By now you’ve probably heard of Carina’s Design Boot Camp and Design Suite programs. On today’s episode of Make + Design,
Carina peels back a few layers of the onion to give us some insight into why she created these programs and how these programs can help you level up as a designer.
__________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
Audrey and Bonnie are the moms from the Outnumbered Podcast. They have 19 kids between them, which makes finding creative time a struggle! Join us as we talk about making time for yourself!
Do you like to give your friends and loved ones crafty creations for birthdays and holidays? On today’s episode of Make + Design,
Originally published in October 2021, Carina talks about how to map out and plan your projects so that you get them done before the holiday you need them for! Carina loves the holidays and loves getting ready for them with lots of pretty creations! Tune in to see how she structures her holiday season!
__________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
Fellow Riley Blake designer Bev McCullough joins Carina for some insights on her recent fabric collection.
To see some of the samples Carina and Bev talk about in this episode, please visit Carina’s youtube channel at www.youtube.com/carinagarder.
Learn more about Bev and her new book at instagram at @flamingotoes. __________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
Bev McCullough is an expert seamstress who began designing her own clothes as a teenager. She’s also a blogger who loves to share her work at https://flamingotoes.com/. Bev also designs fabric for Riley Blake Designs, has authored books on embroidery and jewelry making (available on Amazon) and can be found on instagram at flamingotoes.
What are your favorite things to make with your Silhouette machine? On today’s Make + Design, Carina walks us through her favorite things to cut on the machine.
And what could be more fun than doing it countdown style? Check it out to hear what Carina’s #1 thing is!
__________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina tells us why the timing is perfect for launching Ink Club, an idea that she’s been thinking about for years.
Carina recognizes that designers, by nature, often work alone and may even be introverts. Although working on our own can be satisfying, sometimes we as makers, crafters, and designers want a community where we can show our work to other makers, get their feedback, and learn about additional resources for their work.
Ink Club gives you, first, resources and ideas for new projects. Each month Ink Club will give you a new Silhouette or Cricut tutorial every month, a brand new quilting tutorial every month, and an art tutorial every month, including all of the PDFs and files you need to create the projects. The second thing Ink Club gives you is community. As creatives, we need to share and show our designs to people. Ink Club has a paper crafting corner, an artist corner, and a quilting corner. It also has a sharing space and daily activities like a Member Spotlight on Mondays and Wisdom Wednesdays. Thursday Treat Day is the day when new tutorials launch. Ink Club also has monthly giveaways and prizes, as well as a library of downloads. Ink Club includes content for creatives of every field. If you’re a paper crafter then Ink Club will give you access to beginner content for sewing or watercolor painting.
So why is this exclusive group called “Ink Club”? Carina walks us through the reason: regardless of the project she is working on–a quilt, a fabric line, a Silhouette design, a scrapbooking paper line–Carina always starts her projects with paper and pen.
The purpose of Ink Club is to build up the individuals in the community and to give creatives a place to share and experience community. Can’t wait to see you there! __________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina gives some thoughts about social media and how important it actually is for a designer. Carina finds that it doesn’t matter how big someone’s following is, social media still leaves one feeling a bit empty.
One things she does is debunk the perception that having a large following equals making a lot of money. Carina has seen people with small followings make millions and people with large followings make next to nothing. She also discusses the never ending cycle of always wanting to hit the next number when it comes to followers, views, and likes. In some cases, she says, losing followers is not a bad thing.
Carina also shares some strategies for making it more meaningful. One thing that makes social media more meaningful for Carina is to have genuine interactions with people. At the end of the day, a design career is about being a designer, not being a social media influencer. Carina finds that when you focus on producing great product that the marketing and opportunities tens to fall into place. __________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina is joined by business owner and expert collage quilter Emily Taylor. Emily designed many fabric collections for Riley Blake Designs and started a company called that allowed people to design their own quilting patterns online and gives some insight into how a business failure propelled her to strike out into the new territory of collage quilting.
Emily Taylor makes the most beautiful collage quilts. If you have never heard about collage quilting, Emily breaks down what she does and how you can learn how to collage quilt too! She launched her company, Collage Quilter, in 2018. She also teaches for quilt guilds and events around the country. Her background also includes many years as a mural painter.
You’ll want to check this one out on the YouTube channel because Emily walks us through what makes a quilt a collage quilt and shows us some of her beautiful, intricate quilt. Emily also shares a pre-printed foundation panel, which guides fabric selection and placement in the collage. Emily loves to use printed fabric because it makes every collage quilt unique. Emily also applies general principles of art to the production of collage quilts. Emily also shares strategies for buying the right kinds of fabric for producing collage quilts.
__________ Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY __________
About Carina Gardner: Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
Emily Taylor is the founder and owner of Collage Quilter, a company dedicated to helping quilters learn how to create beautiful, unique collage quilts. Emily’s background includes working as a mural painter and as a fabric designer.
Find Emily online at http://www.collagequilter.com or in Facebook groups called “Collage Quilter Academy” and “Collage Quilter.”
Emily Taylor’s first quilting workshop will take place in Midway, Utah in June 2022 and is already sold out. Nice work, Emily!
Carina is joined by artist and calligraphy expert Melissa Esplin on today’s episode of Make + Design. Melissa tells us about how she got into creative arts and how she tried to bridge the gap between fine art and graphic design as an undergrad and how that created tension between two halves of a department that simultaneously was jealous of and looked down on the other half of the department.
Melissa shares the hilarious story of her Senior project for her Bachelors of Fine Arts in which they almost didn’t give her the “Fine” in the degree because her final project was done in Illustrator instead of a more traditional medium like oil paint. Carina shares a “what price art” moment from when she was pregnant for the first time and painted in a way that concerned her doctor. What could that possibly mean? LOL.
Melissa walks through her post-college journey and how it led her to a love of calligraphy after she was inspired by a book she inherited that had belonged to her great-great grandfather. Melissa talks about how important it was for her as an artist to make ugly stuff in the beginning as she learned her craft and improved. She tells the journey of monetizing her art by taking a risk with starting her own calligraphy instruction site. Carina and Melissa dig into what it takes to run a successful online business and strategies for driving traffic to a website. They also talk about the importance of mental health and self care like exercise.
_________
Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY
__________
About Carina Gardner:
Carina Gardner is a fabric designer, paper designer, and design educator who is passionate about helping other designers fulfill their creative dreams by teaching them her strategies for making money as a designer. She has a Ph.D. in Design and taught design at the University of Minnesota before starting Carina Gardner, Inc.
Carina Gardner, Inc design brand has been featured in dish ware, holiday decor, sewing patterns, and more. Her exclusive Design Suite Program helps creatives make money designing as they learn to design. Her programs include Illustrator and Photoshop training, surface pattern design, paper design, Silhouette & Cricut file design, and running a design business. She started the Make and Design Podcast so that she could share inspiration, stories, and experiences about design and life with crafters and designers.
Melissa Esplin is a calligraphy expert and entrepreneur who has taught thousands of people to become calligraphy artists over the last decade. She holds a B.F.A. from Brigham Young University and is an avid cyclist.
