Putting Your Best Foot Forward

I have always been the sort of person that by the time something turns into a fad I have already been wearing it or doing it...or I have completely avoided the whole thing. It's not by design, it's just an innate sense I have of such things. I was the first kid at my school to wear a new kind of jeans, and I was one of the first people to "distress" bears. I completely avoided glitter makeup and needle felting. Every once in a blue moon I will jump on a fad bandwagon after it becomes a fad though.

Last Fall I did exactly that. I had been seeing lots of pictures people took of their feet. While I didn't really understand it, I was oddly intrigued by it. So when I was outside looking at fallen leaves in my backyard I snapped a pic of my feet half buried in the leaves and posted it. After I did it I felt a little cheesy for jumping on the bandwagon since it had been done so much.

I have made a few posts in the past about Artful Blogging magazine. I love this magazine despite how it leaves me feeling a little bereft after reading it because I feel like I can never measure up to the bloggers featured.

I buy it without even peeking inside. The new issue came out last week and I was excited to pick it up this weekend. I came home, plopped down on the couch with the quilt all ready to indulge in this guilty pleasure.

Two pages in the phone rang. As I was talking on the phone I flipped through the pages to see what I had to look forward to. It struck me how many "feet pictures" there were in it yet again. Eleven to be exact. I realized this is why I jumped on the bandwagon. Every issue has had several "feet pictures" since the inception of the magazine. But this time they were no longer intriguing. In fact they were kind of disappointing in their rhetoric.

Artful Blogging, like many of the Somerset publications costs $14.99. That's a pretty expensive magazine. They have cornered the market on craft and art inspiration type magazines. They have lush images and use a delightful heavy paper. But for 15 bucks a pop I want to see something new now.

That is my one complaint about all of their magazines, they tend to stick to a basic style, even to the point of crossover features on the same people in several publications. While I guess that's ok up to a point, and it's definitely good to have a continuity to their style...for my money I want to see them change it up once in a while.

There are many wonderful artists out there that could be featured, there are also a million and six different types of images they could use that would still conform to the format of the magazines.

When the next issue comes out, I won't buy it automatically. I will look through it before I do. I am not sure I want to spend another $15.00 to support the editors foot fetish and see the same old thing as every other issue. I am afraid that those of us who read their magazines on a regular basis are subconsciously conforming to that style by tiny degrees.

My last two posts have been about getting a new perspective on the world. Maybe it's time that some of our windows to the world get a new perspective too.