Chris's original Dollar Bill Origami Money Plant — a step-by-step project developed for Creativity Portal® in 2004 has been included in the new book Money: Everything You Never Knew About Your Favorite Thing to Find, Save, Spend, and Covet by Sandra & Harry Choron.

Money Plant Featured in 'Money' Book by Sandra & Harry Choron

'Cashius monetarius' Gaining Interest

By Chris Dunmire, Wishful Planter

If you're a fan of my popular 'Cashius monetarius' Dollar Bill Origami Money Plant project ebook, you can see a photo of the plant published in a new book by Sandra and Harry Choron , Money: Everything You Never Knew About Your Favorite Thing to Find, Save, Spend, and Covet (Chronicle Books, 2011). The plant picture — one of the best amateur photos I've taken — appears on the left side of page 283 in the section 8 Steps On the Path to Abundance: Feng Shui for Prosperity.

The picture, which also blooms over the background on the cover of my instructional Money Plant gift-making book on CreativeSlush.com, caught Mr. Choron's attention in 2009 when he contacted me for permission to use it in his upcoming book about money (originally scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2010 under the title The MoneyPhile).

I agreed, sent him a high-resolution image file, and signed a publisher's release (they do this for permission and copyright reasons), and have waited patiently for this book to materialize for about a year and a half. Now that it has, I'm pleased to see my picture used in such a complementary Feng Shui way. (Source notes in the back of the book credit my Creative Slush Playbooks Web site URL, www.creativeslush.com, for the photo — not my name.)

It's cool to be included in Choron's book in this artful manner — it's the first time one of my photos alone has been published in a book without the project context, and now my claim to 15 more minutes of fame in this wispy ethersphere has proven an expert knack for getting my creative stuff into other people's books and publications for a complimentary copy (which really is a compliment and an easy way to write myself into literati history without the rejection slips).

Someday I'll begin submitting my work for real dough, requiring monetari payment when my brand exceeds my ego, but until then I'll just keep growing money in a flower pot with the rich soil of my karmic imagination.

By the way, Choron's published a few other fun books including Planet Cat: A CAT-alog, Planet Dog: A Doglopedia, Planet Wedding: A Nuptialpedia, College in a Can, The Book of Lists for Teens, and Look! It's Jesus!: Amazing Holy Visions in Everyday Life. I love the word Doglopedia.

Here's one interesting thing about money that you won't find in Choron's book: To-date, the Dollar Bill Origami Money Plant ebook (with the two fake funny reprintable humor seed packets) remains my most popular PDF download product (and is also available for Amazon Kindle) with nearly 1,250 copies legally purchased since 2007 — hopefully and thanks to my clear conscience copyright policy — or maybe because it's just so absurdly cheap and everybody loves making and receiving them. Even my 70-something-year-old mother.

You should have seen us together at her kitchen table about a year ago — I was teaching her how to fold and curl the dollar bill leaves for a gift plant she was making for a retiring librarian friend in town. That I was now teaching her something after the many years she taught me was more than just memorable — the gleam in her eyes and the creative fun she was having right along with me was priceless. •

© 2011 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.