Gay Goblin Art & Whatnot: do it badly

this story begins a million years ago on tumblr.com. I came across this post:

I thought it was the exact perfect combination of funny, political, clever, and slutty, and over the years a couple of times I tried to buy a set like this, but was never able to find one that met my parameters, so I gave up and decided I'd just make it myself.

It's been a lengthy process. Years ago, I bought a set of iron-on letters. Years after buying the letters, I separated them into the right letters to make these words. Years after doing that, those letters are contained in a sandwich bag somewhere and I've fallen deep into another special interest art form, and I decided it was time.

I chose a font and arranged the words how I liked them, printed that off a couple times at different sizes until the letters were the sizes I wanted, and then transferred the words onto linocutting vinyl stuff and printed the words on a janky pair of pj's.

I completed this project vibrating with excitement the entire time.

It looks janky. I love it. Now I have a block with these words on it and I can print it as many times as I want on as many things as I want, and I also know what I don't like about this iteration, which gives me things to problem-solve and improve on in my next iteration.

For years I've been thinking of this project. I didn't make it cute and slutty, I made it unflattering mismatched pajamas. I did the thing! My favourite piece of advice on creative endeavours is to just do the thing badly. Not do it badly on purpose, but go into it with the understanding that the first few times you do a thing, it might look bad. It might make you feel incompetent at the thing. That's okay, cause either you still have fun and then you keep doing it and getting better at it! Or you realize that you don't enjoy this enough to want to get better at it, and then you find something else to do.