Lillia Colston, founder of Art Time Party.
Tell me about your vision.
Hello.
I have started Art Time Party about 20 years ago,
and originally it was just children's program,
and I have been teaching art classes
and art and science camps for kids,
also doing children's parties.
But year after year, parents would ask me,
why don't you do something for us adults?
So a year ago, I found out that it's possible
to do these interesting parties on jelly printing.
And I am in love with that technique.
It's super easy, and I have been doing that since.
So I want to show you my examples I brought with me.
Beautiful.
One more.
And this is actually examples for upcoming events
that I'm doing this Sunday at La Lida.
It's a tea shop in Stone Oak area,
and it's gonna be at three o'clock.
So what actually do you do when you make them?
And the concept is very simple,
and anybody with no experience can do it.
You just follow instructions.
And to me, it's actually more about thinking
and exercising your brain than working with your hands.
But yes, you will be using your hands
to make that monoprint.
I want to show you the jelly printing plate.
So this is kind of, it looks like a sensory toy.
Yeah.
It reminds me jellyfish.
It does.
It actually has a memory of its own,
because if you put something heavy,
it would make a dent in it.
But again, if you take it off,
it will go back to its original state.
So it's quite fascinating.
It's called jelly plate,
and there are different names for it.
It's mostly a nickname, but it is a printing plate.
Originally, it was made out of gelatin,
and you can make it using gelatin,
but it's a polymer, and I just bought it.
So you would take a brayer,
which is a fancy name for a specific roller,
and you roll paint on the plate.
Put stencils, you can put flowers, you can put feathers,
even different flat gadgets, not sharp.
Take them off, and put a piece of good paper, and pull.
And you do it multiple times,
and you get something like this.
Yeah.
So it's different, obviously.
It's easy, and you don't really need to have
a lot of skills working with a brush, sketching,
or anything else in order to make such a print.
Like I said, it's more about exercising your brain,
because you have to think in reverse.
You get reflected image.
So I think it's actually a pretty cool project
to do for adults, like for team building,
for office parties, when you don't want necessarily
to have something mindless, so to speak,
but yet fun, and a little bit of strain brain exercise.
Not so focused on the logistics either,
but more on just an activity
that can bring people together in a new way.
I can see that.
It's really neat that you're doing this at La Tida.
We actually had Leo Flores on the show a couple months ago,
and I met you both in different places.
So small world.
And I want to circle back to,
you said you got started a year ago with adults.
How did you get started?
You made that leap after 20 years.
So what inspired that,
and how did you go about getting started?
I just got brave.
Sometimes you just have to get brave,
and think about you can do it.
And also one of my colleagues, our teacher in Midwest,
she was posting pictures of her jelly printing parties.
And I saw like up to 40 people.
I thought, wait a minute, if she can get 40 people,
I don't need 40, I can probably get at least 10.
So that's how it got started,
because I saw interest in jelly printing there.
Obviously we're not Midwest,
and our location is different, everything is different,
but yet there is a hope.
Yes, absolutely.
You know, a lot of, what was it?
Stephen King said the difference between
those who have potential and are talented,
and those who are successful
is a lot of hard work.
So putting in the hard work
is what typically sets us apart.
There's a couple more questions I'll ask you.
So one of the other questions that I ask leaders
in your position is, it's kind of a curiosity poll.
Why do you think that leaders like yourself,
meaning like yourself and myself,
sometimes hide from funding their visions,
from going all in?
You mentioned a little bit of fear on that.
Just curious, why else do you think people sometimes
hold back from really going after it?
Oh, two different reasons.
Reason number one, when they're already established
in the community doing one thing,
and they're successful,
and the fear of being not successful,
because, you know, why would you do that
if you already accomplished one thing?
Why would you reach for another one?
You might not get it.
So that's reason number one.
And reason number two, again,
being so known in the community could be a good thing
and could be a bad thing.
Good thing, you can rely on the community to support you.
But then again, if community does not support your vision,
that is like double hit below the belt.
They don't support your vision,
they don't support you, and boom, you fail.
So that's the fear.
It's so much easier was to get started for me,
because when I started Art Time Party 20 years ago,
nobody knew me.
So it didn't matter.
I had no money.
I had nobody who knew me.
So it really didn't matter.
I think sometimes it's just easier to do that
if nobody knows you at all.
You fail, who cares?
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.