also making better quality, more artistic items that some folks refer to as “statement pieces.” These take a lot of time and effort to make with high quality materials and specialized tools. I’m charging more money for these things because I have to.

Unfortunately, the only way to sell these items is to attend better art shows. The better art shows have higher booth fees. So it’s a gamble. Is my work good enough to get into the show? Once I’m in, will I get the sales I need to not only break even on the show itself, but to get the percentage returns I need to actually profit?

I think the shows I attend this winter in Arizona will answer that question once and for all.

Some comments related to an excellent blog post about the ABC model of Rational-Emotive Therapy and being a writer.

One of the blogs I’ve included in my RSS feed reader is called Writer Unboxed. It presents anywhere from 5 to 10 blog posts related to writing each week. Some are extremely specific, such as a recent post about including blurbs with published books. Others are more general, such as the one I’m touching upon today, which discusses psychology.

If you’re serious about writing, whether for yourself or for publication and (hopefully) profit, this is a great blog to follow. I won’t say that I read every post in detail, because I don’t. But I find that many of the ones I do read give me lots of food for thought. I usually share my thoughts in a comment on the blog post — that’s why I really like blogs that allow commenting — but sometimes those comments will trigger a blog post here. That’s what happened today.

The Post

The post that triggered these thoughts and this post is called “The Rational-Irrational Writer” by Therese Walsh. It discusses something called Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET):

…developed by psychologist Albert Ellis. At the heart of RET is a simple but powerful framework that explains how rational and irrational beliefs shape distinct emotional responses: the “ABC model.”

I don’t want to copy and paste Ms Walsh’s post into my blog. I want you to go and read her post, or at least the section titled “An Overabundance of ‘B’,” which explains the ABC(DE) model. It’s short and easy to read and understand. It’ll just take you a second. I’ll wait here.

[calming music plays]

Back? Great!

The post then goes on to explain exactly how the ABC(DE) model applies to writers and our deep-seated fears about calling ourselves writers and being good enough and having all kinds of preconceived beliefs that just aren’t true.

Not Just for Writers!

Everything she’s written is completely valid for writers. But it’s also valid for other people in other endeavors, as I commented on that blog post:

First, this is a great piece that can easily be applied to any endeavor where we have self-doubts.

I’ll elaborate on that here, since I didn’t think it was appropriate on her blog post which is, after all, for writers. I’ll use one of my endeavors as an example: silversmithing.

A stands for activating event. Suppose I apply to a juried art show. (That’s an art show where a panel of judges decide, based on photos of your work, whether your work is appropriate for the show. It usually comes down to quality, originality, etc., but it might also deal with appropriateness for a show’s theme.) I get the jury response and discover that I’m not invited to the show. Being turned down is the activating event.

B stands for belief. On getting turned down, I naturally come to believe that my work is just not good enough.

C stands for consequence. As a consequence of this belief, I start doubting my skills, capabilities, and creativity. I start wondering why I bother to make jewelry and debate whether it’s worth continuing.

D stands for disputation. This is where I (hopefully) start gathering evidence to prove that the belief is wrong. Maybe I applied for six new shows last year and was invited to all of them. Maybe my work sells well at the shows I do attend. Maybe I visit a new wholesale client and she buys half my inventory because she loves it so much. Maybe I discover that the reason I did not get invited to this show was because they limit the number of jewelry artists and all of last year’s artists are returning. (It’s pretty common to give preference to artists who attend each year.)

E stands for effective (and rational) beliefs. I consider all the evidence that my initial belief is wrong and self-defeating and cast it aside to replace it with a more realistic belief that keeps me motivated, working, and improving my skills, allowing me to move forward.

Think about this for a minute and I’m sure you can apply it to anything you do that you might have doubts about.

Imposter Syndrome?

I think Rational-Emotive Therapy can help folks with imposter syndrome. Per Wikipedia:

Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological experience in which a person suffers from feelings of intellectual and/or professional fraudulence. One source defines it as “the subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary.”

Those who suffer from impostor syndrome often doubt their skills, talents, or accomplishments. They may have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as frauds. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck. They may think that they are deceiving others because they feel as if they are not as intelligent as they outwardly portray themselves to be.

Clearly, believing that you are an “imposter” is irrational. After all, you got where you are somehow. Thinking about the situation rationally and disputing those self-defeating beliefs is the first step to getting past imposter syndrome.

‘Nuff said.

One More Word about Writers

I thought I’d share one more thing related to the original post. This is part of the comment I left on that post and it has everything to do with writing or being a writer.

Before I share it, however, I want to remind readers who don’t know me very well that I earned a very good living as writer from around 1990 to 2015. I wrote books about how to use computers at a time when writers couldn’t produce them fast enough to meet the demand from readers, many of whom were just getting started using computers. Things are different now and I doubt many people could make a good living doing this kind of work. But I enjoyed it while it lasted and had a backup career waiting for me (as a helicopter pilot, of all things) when the demand for my kind of books died off.

Here’s what I shared:

I think there are two kinds of writers, with plenty of overlap.

One kind is the writer that I believe that all of us here are: the kind of person who is driven to write, to get words out of our heads and into a format we can share with others. Whether we share it or not is irrelevant. Whether it’s published or not is irrelevant. As you said, writers write. I believe that deep down in my heart. I have been a writer since I was 13.

The other kind of writer is the professional writer: someone who literally writes for some kind of pay. Hopefully, the pay is money, since it’s so much more useful than “exposure,” which too many of us seem to accept. I felt comfortable during my 25 year writing career telling people that I was a writer because that’s how I earned my living. Nowadays, I still write — after all, I’m still that first kind of writer — and I do get paid for some of it, but it’s not how I earn my living. So when people ask now what I do, I don’t tell them I’m a writer.

There’s nothing wrong with being that first kind of writer.

I spend a few hours making decorative paper for bookbinding projects.

I don’t know if I mentioned it here, but I’ve taken up another hobby (as if I didn’t have enough): bookbinding. So far, I’m amusing myself by making little notebooks and the occasional hard covered book with a purpose. I made my friend Jason a Guest Book for his boat and am in the process of making another one for my boat. I’m taking baby steps now, working on easier projects and honing skills before I get more ambitious. It’s fun. I especially like the sewing — yes, all of my books are hand sewn.

One of the things that’s commonly used in bookbinding is decorative paper. While it’s true that I can go out and buy pretty papers to use as book endpapers or covers — and I have, to a certain extent — I prefer to make my own. I want my books to be entirely handmade, except for the paper inside the covers. But I plan on making paper, too, and I’ll probably use it for book covers. One thing at a time.

Paste Paper

Paste paper is a type of decorative paper that’s created by covering paper with a mixture of wheat paste and (usually) acrylic paint. Wheat paste is nothing more than a mixture of flour and water, in the correct proportions, cooked for about 20 minutes.

It’s not difficult to do and it’s kind of fun. You can’t do it wrong. It’s cheap and easy enough to experiment and learn. I find it kind of relaxing, except cleanup. It’s easy enough to clean, but you have to clean the workspace after every sheet. That gets tedious.

Although I have space in my jewelry studio for bookbinding projects, I make paste paper up in my kitchen, on one side of my island’s countertop. This makes it easy to rinse sponges and clean brushes and other tools because the sink is right there. Although there is a bathroom downstairs near my studio, it has a tiny bathroom sink and really isn’t convenient. Why make things more difficult than they have to be?

Cheap Paper

Today I worked with extra large pieces of mixed media paper. I got a smoking deal on the paper at Hobby Lobby the other day. I really hate shopping in a Hobby Lobby — it’s about as close as I get to going to church — but it’s the only game in town around here. They stopped selling a lot of name brand, quality merchandise and, instead, sell their own store brands. The art paper is Master’s Touch and its wood pulp. (I don’t think they sell any cotton or linen paper at all anymore.) It’s pretty much junk and no professional artist would use it. But folks just getting started? Maybe.

I went in for sewing supplies and took a detour to visit the art paper aisle. That when I saw that the largest pads they sell for watercolor and mixed media — 18″ x 24″ — were on clearance for crazy low prices. This pad, which was normally $27.99, was on sale for $6.99. The watercolor pads, which normally sell for $45.99, were $10.99. How could I pass that up, especially with all the bookbinding stuff I’ve got going on? You can always cut large sheets smaller but you can’t make small sheets larger.

So I bought all they had: three watercolor pads and two mixed media pads.

The Process

If you’re interested in learning how to make paste paper, there are a lot of videos about it on YouTube. I think this one by DAS Bookbinding is the best intro, although he doesn’t get very creative. James Williams gets more creative in this demonstration, but his video is a bit verbose.

But if you don’t want to do it or watch a video, here are the basics:

1. Put some wheat paste into a cup.
2. Add paint and stir well to mix the color you want. I usually do one color at a time, but you can mix a bunch at once.
3. Lay out your paper and use a clean sponge with clean water to soak it. If the paper was smaller and I had the right size bin, I would literally soak it in the water. (That’s the best results, in my opinion, but it’s tough to do with large paper. Also, not all artists wet the paper first. I follow DAS’s instructions; that guy knows what he’s doing.)
4. Make sure the paper is completely flat on the work surface. This is important. If there are any bubbles under the paper, the paste will not spread properly on it.
5. Use a brush or roller to cover the paper with colored paste. The way I make my paste, the color of the paper always shows through, but I like that. I use a brush and there are brush strokes.
6. Use a variety of tools to drag or draw lines and patterns in the wet paste. This is where the creativity comes in.
7. Lay it out to dry.
8. While one is drying, you can clean your work surface and make another one. I made nine today.
9. Once it’s dry, put it under a weight to flatten it; the edges want to curl.

Although most folks seem to really like using a comb to make parallel lines and patterns on the paper, I’m not particularly impressed with that. Instead, I’ve found a pair of rollers that I use to make regular random patterns or I paint with swirl strokes instead of straight ones. I got fancy with one sheet, and used a roller on light green paint, let it dry, and then used stencils with two different colors to add leaves and flowers. (Unfortunately, it looks like Christmas paper, which was not my intention.) DAS Bookbinding has a video that demonstrates using a pattern roller and also demonstrates waxing and burnishing.

I’m satisfied with today’s efforts and now have enough large paper for any project.

Beeswax Paste

I don’t usually wax my paper right after it dries. Instead, I wait until I use it. I cut first and then wax. This way, I’m using less wax paste.

I make my own wax paste from beeswax (from my own bees) and mineral spirits. I got the basic instructions in this Annesi Bindings video. It’s basically 50% bees wax and 50% mineral spirits (by weight) melted in a double boiler. I cook it up right in the canning jar I store it in. If you cover it tightly, it lasts a long time.

Getting Creative

I read somewhere that retired people do things like this — take up creative hobbies. Until I read that, I didn’t realize I was following the pack.

But I really do get a lot of pleasure out of all my creative efforts, whether it’s writing, which I’ve done all my life, or making jewelry, fiddling around with watercolors, making decorate papers like these, or bookbinding. It’s just so relaxing and rewarding to make nice things with your own hands.

What do you think? What’s your creative outlet?