I recently wrote an article featuring 20 ways to say congratulations to someone who is celebrating a special occasion. There are lots of things that you can do to congratule someone ranging from simply saying that you’re proud of them to buying a pricey gift for them.

What I discovered when writing that article is that the methods of saying congrats that interest me most are the ones that have a personal touch. Here’s the Top 5 homemade personal congratulations gifts that I’d like to receive if I was celebrating an accomplishment:

1. Scrapbooks. I love making scrapbooks and I’d really love to receive one from someone as well. A scrapbook of the events leading up to the celebrating would be ideal for me!
2. Home video or photo slideshow. Even better than a scrapbook is an active visual presentation put together to celebrate the event!
3. A letter. There are some accomplishments that are best celebrated with a letter. The letter might describe why someone is proud of you or offer you advice for the new stage of life that you’re entering. I’d love to get this one from my parents or other older people in my life.
4. A song. Even better than a letter would be a song or poem!
5. Cookies! Someone who didn’t know me very well but who wanted to congratulate me would not go wrong with a home-baked gift!

What would you want someone to make for you to say congratulations?

Tags: congratulations gifts, diy, gifts, homemade presents, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, say congratulations, ways to say congrats

I do a lot of different types of crafts. I do fabric crafts. I do scrapbooking. I do collage work.

Doing crafts means that I frequently have to figure out a way to adhered one thing to another (such as a photo to a scrapbook page). I have used all different types of glues and tapes in an effort to find the best adhesive for different crafts.

You know what I’ve learned? I really only like double-sided tape.

Believe me, I know that there are a lot of crafts for which other types of adhesive are recommended. There are dozens of different types of glues out there which are recommended for crafts (including scrapbooking). I’ve tried them. I don’t like them.

I keep trying to use something other than double-sided tape for my crafts. Whenever something else is recommended, I try it. But it never seems to work for me. I make a mess wtih glues. I don’t like other tapes. I seem to just be a double-sided tape kind of girl.

Why fight it right?

Tags: art, crafts, creativity, double sided tape, double tape, hubpages, kathryn vercillo

I really adore creative things of all kinds and particularly love learning about how technology has advanced the ability of individuals to be more creative. For example, I love that there are so many people now making their own videos thanks to the popularity of YouTube – it’s a form of creative expression that the average person wasn’t engagin in twenty years ago and I think it’s great.

Another thing that I think is great is the availability of online storefronts like Zazzle. These are places where you can upload your own creative designs and easily turn them into T-shirts and coffee mugs and other items for use or for sale. This allows people to be flexible in their creativity and also to be productive with it.

I really like Zazzle and the sites that are like it so I’ve been trying to spread the word about it. I wrote a piece about Zazzle on this blog not that long ago. And I also answered a Yahoo! Answers questions about Zazzle which covered the basics of what it is and how useful it is. That answer was chosen as a best answer for the question.

Tags: art, creativity, design, kathryn vercillo, online design, questions, store, Yahoo Answers, zazzle

As a SmartChick I find myself completely interested in impossible car design concepts. For awhile I was totally in love with the Aptera, a three-wheeled car that’s designed by a company in Southern California. I don’t particularly even want a car at all but for half a second I was convinced that this would be the car that I did want if I were to get a car because I just loved how unique and innovative and interesting the design of this green vehicle was.

The car that I’m feeling that way about at the moment is the Terrafugia Transition. Appealing to all of those people who have wondered when we’d have flying cars like the Jetson’s had, this is said to be the world’s first flying car (although in design it’s really more of an airplane that can also do well on the road).

The Terrafugia made some headlines this month when it was finally tested out in the air by a pilot in New York. Launched as a concept in 2006 by MIT business and aerodynamics students, it was finally ready to be flown for real. It only lasted 37 seconds in the air but it was pronounced a success in terms of a milestone for getting the car ready for the road.

The car is basically a plane that can be folded up to look and drive like a car. It reaches highway speeds, gets 30mpg using regular fuel and functions as a small two-seater car would function. The difference is that it can fly distances up to 500 miles away (in theory, anyway) so it can be used for some light travel that isn’t on the road.

It’s an interesting concept. The makers of this car are pegging 2011 as the date when it could be customer-ready so we’ll have to just keep an eye on them until then and see what happens in terms of the developing the design.

Tags: airplane car, auto, car, car plane, concept car, design, flying car, hubpages, innovation, jetsons, kathryn vercill, terrafugia, transition

Yesterday I wrote about child prodigies (and specifically the case of Sufiah Yusof, a child prodigy in math who went on to become a prostitute). There are child prodigies in many different walks of life from music to sports. One area of this that I find to be really interesting is the child prodigies of literature.

There have been many different child authors throughout history. In ancient times, many of these were kids who wrote poetry or diaries but then died at a young age and the work was published post-humously in a sort of “what could have been” look at where their literary careers may have gone if they had lived into adulthood.

In modern times, child authors are a bit more complex. These are typically kids who write a book (often with the help of a parent or grandparent) and who then get picked up by a publisher as a result of a parent or guardian’s persistence. The children then get marketed widely and are adored by the public because they’ve written a published book before they’ve reached adulthood.

What do you make of these kids? Are they really literary prodigies or are they simply smart kids who got their fifteen minutes of fame for their writing because their parents wanted them to and the market supported them in that?

I definitely think that these kids should be admired. It’s tough to sit down and write a book at any age. If they’re writing stories instead of playing with their friends and watching TV then they’re exercising their natural sense of artistic expression and I think that’s terrific. But I’m not sure that these kids are really prodigies per se.

Tags: books, child authors, kids who wrote books, published kids, writing

I love innovation. I love it whenever I see an individual or company that goes beyond what they usually do with their work and moves into some new area that pushes the boundaries of what they were doing before. That’s exactly what I see happening with Ulysse Nardin, a watchmaker that has branched out into the design of a really cool hybrid watch smartphone called The Chairman.

You may be thinking that watch phones are nothing new and that’s true. A handful of people over the years have made cell phones that you wear on your wrist like a watch. But The Chairman is different. This phone is actually designed like a watch including that it has a self-winding feature which means that it charges from winding itself (like a watch) rather than from being plugged in (like a phone).

It’s a really cool design idea. I’ll never get to see it in person I guess because it’s a limited-edition product that is going to sell for a fortune to those few people in the world who can afford to adopt new novelty gadgets. Nevertheless, this SmartChick thinks that it’s a really great brilliant idea.

Tags: hybrid watch, mobile phones, phone watch, smartphone, smartphone watch, ulysse nardin, watch, watch phone

I am interested by almost all types of art. I’m just as happy to browse through a small independent gallery as a huge art museum, to attend a dance event or a live music performance, to fingerpaint or take a sewing class. I believe that exposing yourself to art of all kinds broadens your perspective on life and enhances your creativity.

But there are some types of art that capture my attention more so than others, of course. Found art is one of those types of art, as I’ve mentioned here on the blog before. And another is art that is combined with technology. One such type of art is mobile phone art.

There are a lot of different types of mobile phone art out there. People actually take recycled mobile phones and use them in sculptures and found art pieces, creating mobiles and structures that are visually stunning despite the ordinary-ness of the mobile phone. Other people use the phone as the means to make art, creating interactive audio and visual performances from the phone or filming videos on the phone and turning those into art.

I find this all to be really interesting. We use our phones every day but most of us don’t think twice about them in terms of their potential for creativity. As mobile phones get more and more advanced, that potential just opens up even wider. I think it’s inspiring … it makes me look at my own cell phone in a whole new light!

Tags: art, cell phones, creativity, found art, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, mobile phone art, mobile phones, phones, recycled art, tech art, Technology

I read a lot of books about creativity. I read a lot of memoirs by artists and writers. And I know a lot of people who make art their living, their way of life or an important hobby that they would never let go. What all of this intake of information about art has taught me is that most creative people have blocks that they have to deal with when it comes to their creativity. And like most of our issues in life, those blocks were often built during childhood.

Spend any significant amount of time with children and you will see that they are naturally imaginative. It isn’t just in the way that they play – although it’s clear there with their fantasy games and make-believe. It is in the way that they approach life, with the curiosity and wonder that we associate with being a kid. It is in the way that they solve problems and in the way that they negotiate friendships.

Adult artists know that they can learn a lot from kids about all of these things because kids don’t just ‘think outside of the box’. Kids don’t even see the box. Or they see the box but what they see is a potential fort or ship or space for drawing on.

Unfortunately, it happens all too quickly that kids are taught that the box is a box. They are limited by life and education and experience. Their imaginations begin to dwindle. This happens as a part of life. But it also happens directly as a result of the failure of parents and teachers to encourage the ‘not-just-a-box’ thinking that kids naturally have.

I’ve written an article today with 20 tips for encouraging your children’s creativity. I hope that you will read it and add to it because I think that one of the most important things that a parent can do is to encourage kids to continue to be creative. It isn’t about being artistic, although that’s a nice side benefit, but rather about being creative in life so that it always seems that problems have solutions even when they aren’t obvious to them. It’s about celebrating life and the wonder that it holds. These are things we all need more of and things that we shouldn’t take from our kids earlier than life gives it to them.

Tags: arts, creative home, creativity, expression, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, kids, Parenting

I had a really great time yesterday having my picture taken for a cool photo project that’s happening in San Francisco. I’ll be telling you more about that next week but if you’re interested in what it might be then you should check out the website I Live Here: SF which is the platform for the project.

What I want to talk about now is digital cameras. The photographer who came over is a very cool woman who is one of those people that you can tell is just totally herself. And just one simple example of this is that she uses a basic digital camera that isn’t some big fancy schmancy thing.

During the photo shoot, her batteries went dead. When my battery goes dead on my fancy camera, I have to stop taking pictures, take out the battery, recharge it for several hours and then (if I’m lucky) resume what I’m doing. She just popped out her AA batteries, put in new ones and kept on shooting. There’s something to be said for the convenience of that.

Sometimes we don’t need to get the fanciest new gadget out there to create our art work. Sometimes it makes a whole lot more sense to get the item that is right for us regardless of what other people are using or what others think of what we use.

I wrote an article today comparing 7 different 5 MP Cameras. What you can see just from this brief article is that there’s a big difference in the cameras that are out there even when you’re looking at the same megapixel range. There are camera phones, cute cameras, cameras with multiple shooting modes, cameras with cool zoom features … so what matters isn’t that you get the camera with the right megapixels but rather that you get the camera you want.

Tags: 5mp camera, art, cameras, choosing a camera, creativity, design, digital camera, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, photography

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of things that I love about living in San Francisco. It’s hard to say what I like “best” about the city. But I definitely know that one of the things that I really treasure about living here is the fact that I am surrounded by really creative people.

San Francisco is anything but a boring place and the people who live here are the opposite of dull. People here live fully. They create regularly. They embody self-expression in everything from the way that they dress to the events that they attend to the discussions they have over brunch in the Castro.

And many, many, many of them work either full-time or part-time in creative careers and hobbies. Often, this is linked with the DIY movement. For example, there are tons of San Francisco based artists on Etsy, the site where you can sell your DIY crafts of all kinds in really cool little storefronts online.

I feel lucky to live in a place where creativity is valued by so many people. It is my belief that the creative lifestyle is the only one really worth living. However, living it can be hard sometimes because of the pressures of real life. Living in San Francisco, where there is so much support for creativity, makes it so much easier to stay on that path.

Tags: art, artists, creativity, etsy, kathryn vercillo, San Francisco, san francisco is sexy