• If you want to register, please do it NOW for the low cost of $75 because the price goes up to $95 on the 19th.
• If you want to get hundreds of femmes to check your organization out, why not advertise in the program? Rates start at $50 and a whole frickin page ad is only $120.
• Oh! And the conference has a blog with a daily countdown/femme reasons to attend the conference! So check it out and comment – our voices are *all* crucial!

And – because the Femme Family is hustling so many of us out to beautiful Oakland for the event, we’re throwing one more fun[d]raiser party on July 23: SPEAKEASY OF FEMME! Check back or find FemmeFamilyNYC on evil ol facebook for party details…

Last, please send support + love to our friends & allies in Toronto. It got ugly there this weekend at the G20 and while a lot of peoples’ resistance is blooming, they can use support too as they resist the criminalization and brutalization of their rightful protests.

Part of my favorite media strategy has always been postcards. I love them: I let them collect in my purses to remind me of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and I think they’re a really effective strategy to let people know about your art, your project or your business. Below the cut I’m pleased to display four of my newest postcards, but first lets talk a bit about production and printing. I have some links to cheap printers and tips to make your cards look great!

Designing a postcard:

You need good images. Get a photographer friend and dress up, like we did for the Animal Print photo shoot. Or source something copyright-free or copyleft and shareable from Wikipedia Commons or the Library of Congress Digital Collections or NYPL archives. Or get your digital camera out and take a picture of someTHING in this beautiful world. And credit your source!

Once you have your image in your computer, make sure it’s set to print resolution and not web resolution! 300dpi! This is critical so you don’t get that weird little-crystal effect when you print. To design, you can use photoshop or indesign, or GIMP [free!]. The most important part when you’re laying out your postcard is a little something called margins and bleed.

Next, before you perfect your postcard, know your print specs. How big is your image going to be? 3.75×5.5 is far off from 4.25×6, when it comes to font size and layout. This means sourcing your printer ahead of time. Will your image bleed off the edge or have a border? Make sure that text is not too close to the margins, and remember that the way things look on your screen often don’t exactly translate to the way they look when printed, so beware of color values that are too close to one another side-by-side.

Printing. I like using overnightprints.com because there are a lot of good discount codes out there for them, and they usually get your order to you in about a week. I just ordered 500 full-color one-sided cards for $20+shipping. Sweet. However, walking into your local independent printer cannot be beat in terms of putting a face to your process, and in my experience, chain-print-place employees are often really rad and discount-y after the managers leave at 5pm.

Here are my most recent products, if you’re curious. And they got here just in time to take to the USSF!

Postcard for performace + creative arts

This is from photo's I got from many of the performers and presenters from the upcoming Femme2010 conference!

This illustration is by Cristy Road

Tues June 15, 7:30 – 9:30pm, 713 Classon Ave, Apt 206, Brooklyn, $free/bring a dish to share
Kick off Femme Pride Week with a Femme Family community dinner, at which we will utilize the potluck to honor our deep lez ancestry and queer activist present. Femme + femme-questioning only, please.

Thurs June 17, 10p-2a. Sugarland [221 N 9th St.], Brooklyn, $5
Co-Head Madam Bevin Branlandingham brings another installation of the Rebel Cupcake Cabaret! The theme is Queer Root, and it features performances by Rosie Lugosie, SirMamSir and the Missus, Lola Dean, and myself, Axon D’Luxe.

Fri June 18. Paddles [250 W 26th St.], NYC 10:30p – 2:30. $10.
Orphanage play party!! SWITCH, New York City’s monthly genderqueer/women/trans/define it for yourself BDSM party, takes you into the dingy world of the wayward, Daddy Warbucks, Cruella DeVille and all those Nuns who’d grown tired of brats run amok. All queer genders welcome. Hostessed by Damien Luxe/Home for the Wayward.

Sat June 19.
It’s Juneteenth! It’s the Mermaid Parade!! It’s my 31st birthday!!!

Sun June 20: 8p – 12a. Stonewall Inn [53 Christopher St,] NYC. $5-$10.
NYC Femme Family is excited to invite you to our second annual pride party!  This year’s party has a very special theme: PINUP, and it’s co-sponsored by Shameless Photography, Bklyn Boihood, and I Heart Brooklyn Girls.  In addition to dancing, drinks, and general revelry, we’re holding a date & service auction you won’t want to miss. Auction info is available on our blog. All femmes + queer allies are welcome.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 8, 2010 – Femme Collective

Press Contact: femmecollectivemedia@gmail.com

Femme2010: No Restrictions Features Dynamic Line-up of LGBTQ Speakers, Performers, and Activists
The Femme Collective is excited to announce the keynote speakers, featured performers, and workshop line-up for Femme2010: No Restrictions, a conference for and by queer femmes August 20-22, 2010, in Oakland, CA.

Femme2010 welcomes people of all genders who are interested in learning, teaching, connecting, and building femme community, as well as those interested in a deeper understanding of femme identity, culture, and history.

This year’s conference will feature world-renowned author, playwright, and performance artist Kate Bornstein and self-proclaimed “trouble-maker-at-large” and activist Paulina Hernández as keynote speakers. In addition, Rosie Lugosi, an award-winning high femme performance artist from the UK, and Alotta Boutté, the Bay Area’s own songstress and burlesque artist extraordinaire, will be joined by dozens of other exciting performers, showcasing talents from spoken word and live music to steamy burlesque and drag.

Femme activists, artists, and academics of all varieties will present more than forty workshops, panels, and skill shares on identity, sexuality, and politics over the three day conference. Panels on responses to violence and community organizing will be joined by how-to workshops in social media and sign language, among many others. Artists and vendors will be showcasing their work. Femme2010 also features a film and video screening, including works from over 20 artists, including the award-winning Lucha and the documentary Diagnosing Difference.

Jessica Humphrey, Conference Co-chair, says that Femme2010 “builds on the history of femme contributions to queering identities, gives voice to femmes of all kinds, and seeks to build unity, coalition, and solidarity in our queer communities.”

As stated on the conference website, the conference organizers are dedicated to “creating a Femme-positive environment; selecting programming to honor differences in ethnicity, physical abilities, and gender expressions; and highlighting the intersection of queer Femme identity with issues of race, class, age, and body.”
The conference will be held at the Oakland Marriott City at 1001 Broadway, Oakland, CA, August 20-22, 2010. Registration, which includes all day and evening events, is currently $75, going up to $95 after July 15.

Please visit www.femmecollective.com for more information.

Advertisers and vendors may contact Jessica Giusti jess.giusti@gmail.com.
Media inquiries may be directed to femmecollectivemedia@gmail.com.
Photos and interviews available by request.

We’ve given this workshop several times starting in 2007: at Women, Action and the Media at MIT/Boston, The Anarchist Bookfair in NYC, The Desiree Alliance Conference in SF and Chicago, and at the Hart Collective in Brooklyn.

To fun(d)raise to get ourselves to the USSF, we’re giving a series of BDSM 201 workshops: one on Bondage May 30, and one on Edge Play June 10. Now that’s intersectionality!!

INFORMATION

About Image Size for Printing:

The internet is great because it gives us access to all kinds of images of ourselves and others, but tragically for the print-minded among us, most of the images found on the internet [like most of what's on Facebook, or the small images on Flickr] are NOT suitable for printing. These web-optimized images have been scaled down to contain only 72 “Dots” [also called pixels] of color information Per Inch [eg. "dpi", also called "resolution"]. Thats perfect for a computer monitor, but for a medium or big pic in a magazine, flyer, brochure, etc, really for any print instance, we need to get images that are 300 dpi or greater — 4 times more dense with color information as web-optimized images! — to look good to our eye when printed on paper, and not blurry and “pixelated”, like when you see something looking all choppy with the little squares in it.

What does that mean and how do you know?

If you  have an image file that you want to use for print, but aren’t sure if it’s dpi is correct, open that file in your image editing software [try PC: Paintbrush; Mac: Preview, iPhoto; PC/Mac: Photoshop, GIMP]  and look at the image size information, however your program gives you that info*. It will tell you how many actual dots of image data [pixels] are in your image, what the current setting on the image is, and how big that is in inches. You can do some simple math to see how big it would be on a computer versus printed, by dividing the number of pixels by the output method [web or printing].

An example:
A camera phone may take a 600 wide x450 tall pixel picture, which you then copy onto and then open on your computer. *In the program you open it in, there will be a drop-down menu called ‘Tools’ or ‘Edit’. Pick that, and then “Get Info” or “Image Size” and a window will open, telling you lots of info, including that the image is 600×450.

In print terms, that picture is 2in. x 1.5in [600/300 dpi for print=2in; 450/300=1.5in]. Small for a magazine or postcard, probably ok for a brochure. For reference, an image that is 750×600 is about the ‘print size’ of a playing card.

That same picture is in web terms sizes out to be 8.3×6.25 [600/72 dpi for web=8.3; 450/72=6.25, or big enough for a computer screen!].

For printing, we need images that are 300 pixels per inch, cuz that’s what printers print at. For your postcard and magazine needs, try to find/take/get images that are at LEAST 1200×900 or bigger [4x3 inches]. A full page image needs to be 2850×3600 pixels [9.5x12]. A brochure image should be NO smaller than 450×450 [1.5 inches square]. We want to see your brilliant face!

Resizing:

Please DONT “Resize” or “Upsample” options to resize an image from smaller to larger!!!!! That’s how you can guarantee your pic will come out with all the weird little squares when printed.

You can’t just use the “Resample” or “Resize” tool for print purposes, because doing so asks the computer program to make guesses [using math!] to fill in the missing image data from all the pixels that aren’t there, and that’s when you get images that print looking  what is called “pixelated”, because you can see the individual edges of pixels. That’s BAD]. That’s why you want large original images to work from.

You can “downsample,” that is, go DOWN in size, because your computer is not missing any image data information, it’s only cutting out the extra. That’s ok. But if someone is asking you for an image for printing, just send them the biggest thing you have. They will  downsize as needed.

Oranization

When you send someone who runs a magazine or a conference called, say, Lick The Moist Cherry, a picture or bio, you might be tempted on your computer, to name your picture or bio “Lick The Moist Cherry” — so that you know what it’s for — and email it away. Not only is that awkward, at least 30 other people are naming their images and bios the same thing and sending it to that organizer, who now has 30 Lick The Moist Cherrys, and no time for her own cherry because she has to rename everything that gets sent her.

Do these nice people a favor. Save the image or document as your name, or the name of your troupe, or your presentation title. It will save someone a headache, I promise.

**a note about file extensions. Unless you are a “computer” person, don’t change a .jpg to a .gif or a .doc to a .txt willynilly. Leave it be and it will be better than if you get all cray. Also don’t delete the extension accidentally, they help the other person’s computer know what it’s looking at. If you are a graphics person, you know that .tif or .pdf are preferred delivery formats for print.

Example:

• picture: DamienLuxe_LTMC.jpg [I've used an underscore - _ - because it helps Macs and PCs read the filename easier than if you leave spaces]
• bio: DamienLuxe_bioLTMC.txt – [I also anally appended the acronym of the event this bio is for, so I know from my computer what I sent it to.]

CLEAR, DIRECT INSTRUCTIONS

- get your pic onto a computer

- look at the size

- make sure it’s ‘big’ enough for your purposes

- save it with an obvious name [your name_event.xxx]

- email it with an obvious subject line in the email

- sit back satisfied, knowing you did your best

RESOURCES

Baltimore’s beautiful gem Black Cherry Puppet Theater, as run by Michael, meeting Rebecca Nagle and Koala, talking with Wobfest folks and being hosted amazing by Leah and Xander, finding The Book Thing and eating the new bagel sandwich involving fried egg, mustard, humous, spinach and cream cheese.

Richmond’s Lamplighter gave delicious food, handsome mysterious Hank, the post show drag queens who fiercely changed on the street and who honored the glory of Sequinette’s name, and where Jenny and Jack and co. made us thrill with brunch beyond belief.

Durham, ohhh Humble Tripe, how you swayed us with your giant smiles and gorgeous music and Shawn, how your beautiful home comforted us mightily and created I Have A Crunch On You, the PTM remix.

Duke where thanks to Kadji, Haley and Victoria in the Pink Room made Heather and my lecture: Queer Girls Dreaming Away From Home even more magical than the pink leather desk and armoires surrounding us.

Asheville, where the bar booked us thinking we were strippers, people debated if I was going to hell for the Hot Pink Mass and there were five amazing souls holding it down for our show. Haley, Ezra, Zeke: thank you.

Atlanta! Bellissima! A beautiful space with amazing acoustics, and the gracings of Lady Vagina Jenkins who femmceed the event in the Best Red Leather Suit Ever plus we got to see Al Schlong in a flaming suit!. And thanks to lovely Asha who lent us the glory of her home, pointed us to the five corners and made us amazing pasta when we surely looked half dead.

New Orleans, walking into the All Ways felt like Arriving, Jordan and Nat and Michelle and Red came, and the Love-o-Rama folks were were so welcoming to us. Sequinette and Laurence were left behind in the bayou, with then Silas taking over van space.

Austin! I always feel like I’m coming home here even though it’s a new adventure every time. The Gay bi Gay Gay stage shone with pastel homomagic in the afternoon sunlight and femme atx folks, equality riders, Ida friends and the GxGG magic makers combined with local friends to make it such a magic show.

Georgetown/Southwestern where we added Leah [and lost Chicago] for the How To Build A Fire Tour, driving the hour to a school which makes queer art and skill-sharing happen for its students. I got to make a track and thrift bike helmets and wonderful Alex and Lisa and Lilly and Eli and everyone else made it a great show in a large atrium.

Waco/Equality Ride was an add on for Chicago and driving the two hours out there I wanted to rest but upon arriving and talking and listening to Mac and Jaxon and everyone — and perfomring the Hot Pink Mass for folks who survived the vengeful followers of a loving god, as I have, gave me more empathy and inspiration than a month inBrooklyn could ever.

Next I want to go to Philly for shows, Detroit for the USSF, Oakland for The Femme2010 Conference and plan more Heels on Wheels for the fall. But first, Summer 2010, let’s go for it!

xoxDLuxe

What do you do when you aren’t the web design mastermind behind your site/blog, you find yourself needing to update it, and your friend who made it for you is MIA or really busy? Read below to see what choices are available to you as you go along. Most importantly, you need to get EITHER the domain or access to the webfiles, the latter of which are the real goal.

First Steps: Know Everything You Want To Go Onto The Update Of Your Site

- Gather all new photos, videos etc. you want on your site
- gather into a document the new text, blurbs, links and press clips you want on your site
- get access to your files via access from the designer or by nabbing them and putting them on another server

Option 1:

ACCESS YOUR FILES/GET THE BLOG LOGIN and update the content yourself [or get someone else to do it]
Whether you can get to your domain name or not [see next], it’s the web files or blog pages or CMS [content management system] that you need to actually access in order to update what appears on people’s browser screens when they look at your site.

Either the files are on your server that you pay for, or on the designers’ server, or on the server of a third internet party like a blog host. You need to get access to the server they’re on to update them.

If you can get ahold of the designer you can ask for copies of the files for your site or a server login – or double check if they gave you FTP, server, blog login or copies of the files from the get-go**  Don’t dally once you get this info — just go ahead and log onto the server to get access to your files. If it’s an FTP server, use Cyberduck or another free software to help you navigate. If you get to log onto their server to get these files please be very, very careful and don’t delete anything. Some designers will prefer to send you a copy of your files instead of giving you access to their server.

If you have a blog you can get copies of the files but they are usually in a funky .php format [a major blog negative, plus that it's a separate project to transfer them over to a new site/blog], or you could just copy and paste the content to a folder on your computer or to your googledocs [something I reccomend doing every few months].

Either way, capture the pages/content, place it on your computer and take a moment to think: “That was easy, look at that list of filenames, pagenames, extentions, and folders!” Now you get to either learn how to update blog pages [easy!], use one of the many free web editing softwares out there.

If your friend can’t give you the files and the site is still up, you can “View Source” to copy the code of each page as it appears online. This won’t work if you have .php or framing on your site, and you also can’t get the CSS [page styling code] but is a decent last-ditch effort if you really don’t have another option. You can either open the pages in a web editing program or just copy and paste the content into new blog pages, and you’ll just have to reformat the links and reupload the images.

Option 2:

ACCESS YOUR DOMAIN NAME and direct the domain name to a new site you’re making/one you have access to

If you purchased your domain name [also known as a URL], then you have the login info to the registration account which leads to where mysite.com, ourblog.org, etc. is registered, and then you have quite a bit of power! You can log into the website of the service you registered at and direct your domain name anywhere using the nameservers or the redirect. To the site your friend made which you or they are updating. To a new blog/site you are hosting somewhere else because the old site can’t be updated. To xtube. It’s up to you.

If your friend bought your domain name for you, I do hope they either provided you with a login or you can get ahold of them to get the files [next] or have them redirect. Because without access to the domain name AND the web files or blog login, you are looking at some startover action my friend.

For more info about domain names, you can see my post on the topic. There’s a lot in there.

USEFUL TIPS SO THIS NEVER HAPPENS TO ANYONE ELSE

1. Talk The Designer’s Language. It helps.
When someone is making your site for the first time and storing it on their FTP, you can ask to be a “user” on their “server” and so get your own login and access updates to your site via the server’s WYSIWYG. They might not want to give you access, FYI, but maybe they can section off a parcel of server for you if you’re really special.

2. Keep backups – and a non-online list! – of your logins and passwords
I know this is boring and annoying, but isn’t it MORE boring and annoying to spend days tracking down someone for something you could just have on your computer or desk?

3. *If you are the “friend who makes sites”, please make sure people buy their own URL’s so you never have to redirect namservers or transfer ownership or accidentally forget to renew a URL which ends up costing a client or — way worse — a friendship. It’s happened to the best of us.

4.**Copies of the files and/or FTP logins. Such good ideas! Sometimes hard to remember to ask for but, still!

Logo by Shannon Taylor, Animal print Photos by Ally Picard. Heels On Wheels Roadshow is four Brooklyn Femmes teaming up with our local friends! Heels on Wheels is a caravan of artists from Brooklyn offering a cabaret of performance, music, drag, and shenanigans. Femme troublemakers Damien Luxe, Heather Ács, Princess Tiny & the Meats, and Sequinette Jaynesfield will wow you with gender troubles and flashy trash!

Heels on Wheels Roadshow is a flashy femme caravan from Brooklyn touring the South with a queer performance-art cabaret. Starring dazzling troublemakers Heather Ács, Damien Luxe, Princess Tiny & the Meats, and Sequinette, the show features a multi-media format of high femme drag, electro music, and piercing, poetic theatre. Expect to see Dolly Parton transformations, stilettos flying, eggs breaking and moods changing. Heels on Wheels delivers a trashy-fancy night of radical extravagance and thought-provoking glamour.

Find us on facebook!!

We’re getting in our dreamy van for this epic NYC-to-Austin trip March 26 – April 4. Our stops are:

• Sunday 3/21 – Brooklyn NY – 8pm @ Collect Pond, 45 Berry St., 8pm, $5
• Friday 3/26 – Baltimore MD – 8p and 10p @ Black Cherry Puppet Theatre, 1115 Hollins Street, 21223. 8p & 10p shows.  $5-10.
• Saturday 3/27 – Richmond VA – doors 7/ show 8p @  The Lamplighter Cafe 116 S. Addison St, Doors 7pm – Free!
• Sunday 3/28 – Chapel Hill NC @- 6:30p NC Rising Conference at Internationalist Cafe
• Sunday 3/28 – Durham NC @ 8pm with Humble Tripe Monkey Bottom Gallery, 609 trent drive durham with Humble Tripe $5
• Monday 3/29 – Asheville NC @ 9pm Club Hairspray, 38 N. French Broad Ave., $5
• 3/30-31 – Atlanta GA – Bellissima, 560 Amsterdam Ave, 30306. 9p $5-8.
• Thursday 4/1 – New Orleans LA – 10pm @ All Ways, 2240 St. Claude Ave., $5
• Sunday 4/4 – Austin TX – TBA

Oh and thanks to our screenprinters, Means of Production – check them out!

Any assistance in getting us places to stay is super appreciated! More info below the cut…

BIOS
Damien “Hadassah” Luxe is a Brooklyn-based queer femme, liberationist artist, writer, creative, and activist who performs as Axon D’Luxe. Her work focuses on celebrating extremes of femininity; feminist / queer archiving and storytelling, and on building and skillsharing a new framework to both analyze and enjoy life from. D’Luxe is co-founder of New York’s Femme Family [femmefamily.com], a queer femme cultural community; she’s the co-creative director of the community events and skillshare group the Hart Collective [hartcollective.com]; and she Art Directed the award-winning $pread Magazine [spreadmagazine.org] for three years. A repatriated expat by way of Toronto, DIY tech geek and communications designer [heelsonwheelsdesign.com], and working-class gone hustling-class high femme fatale, Damien loves rhinestones and anything dramatic on wheels. Download tracks, read stories and her how-to blog: www.axondluxe.com

Heather M. Ács is a multi-media theatre performance artist, activist, educator and high-femme troublemaker. She creates nonlinear worlds layered with movement, soundscape, video, and storytelling, refracted through working class Appalachian and Mexican cultural imagery. Her gritty, glittery work has been featured in festivals, galleries, colleges, conferences, divy bars, crowded living rooms, and queer feminist spaces across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Heather has worked with Nao Bustamante, Karen Finley, Steven Soderbergh, and regularly collaborates with Silas Howard. www.heatheracs.com

Sequinette called a “Drag Impresario” by the New York TImes and a “Dolly Parton-esque beauty” by the Village Voice, Sequinette is one of the most stylized of NYC’s “Female to Female Drag Queens.”  She relies on fine couture costuming in drag performances that contain elements of burlesque.  She was crowned Miss LEZ 2008 in Murray Hill’s queer beauty pageant,  and also starred in Michelle Handelman’s Dorian in 2009. She is the co- producer of multi-media queer dance party “Love Muscle,” and also produced Coney Island’s first ever full fledged drag show, “Hollywood Bitches.”

Chicago is a solo artist who performs under as Princess Tiny and the Meats. Their debut electronic album, “Will S UR D 4 Coin” is to be released early this summer. You can check out their music at [www.myspace.com/princesstinyandthemeats]. Their music brings awareness and education to a broader audience about queer culture. Princess Tiny and the Meats also performs acoustic songs on guitar and piano in a theatrical fairy tale called “Confessions of a Love Sick Teenager”.  Chicago is an artist that is dedicated to breaking down the walls of ignorance that have saturated the music industry for what has been – up until now – way too long!