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!
__________ 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, Jeanie Dickinson returns as Carina’s guest star to talk to us about how process can get you through the hard times as a designer. Jeanie likes to think about art as creativity and creativity soothed her soul during various tough periods in her life. Jeanie tells us about a time that the scrapbooking she owned burned down.
On top of that, her home was in the back of the scrapbooking store so she lost everything. Jeanie had to be rescued by the firemen and was extremely traumatized by the event. Art gave Jeanie an outlet that allowed her to process what she went through so that she could heal. On top of art, learning a new skill–in Jeanie’s case it was digital design–helped Jeanie to move on from her trauma. Carina and Jeanie have known each other for a long time and Carina has always been impressed by Jeanie’s drive to level up her talent. Jeanie gives great insight into ways that consistent effort over time leads to big results. You’ll want to check this one out on YouTube because Jeanie shows us some of her creations and explains her creative process. She gives us some great nuggets of wisdom about what she’s learned through the adversity she’s faced!
__________ 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.
About Today’s Guest Jeanie Dickinson is an artist, a designer, and a businesswoman. You can find Jeanie’s blog (with links to all of her art!) here: https://jeaniesdesigns.blogspot.com/
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 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.
__________ 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 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.
__________ 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.
Amanda Niederhauser returns as our guest star on today’s episode of the Make + Design Podcast. She and Carina take a look at Amanda’s quilting book, “Playful Precut Quilts,” and take a deep dive into what Amanda did to get the book published. Playful Precut Quilts is a “how to” book that gives step-by-step instructions on how to make quilts with pre-cut fabrics. You’ll want to check out the YouTube video on this one so that you can see Amanda’s beautiful book!
But first, here is the link to the YouTube exclusive Trunk Show that Carina and Amanda talk about at the beginning of the episode! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3cUMC-t9w
During the discussion on getting the book published, Amanda talks about how important it is to be able to handle rejection. Prior to Playful Precut Quilts, she had submitted many book ideas to several publishers and was rejected every time. Amanda also walks us through the proposal process: for a quilting book, this meant that she had to design every quilt and include it in the proposal. The proposal also includes data on the author’s experience, their social media presence, and projections on the size of the potential target audience for the book. The proposal for Amanda’s book took several months. Her experience with prior proposals meant that the proposal for Playful Precut Quilts incorporated all she had learned from her prior attempts.
Amanda walks us through the busy schedule of making 13 full quilts in six months to meet her deadlines after her publisher accepted her proposal. Turns out that when you make a book about quilts, you have to make the quilts that are featured in it for photos and marketing! Not gonna lie. Carina is in awe of all that production. The publishing process also required her to write all of the patterns and design the illustrations for the book. We also hear about the back and forth between the various departments within the publisher (graphics, layouts, copy) and Amanda as they got the book ready for final publication. What a great behind-the-scenes look at publishing in the crafting industry!
__________ 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 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.”
__________ 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!
On today’s episode of Make + Design, Carina is joined by Terri Johnson, an event planner who runs one of the biggest Silhouette events, “All Things Silhouette.” Terri tells us about how she got started as a crafter. It began when she was young in sewing classes but really kicked into high gear when she had children of her own and wanted to sew clothing for them. Her passion led to working as a seamstress at a sewing store. This led to her ownership of her own sewing store for many years.
Several years ago, she discovered that Silhouette machines can be used to create fabric appliqués and her expertise in the Silhouette space took off from there. Based on the demos they were doing in her sewing shop, they began selling Silhouette machines like crazy to the point that Silhouette’s Vice President of Sales came to visit her to find out how her methods were so effective. Eventually her work with Silhouette education and retreats led her to close her sewing shop to focus full time on Silhouette. Terri walks us through what it was like to plan and host her first-even Silhouette conference and that it was a bit like Field of Dreams, “if you build it they will come.” Carina points out that Terri has been really great at seeing an opportunity that aligns with her passions and then turning that opportunity into something memorable for the wider community. For Terri, the key to the success of her events is the quality of the educators that they bring to the conference.
Terri walks through some of the challenges that her conferences have faced during the pandemic and tells us the ways they have continued to be successful with a pivot to an online-only model. Many people actually prefer the virtual event! As Terri looks to the future, she is in the process of deciding whether to do live events again (it sounds like she’ll do one live event and one virtual event!).
Terri tells us about some of her courses and programs, including a curriculum that allows someone to become a certified Silhouette instructor. She also has a monthly club for Silhouette projects called the “All Things Silhouette Club.”
__________ 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.
Terri Johnson is a seamstress, Silhouette expert, business owner, and cancer survivor. She is passionate about helping people unlock their creative potential with their Silhouette machines. You can find more information about Terri’s conferences, courses, and licensing products at her website, http://terrijohnsoncreates.com.
