Posted on 12 Comments

Morning Coffee with Alicia Paulson

Welcome!  Pour yourself a nice hot cup of coffee or tea, grab a slice of blueberry pound cake, and have a seat.  This morning we’ll be chatting with Alicia Paulson of Posie Gets Cozy.

This is the first in what I hope will be a weekly-ish series.  We’ll sit down with some of my favorite writers & creative people, and get to know a little bit more about their blogs and why they do what they do.  If they inspire me, maybe they can inspire you, too!

Comfy?  Great.  Then let’s get started 🙂

Posie Gets Cozy

How I found Posie Gets Cozy

It was the spring of 2007.  I was feeling down and in desperate need of a distraction.  Being a polymer clay artist, and a blogger (albeit one who, at the time, used the medium for little more than a promotional vehicle for her book store), I turned to the internet and began a search for other polymer clay blogs.  I thought that getting lost in an artsy world would be just what the doctor ordered.

Well, you know how one link leads to another on this web of ours, and before long I was exploring past polymer clay, and discovering a world of creative blogging I never knew existed.  And I was getting pretty well sucked-in, too.

Alicia’s blog was one of the first of these “new” blogs that I came across, with its photo-rich narrative and personal voice.  I was especially drawn in by her spread in the premier issue of Artful Blogging.  At the time, reading Posie Gets Cozy was, for me, like sitting down for a chat with a new friend who liked many of the same things I did, and who was not shy about showing  me what she’d been working on – and showing me in glorious detail.  It was an exciting discovery for me, really, which left me wanting more.  It opened my eyes to the myriad possibilities that existed in my own blog – I needed only to tap into them. (And I have!)

Posie Gets Cozy continues to be one of my top five daily must-reads, and I’m thrilled that Alicia agreed to let me ask her a few questions today.

Q&A with Alicia Paulson

Alicia sews beautiful quilts, takes engaging photos, has a love affair with the color aqua, and waxes poetic about her pampered pup.  She’s written a fabulous book and has another on the way.  I could live in her sunny studio, if she let me.

Posie: quilt

Welcome, Alicia!  When and why did you start your blog?

I started the blog in September of 2005 when I owned a store that wasn’t doing very well and had a lot of time to surf the internet (which I’d never really done before, although I’d had a web site for my craft business since 2000). I had a long history as a writer before I became a professional crafter, so once I found out what blogs were, it didn’t take me long to start writing.

Has your blog evolved significantly since you began it, and if so, how?

I really don’t think it has changed much at all, believe it or not. In the beginning, the blog quickly became primarily a place of personal expression for me, and that is still my motivation for doing it now, in spite of the fact that I have a business. I still think of the blog as a personal blog; it’s secondarily about crafts and the professional aspects of what I do because those things are such a huge part of my personal life, but I don’t see the blog as work. When I started the blog I was really needing to take that time out of every day to notice and record my thoughts about the little things, and I think I need to do that now as much as I ever did.

Posie: Clover

How does your blog fit in to your daily life?

I fly by the seat of my pants every morning when I’m drinking my coffee. If I don’t manage to write the blog during those early morning hours, it generally has to wait until the next day. But I do like to do it every day. I am a very habitual person.

Is blogging something you can easily explain to your family and friends?

My family and friends have always known me as someone who talks about herself incessantly, so I think they get it :-). And are not surprised. Possibly bewildered why someone would do it, but not surprised that I do.

Posie: studio

How important are reader comments to you?

The comments are important to me because I rely on the idea that me telling my own story is really a conversation — having listeners who understand and offer enlightenment has been profound. Most of the time it’s me responding to the comments in a collective sense — I am not very good at replying to questions or individual inquiries, because I try to save my time and energy so that I can just keep doing the blog itself — that’s the most important thing to me. But I do read each and every comment (as does my husband, believe it or not) and feel very engaged in the ongoing dialogue in a day-to-day, more collective way. A lot of the things I talk about in blog posts are in response to the ideas that the comments suggest (and many times what I’m saying refers to things that I’ve talked about in the blog before — the context is something I never explain, I just expect that people “get” it, and I always write as if they do [even if they don’t, because they just arrived, or whatever] ). I always write as if everyone has been reading all along. Those who have are the readers I “picture” when I write.

In what ways has blogging enhanced your life, if any?

It’s given me a way to express myself that fits my personality and tendencies perfectly, I think. I used to make scrapbooks of my life, and now I blog. Both mediums make me feel more organized and appreciative of what I have. They’ve been wonderful.

Posie: flowers

Thank you, Alicia, for taking the time to answer my questions and for allowing me to mine your blog for the fabulous photos I used to illustrate our conversation.  It’s been a pleasure!

Want more?  You can find Alicia in the following places:

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Posted on 12 Comments

12 thoughts on “Morning Coffee with Alicia Paulson

  1. Thanks so much Lisa for the wonderful piece on Alicia! Her blog was one of the first that I fell in love with, so learning more about her feels like learning a little more about an old friend.

    I look forward to this new series of yours 🙂
    .-= See beki’s latest blog post: quilty thoughts =-.

    1. Glad you enjoyed it! I had fun going through her blog looking for photos – there are just so many beautiful pictures to choose from!

  2. New blog post: Morning Coffee with Alicia Paulson http://bit.ly/hWYAk

  3. Nice interview! Posie is my favorite blog! I’ll be checking back to see what else you have in store!
    .-= See Sara’s latest blog post: ::Saturday Sundries:: No. 9 =-.

    1. Thanks for the feedback! Posie is right up there on my (short) daily must-read list, so it was a pleasure.

  4. I really like what Alicia Paulson says about blogging in this interview with @lclarke522: http://tinyurl.com/ndh8s2 well done Lisa.

  5. Been reading Posie forever, and have been inspired by so many things, most notably her backyard, and vinatage sheets.

    :o)

    Love that blog and visit it everyday!
    .-= See lauradodson’s latest blog post: a dash of sunshine =-.

    1. Oh, yes, the vintage sheets! I’ve been buying vintage pillowcases lately to use in crafting, but after seeing one of her bed pictures lately, I was inspired to use some of my thrift shop pillowcases to cover actual pillows 😀

      1. And…ever since I’ve seen your pj pants and skirt made from the green flowery sheets…well, I’ve been on a high and low search for those sheets! I must find them! So far, no luck…but I love ’em.
        .-= See lauradodson’s latest blog post: help! i’m in a jar and i can’t get out! =-.

  6. I love Alicia’s writing style. Her humor and wit makes her blog a must read. Then on top of it she’s crazy busy creating and shares it with all of us.

    Candylei

    1. I couldn’t agree more! Thanks for dropping by 🙂

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