Make It

Double Duty

I'm doing double duty this week as the guest blogger for Modish. Click over there throughout the week to see what I'm up to. I'll be focusing on silkscreened gift items. Today's posts are a recap of the screenprinters I met at Bazarre Bizaar yesterday. Check it out!

Black Purl Fills a Void in the Needlecraft Community

As a crafter of color I was thrilled to find out about a new magazine called Black Purl which places an emphasis on sharing needlecraft stories and patterns with a diverse audience. I'm happy to see something like this spring up to fill a void in the craft community. Oh and they're looking for writers as well...

Read the Editor's Statement here and check out submission guidelines (for articles and patterns). They've got a blog too.

Super info from the Super Crafty Ladies

Here is an excellent introduction and overview of selling crafts for profit, from PDX Super Crafty - a group of four Portland based crafters and authors of Super Crafty. I especially enjoyed the information about finding a sales rep, something I'd heard about before but never found much substantial info on:

Finding a Rep

                          Finding a rep can be time-consuming, but the more time you put into the process, the better your chances are of finding a rep that will be a great fit for you and      your business. The Internet can be a good place to begin your search. Try putting "gift manufacturer rep" or "apparel manufacturer rep" into a search engine; it can yield lists of reps all over the country. Another way to search for a rep is at online sites for                           gift marts around the country. The California Gift Mart hosts a great site chock full of information on reps and lines that they represent in their showrooms.

                          A more guerilla tactic is to think about cool jewelry, clothing, or gift items that you have seen in stores that you would like to sell into as a manufacturer. You can look up the websites of many of these companies, and sometimes you luck out by finding a list of their reps around the country. If you already sell into local stores, there is a good chance that store owners will also have recommendations for reps that they like to work with who may want to represent your line.

Crafting for Profit

                                                   

CRAFT Magazine Preview

While surfing the Internet this weekend - procrastinating a project I should have been working on - I came across a review of CRAFT magazine which reminded me that I had received my own preview issue of the mag and hadn't yet shared it with you. If you don't know, CRAFT is the highly anticipated (by me!) new magazine from the creators of MAKE magazine. I was anticipating CRAFT so much because I think it fills a void in the magazine market. The magazine does feature tutorials and does profile crafters but it also has feature articles that are very unique to the crafty crowd such as a look at the "world of creepy cute dolls and the people who make them" and an overview of Gocco, which I've heard about but never really understood the appeal of, written by Jill Bliss (who I love, they got great contributors!).

One thing I really appreciated about the magazine is that it seems to have appeal for a wide range of crafters. The premiere issue has a techie influence, no doubt due to it's relationship to the very techie MAKE magazine. It remains to be seen whether the techie bent will endure or if it will dissipate as they get more contributors. I wasn't as interested in the techie articles but I did find lots of intelligent and interesting writing elsewhere in the mag. I actually hope CRAFT puts more emphasis on the articles in future issues as tutorials never really interest me. I can't think of another magazine that offers a venue for writing on the subject of craft community, business and culture and for that reason I am happy to have CRAFT magazine on the market. Speaking of craft culture, I am very pleased that CRAFT is not another VENUS or BUST. That is to say, less of a focus on the "indie" and "riot grrrl" type of craft and a more inclusive view of craft and crafters. VENUS and BUST do what they do well and I'm glad they exist, but not all crafters (myself included) identify with that scene and unfortunately there's not much of an option in the magazine world when it comes to contemporary craft commentary. I believe CRAFT offers a welcome and welcoming alternative. I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Other reviews:

http://modish.typepad.com/modish/2006/10/craft_no_longer.html
http://feisty-elle.livejournal.com/26015.html

Artist Emerging Blog is a must-read

Deanna Wood's Artist Emerging blog is a great resource of business info for crafters and artists. Her tagline is "One artist's struggles and triumphs in starting an art career. Sharing resources and ideas..."

Plenty of information and links here to keep you busy for a while. Like a recent post about creating an effective postcard to advertise your participation in an upcoming event like a crafts fair or art show. Deanna lists a handful of key steps in creating your postcard:

I can’t count the occasions where I’ve gotten postcards for art shows that left out something crucial – like the artist’s name, the dates of the show, location, etc.

What you should include:
Your name (preferably on both sides)
Title of the show
Location
Date (including the year)
Gallery hours
Reception date, if there is one
Information about the work you featured on the front of the card (title, medium, size)
Return address (the post office will return any with bad addresses – important to be able to keep your mailing list current)
Your website url

All of this information should be clean and easy to read. Don’t use funky fonts here. The title and your name can be in a larger size and bold, and possibly in a different (but not too different) font. Try to limit yourself to 2 or 3 sizes and no more than 2 different fonts. Don’t use any sizes below 8 point.

I don’t think there’s any reason to use color on the back of a postcard. Seems like a waste of money to me. Black ink is effective and readable.

Click over to Artist Emerging to read about the other steps to creating an effective postcard.

Hear, hear for small biz tips

Hear, Hear is a very cool blog I discovered via fiveandahalf.net.
It offers small business tips like:

Online credit card transactions explained

4 ways to make your office greener

Doing what you love

A New Favorite: Five and a Half

I stumbled across my new favorite blog the other day and it was just too good to save for the Blog Dump.
Five and A Half is a business owned by Judy who produces handmade journals from pages of recollected papers. Judy's had great success with her line of journals since launching the biz this year. I'm loving everything about this business and blog: the web design, the eco-friendliness, the photos and the incredible info that Judy shares. On her blog, she has great information about running a small crafts business.

Everything in her business category is a great read. There's info on packaging, pricing, selling in stores and this ridiculously amazing roundup of online boutiques. Because Judy's interest is journals and stationery, the blog is heavy on paper crafts, but many of the posts are applicable to any type of crafts business. Five and a Half is roughly the amount of hours you'll spend on this site and blog. It's that good.

Book Review- Teach yourself Visually: Sewing

Teach Yourself Visually: Sewing

I love the Teach Yourself Visually series of books. The idea behind these books is that instructions about a certain topic are accompanied by pictures for every step. I consider myself a visual learner so I have found this series to be perfect for me. These books come in a variety of topics (I've also read the HTML one) but the one I most recently picked up is the Teach Yourself Visually: Sewing book by Debbie Colgrove.

While at the bookstore, I skimmed through several books, including some trendier ones that seemed to have more style than substance. I am a total newbie to sewing with zero experience and I found this book to be very comprehensive and very easy to follow. The actual sewing info doesn't come until chapter 6, chapters 1 - 5 are about the sewing machine, fabrics, interfacing, tools of the trade and handsewing. I greatly appreciated this background info. The other books I checked out seemed to take for granted that if someone is a sewing newbie, they have no idea what a rotary cutter is, or how to use interfacing. Part of learning how to sew is having the right tools and materials and knowing how to use them.

I also really appreciated the entire chapter devoted to zippers since I got my machine with the intention of learning how to make zippered pouches. The process of putting in a zipper is documented step-by-step with pictures in a manner that is very simple to follow. There are a few projects at the end that I may or may not try, unlike other sewing books, this one isn't project-based. Instead it's focused on delivering the essential info about ABC's of sewing. In that it succeeds and I highly recommend it for sewing newbies who want to learn the basics quickly.

Check out these other sites for extensive craft book reviews:
http://www.huangfamily.com/craftlog/library.html

http://www.thimble.ca/index.php?cat=14