Episode 45 First Steps with April Cobb

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Carina talks with fellow sewer April Cobb today! April has owned her own product based businesses including handmade goods and a digital fabric printing company.


April shares the first steps you should take when building a creative business.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

About Today’s Guest

April Cobb is an expert seamstress, fabric designer, and crafter. You can find April’s colorful and gorgeous creations at her Etsy Shop, aprilcobbdesigns. 

Episode 44 To Do Something Great, There Must Be Sacrifice

Posted on by Carina Gardner

What does it take to become a great designer or to do something great in anything you do?

Find out as Carina talks us through the kinds of sacrifices in time and money it takes to level up or do something great. Have you ever thought about whether time or money is more important? Carina shares her thoughts on which is more important and why.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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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.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 43 You Are Enough with Diane Rooney

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Today Carina talks with fellow fabric designer and Design Suite Member Diane Rooney.


Diane talks about all her experiences in the crafting and sewing world. Carina and Diane talk about life lessons and making your passion a career. As you’ll hear, it’s never too late to start following  your passion!
 
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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

About Today’s Guest

Diane Rooney is a fabric designer, illustrator, and digital artist with a passion to help and inspire others in their own creative pursuits. Her design work has featured in software, television, fabric, and many other mediums. Find out all about Diane’s gorgeous design work, career, and family at https://www.dianerooney.co.uk/.

Episode 40 Borrow A Little Confidence from Someone Who Believes in You

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Do you ever struggle with confidence? Whether we are well-trained and experienced or just starting out, a nagging lack of confidence can affect any of us.

Today Carina gives us some tips on surrounding ourselves with people who will give us a boost in confidence.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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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.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 39 Why Mental Health is Important to Creatives with Melissa Esplin

Posted on by Carina Gardner

Have you ever wondered how to balance mental health with having a successful design career?


Today, artist and calligraphy expert Melissa Esplin joins Carina to discuss some of the ways to approach maintaining your mental health. Whether it’s getting a new pet or starting formal therapy, Melissa and Carina share their experiences.

Designing is a beautiful way to share wonderful things and fill the world with light and happiness. Just don’t forget, as Melissa says, to “put on your own oxygen mask first!”

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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

About Today’s Guest

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. 

Find Melissa on her site at https://www.calligraphy.org/ and on Instagram at melissapher. 

Episode 38 Your Last 90 Days of the Year

Posted on by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina delivers strategies on how to approach the last 90 days of a year. Even though it’s fun to start a new year with new goals, Carina finds a lot of power in starting new goals on October 1st every year.

This process helps her visualize what she would like to accomplish by the end of the current year. The momentum from the last 90 days of her year would help her hit the ground running with goals in the new year.  One of the questions Carina asks when making these goals is, “How do I live my best life now?” Another big benefit to setting goals for the last 90 days of the year is that it allows you to fit family traditions into your last 90 days of the year so that you’re not only setting awesome goals but you’re also making those last 90 days memorable.

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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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.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 37 Why We Are Not a Product of Circumstance but of Decisions

Posted on by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina walks us through a quote that she recently read from leadership guru Stephen R. Covey: “I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions.” She feels like it’s a freeing thought to be a product of your decisions because it frees you from playing the role of victim.

When we’re a product of our circumstances then we are the victim and we have zero control. Many studies show that feeling powerless makes us feel hopeless. Good decisions lead to positive changes in life, which leads to hope. 

Carina also talks us through the things that she thinks about to make decisions very quickly. The worst that can happen when you make a quick decision is that you make the wrong decision. In most cases in life, we’ll have the opportunity to course correct when we need to. When we make quick decisions we are CHOOSING the kind of life we want to have. She also walks us through some of the little decisions that we can make. Little decisions turn into monumental things that teach us how to live a creative life. 

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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 

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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.

Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com

Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 35 Strive For More So That Falling Short Feels Like a Win

Posted on by Carina Gardner

On today’s Make + Design Podcast, Carina talks about the power of setting really big goals. Carina’s not on camera today because she just got back from running a race! Carina compares the process of training for and running a race to improving anything in life.

 If you strive for a lot more then falling short is still a win. It is better to make bigger goals because achieving half of a huge goal often puts you farther along than setting and achieving small goals. Goals need to be realistic but our dreams can still be huge! Carina’s running goal today was twelve miles and she only made it 5.5. But Carina of today ran 5.5 miles farther than Carina from five years ago who didn’t run at all. Remember where you’ve been, assess where you are now, and remember that  you’re winning. For the future, make your goals just a bit bigger!


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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 33 Why I Created Ink Club

Posted on by Carina Gardner

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!
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Download Carina’s free guide: The 7 Tips Nobody Will Tell You About Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer here: http://eepurl.com/dN2RcY 
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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp

Episode 32 Three Ways to Convey Feeling in Your Projects, Art and Designs

Posted on by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina walks us through three ways to evoke a feeling in our design work. 

Tip 1: Color. This one is obvious for a reason. Carina talks about how the use of color in a fabric line she’s been working on changes the feelings that the line conveys. When you change up color it totally evokes a different feeling.

Tip 2: Texture or the lack of texture. Sometimes when we design in Illustrator or with software a design can feel very flat. Compare this to a painting where the texture of the paints is visible. Different textures evoke different feelings.

Tip 3: Reference. Carina gives us a great example of what she means by reference by telling us the story of a vintage-feeling book she made while working on her Masters degree. The sans serif font she chose for the book did not fit the vintage feeling of the book, which called for a serif font. Reference is when something in our work evokes feelings based on the preconceived notions people have about that item in our work. 

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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.
 
Find out more at https://www.carinagardner.com
Check out her most popular program, Design Bootcamp, here: http://www.carinagardnercourses.com/designbootcamp