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

September 10, 2021 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

September 6, 2021 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

September 1, 2021 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

August 30, 2021 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
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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 31 Why Social Media Can Leave You Feeling Empty

August 27, 2021 by Carina Gardner

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.
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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 30 How Long Does It Take To Design A Fabric Collection?

August 25, 2021 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina answers a question that she gets a lot: “How long does it take to design a fabric collection?” Carina talks through the difference between fabric lines that take a long time and lines that come more quickly.

Her current fabric collection project, which is set to release in late 2022 or early 2023, is one that has taken a long time because she has specific things she wants the collection to do. Carina’s process begins with setting aside blocks of time so that she can figure out the color scheme and what the theme for the collection will be. Carina typically starts with the master or the secondary design for the collection. Starting with the secondary gives her two things: first, she doesn’t have to make the secondary as colorful, which gives her more options down the road, and, second, the secondary design doesn’t have to be as detailed as the master. The master is always very detailed and very specific, so it can limit choices later in the design process.

On her current line, Carina gave herself an overnight hotel stay so that she could filter out every other distraction. It took her about 14 hours of work to get the secondary and the master done. Then she set it aside for a week. After getting back to it, she *hated* the master. It was off in terms of look, feel, and overall vibe. For the next week, she worked on the fabric line. On Monday she made a very detailed, two-layer demasque. Then she spent a couple of days mapping out the rest of it and changing the colors. She actually did the master last at the end of the day. For Carina, this entire fabric line took about ten days. On her first fabric collection, this process took months.

Carina finds that it’s important not to get too attached to a certain design. Sometimes the client sees it and wants something different. Sometimes what you’ve designed doesn’t quite fit the current project and you have to modify it. Every design experience, even the rejected ones, are a learning experience.

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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 28 Why Writing Things Down is Important For Even Designers

August 20, 2021 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina runs through the reasons why *writing* is so important to developing ideas. For her, most great ideas start with paper and pen–this is one of the reasons that her membership group is called “Ink Club.”

Carina recalls that on Episode 21 of the Podcast, calligraphy expert Melissa Esplin taught us about bullet journals. Both Melissa and Carina use multiple journals.

Carina walks us through the journals that she uses and how they help her. Carina keeps a “traditional journal,” like a diary to record thoughts and events. She also keeps a “business journal,” where rights down new ideas, notes on new podcast episodes, and other inspiration that comes to her. Carina also uses her business journal for one of her daily practices, writing down her ten biggest dreams as if they have already happened. Her business journal is the one she takes with her to conferences and business meetings. Carina keeps her journals and they become physical evidence of what she has accomplished. If you begin to journal then you will be amazed when you look back and see the results of all that you’ve accomplished. That physical evidence helps you to overcome imposter syndrome by giving you proof that you are amazing! Carina really digs in and takes a deep dive into the revelations, epiphanies, and plans that have come to her because she writes it down. “When we write it down it somehow always turns into a plan.”

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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 27 Two Ways You Can Be Supported in What You Do

August 18, 2021 by Carina Gardner

Carina begins today’s episode of Make + Design by telling us about Ink Club, which launched originally on October 1, 2021. Ink Club is for every creative so that you, as a creative, can find community.

The announcement about Ink Club fits today’s podcast topic, which is all about community and, specifically, two ways that having a community can help you feel supported in what you’re doing.

The first way to find support is to join a community like a club, a mastermind, or a membership group. Carina gives us a great example of a community that didn’t work and how starting a community that didn’t work taught her about the kinds of things that a community needs to offer in order to serve its members. To find a community, Carina recommends searching the web for your hobby/interest and the word “community.” Community can help you feel loved, trusted, and supported.

The second way to find community in your life is to build it yourself. With apps like Facebook, Clubhouse, and Instagram Rooms, there are many great ways to build a community.

Finding a great community can help you to level up by giving you a new set of “the five people you spend the most time with.”

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Access to Carina’s Ink Club membership can be found at https://www.carinagardnercourses.com/inkclub.

Carina’s Instagram fabric feed can be found at @carinagardner.
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 24 What is Holding You Back

August 11, 2021 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina analyzes the kinds of things that can hold us back. It is very natural for us to hold on to things that hold us back.

First, are we able to identify what’s holding us back? Second, can we identify why that thing holds us back? Carina runs us through the categories of excuses and mental blocks that can hold us back.

One of them is limiting beliefs. Based on past experience and incorrect assumptions, we can create beliefs that keep us back from achieving. Ask yourself what kinds of limiting beliefs do you have? In the midst of this analysis, Carina debunks the old belief that “you should only post on Instagram on Fridays.”

Another thing that can hold us back, Carina tells us, is comparison. We can achieve much more when we stop comparing ourselves to others. One way to avoid comparison is to learn to celebrate the successes of those around us. If we’re celebrating, we’re too busy to feel bad about a negative comparison.

The last category of things that hold us back is timing. Sometimes we can be our own best salesperson and talk ourselves into something that isn’t the correct next step. Timing is very important!

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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:

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

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

Episode 23 The One Word That Will Transform Your Daily Life

August 9, 2021 by Carina Gardner

On today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast, Carina tells us about the one little word that will change your life. The word is ACTION. Carina tells us how taking action helps her gain clarity, get unstuck, and build momentum when it comes to starting (or completing!) a project.