Do you like to give your friends and loved ones crafty creations for birthdays and holidays? On today’s episode of Make + Design,
Fellow Riley Blake designer Bev McCullough joins Carina for some insights on her recent fabric collection.
About Today’s Guest
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.
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.
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.
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.
About Today’s Guest
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.
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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
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.
