This blog goes off the advertising-type grid and onto some history. As women of the new millennium, we have come a long way from the days of our moms and grandmas being housewives in the 1950's. Although, my mom and grandma didn't have the option of always being housewives. My grandmother worked in the ammunition plants during World War II and cooked at the State Hospital in Parsons, Kansas before that time. My own mother married as a teenager, had two children, ended up divorced and had to work as a waitress during the depression and on into the 1940s. She had help with care for her children from her mother, but had to leave her little hometown in Oklahoma and travel 35 miles to find work. Gone during the week waiting tables and managing a small apartment building, she went home on weekends to see my sister and brother. After years of working and getting the two oldest raised, she met my father and they wed and had a surprise, ME! My mother was a homemaker for most of her life after 1951, but there were times she worked at part time jobs to earn extra money or fill the gap when my dad's union job went on strike. She always worked in a retail store in downtown Lawrence for the two weeks before Christmas to have her own Christmas money to spend. As time went by, she became known for her ability as a seamstress and spent several years making clothes for friends and acquaintances. She sewed both for money and in trade for fabric. I was the lucky recipient of some of the clothing made from the fabric. Mom had earned her own money for so many years, it was hard for her not to do something to earn a little to spend as she wanted.
Mom's sewing and crafting was handed down to me and to my daughter. She was always making some kind of fabric or floral craft she had found a pattern for in a book or from a friend. Some of her more popular items were the Aunt Jemima toaster cover, bean bag frogs, door knob hangers, ruffled bed dolls, and her ornery set of man and woman aprons. She sold many of these items and got a good price out of them. Every Christmas she had a new craft she made and sold. Later, during the summer she would take orders from people wanting her sweet pickles and salsa from time to time. We always had extra from the giant garden my folks planted every year.
I am sure all of this history has resulted in my daughter and I always making a new craft and finally beginning to sell them. Years of sewing, crafting, and art has went into the creation of Rebel Roxie Rose. Kristi was the only one of us that had any formal training in the arts. I had never had the chance to take art classes in school, my folks wanted me to take "useful" classes that would give me a foot up in the work world. It never occurred to them that one or two art classes wouldn't have hurt anything, but in their defense, they survived the Great Depression and were very aware of the need for practical skills since they both had to go to work early in life to survive and help keep their families fed. When Kristi was old enough to enroll in art, I pushed her to try art classes. She was already in band and I wanted her to experience all aspects of the arts. She not only liked it, she excelled in it. Her vision and ability in art won her awards at the state level. Her nail art project had an offer of $200 which her art teacher encouraged her to take at the time. We asked her not to accept it and that piece still hangs in our home to this day. Her paintings are imaginative and funky. Although she doesn't paint as much these days, she uses the same visions from painting in her brooches, pendants, and earrings. It spills over into everything she does from set up and decorating of the store to her tutus and hair accessories and more.
We have our ancestors to thank for our abilities. Kristi is the creative director of Roxie Rose and I am the business manager. We both have our talents and make different things; we enjoy our store and our customers. It took years of work and trial and error to get just this far. But then, we have a long line of artistic, crafty, survivor types to thank for our mix of abilities.
Hope you liked reading a little bit about our personal history. Next blog, I'll go on to other subjects, and show you some more new products! Until next blog . . .
