Franki Kohler, Author of Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Postcards, has created an adorable summery fabric postcard project to share with you.
Does it say “summer on my mind”? You bet it does! It also says “u r on my mind”. Make several of these fun postcards before you take a much-deserved summer break. They are fast and easy! Mail them back to friends or family to let them know you are thinking of them. It’s a new twist on “wish you were here.” First-class postage (use the self-adhesive kind) will deliver your keepsake. Keep reading for full project instructions.
Continue Reading…
If I ever doubted the power of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for bringing people together, CHA has made me a believer. The number of people walking and tweeting concurrently at this show is astounding! If you go on Twitter and type #chasummer into the search box, you can practically attend both the trade show and the consumer show from your own living room.
Even though attendance seemed considerably lower this year, I think online word-of-mouth (or word of keypad, as the case may be) will make up for it. I have to say I am doing my share too…each night I have posted pictures of lots of new scrapbooking and papercrafting products for my many crafty Facebook friends, and they are all anxious to go out and find these supplies in their local stores.
I’m very excited about the new relationships I’ve made here with other manufacturers. Our Ready-to-Go!® line of blank surfaces is the perfect foundation for so many of their products—from paper and glue to flowers, glitter, stamps and ribbon. I’ve also had the honor of meeting so many talented artists, crafters, and educators “for real” from all over the country (we were already Facebook friends) and was pleased to here how much they all love our products. Having a connection through Facebook made it seem like a reunion rather than an introduction.
Mixed media artist Traci Bautista shows everyone how fun it is to paint on fabric
The crafting community is using social media to connect with others who love to create, to be part of a larger community, to get validation for our work, to learn about new products and techniques, and to find inspiration. Social media will never replace the wonderful intimacy of our communities in our local craft stores and groups, but it does allow us to expand our creative horizons even further to reach more people, which helps to ensure the art of crafting will be enjoyed by many generations to come.
A creative life is filled with challenges and rewards, puzzles and curiosities. This ongoing series of poems attempts to express the “Aha”s and “What if”s, the deep ponderings and casual observations of an inquiring mind trying to make sense of reality. May it serve, for you, as a bit of “Everyday Inspiration” along your own creative path.
A creative life
Is built on
“What if…”
NOT
“I don’t think so…”
A quick introduction to Adobe Photoshop Elements is now available to read and download. You can view the PDF here or find it on the Tips & Techniques page on our main website.
This information is designed to help get you started with Photoshop Elements and includes just some of the things you might want to do when printing images for quilting, fiber, and paper arts. We’ve included brief descriptions of the major functions to encourage you to try them out for yourself.
If you’ve been wanting to try Photoshop Elements, but don’t know where to start, this document will get you started. It is also designed to provide additional information for some of our books that revolve around inkjet printing on fabric such as Charlotte Ziebarth’s Artistic Photo Quilts.
Blue Hills by Charlotte Ziebarth
Disney’s Family Fun Magazine has awarded a 2009 Boredom Buster Award to our line of Ready-to-Go!® Blank Board Products. Read the full article here. The Blank Board Products seem to be growing in popularity as they were also recently featured in the Sacramento Bee and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Continue Reading…
Who would have thought that on a lovely outing with your husband to have dinner at a simply yummy Italian restaurant, Tommasso’s in SF, you would pull your hand away from his in the middle of the cross walk, dash back from whence you came, and run into a shop called Urban Burp? Let me enlighten you that Urban Burp is stuffed to the rafters with rare and vintage fabrics for home decor and upholstery, AND tons…OK maybe 200 bolts…of vintage cotton fabric. The owner, Electra Skilandat, just brought in a huge collection of vintage feedsacks that are amazing.
So check out the website, or better yet, get to the shop and see some of the coolest retro fabric. Not only is this place cool, but as we all know in the current era when fabric manufacturers print a line only one time, this type of resource can be a dream come true. My husband waited for the light to change,then came and found me in the shop. When I was finished looking at everything we left and had a divine dinner of pizza and lasagna.
Blank board books decorated with fall-themed papers adhered with Zip Dry—designed by Susan Jones
Susan is a member of our Creative Troupe!
I was on the hunt for fabulous products that work well with our Ready-to-Go!® line of blank products.
Our good friends at Beacon Adhesives did a make-n-take project on our 8×8 Blank Board Book. People were lined up all around the table and they ran out of product in record time!
Designer Susan Jones also created these absolutely gorgeous Indie File Boxes. She used Liquid Laminate to adhere and seal french tissue paper to the box.
Over at the Tattered Angels booth, Education Coordinator Liz Hicks designed some adorable dice using the 2-1/4″ Blank Board Blocks and their new Bingo Card papers.
Liz also made a really cute Christmas ornament with our Mini Shadow Box and their Glimmer Screens and Glimmer Mist.
And some exciting news to share…I taped an episode of FiskarsTV here at CHA! I can’t tell you the details yet, but my cute little project involves Lutradur®! I’ll keep you posted when I know the air date.
Until tomorrow…
Do you think that rules were made to be broken? In this case I certainly do! C&T is trying something a bit new. We are introducing three of our upcoming authors and spilling the beans early.
As there are so many of our readers who are interested in the process of writing a book, we have invited Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle of Fun Quilts, Bari Ackerman of Bari J Designs and Samantha Cotterill of mummysam to use their blogs to talk about their book writing experiences. We invite you to follow them on their journeys, ask any questions of them, and share in our excitement in welcoming these four talented artists to the C&T family.
So, without further ado, it is my honor to introduce:
Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle from Fun Quilts (website and blog)
Bari J Ackerman (website and blog)
Sam Cotterill (etsy store and blog)
Terri O., Kathy Cano-Murillo, Vickie Howell, Donna Dewberry, Carol Duvall
This powerhouse group of creative women comprised the celebrity panel at the CHA general session, “The Future of Crafts: Our Changing Face.” Host Terri O. posed questions to the panel about why people craft, how crafting has changed over the years, trend spotting, as well as how the internet impacts crafting.
I sat right up front and soaked it all in…it was really inspiring to hear them discuss how crafting has evolved from 58 years ago, when Carol Duvall started her career teaching baby boomers basic skills — to today with Vickie Howell and Kathy the Crafty Chica working online to bring out the crafty side of the Gen-Y and Z crowds. Meanwhile, Donna Dewberry is “bridging the gap” by teaching women all over the country how to paint AND blog.
And my heart literally skipped a beat when all five women implored retailers to create a crafting community in their stores; give people a friendly, comfy place to try new techniques and products so they can build their skills and confidence. That is exactly what C&T’s annual Stay-n-Play Café retailer workshop at Winter CHA is all about! Continue Reading…
As part of an ongoing series on the acquisitions process, I am going to talk a little bit about self publishing.
A lot of people are attracted to this, but self-publishing is a lot of work and very (very) few do this well with either patterns or with booklets. Lots of errors, long hours of fulfillment, and a lot of money up front. Much better to have a team to help you along the way, that have a reputation for quality work…it’s kind of like the Verizon network. You give up some money for that, but I’ll touch on this a bit later about diversifying your business.
I see that self-publishing is a big risk, and even if it is done well—it’s a tremendous outlay with almost none being able to get into the bookstores and into the craft chains and specialty shops which are C&T’s main areas of sales. Anyone can self-publish. It doesn’t add a lot of prestige in the same way as saying that a publishing company has signed you up because that means that a lot of people got in a room together, discussed your work and decided that it was worthwhile spending their money to create something with you.
Another point that has come up a lot (and always surprises me) is that potential authors I’ve approached always ask how much it will cost them to publish a book. It’s a fair enough question but is always the ‘ah-ha’ moment when I tell potential authors that there is no money of theirs involved. It’s the publishing company who is taking all of the risk in creating a book with their team of designers. They put together a marketing plan and promote the book in their catalogue with nothing but a leap of faith—it’s actually a pretty exciting concept, and you can see why C&T considers it a really collaborative process. There are some publishers who take your work and don’t offer the same level of consultation with the author with regard to the design and the packaging, but we are really interested in working with our authors for years to come so we want you to promote your book because you love it and it’s a piece of you. It’s great to have so many people on your team to turn to for advice. So free up your time and your money to concentrate on other areas of your business and work with a publisher who know what they are doing.
Next week, I’ll talk about what you can start doing today if you aren’t ready to start working on a book.
Related Posts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
