new window display time

Beginning of the month, and this is when I always put up the new window displays at Powell’s City of Books. In the end, I have to say, they look pretty good. Last month I had a customer ask if she could buy one of the graphic pieces.

[for hopeful proof that they look pretty good, see picture, which just so happens to be, wouldn't you know it, Portland Noir...]

But me putting these things together is like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the flaming green head says don’t look behind the curtain. I’m on the floor in my socks with printouts from the color copier and a scotch tape dispenser. Trying to fit all the pages together into one perfect, cohesive piece, and it doesn’t matter if I cropped everything with exact measurements, something is not going to match up right. And when I do get a pair to match up right and tape it all up, I find I need to trim an edge that’s sticking out, and now I can’t fit it in the paper-slicer. I can either get to work with the scissors or take all the tape off the back, and I’m sure as hell not taking all the tape off the back.

I’m not great with scissors. On Saturday I had this big idea that I could line the two taped-up pages up on the edge of a table and guide the scissors in a straight line. That would have been great had the scissors been able to work themselves, but my hand kept getting in the way. I thought, if I slid the paper just a little over the edge of the table, my hand would fit. But then I couldn’t tell if it was straight. If only I could see the edge of the table. So I crawled under the table and tried to cut it upside down. That didn’t work but at least I now know where to start if I decide to build myself a fort in my workspace.