Today is the final part of a very special series this week with two members who are soapers and upon first meeting decided to road trip to attend not one but TWO handmade conferences together! If this sounds like the recipe for a handmade buddy comedy movie (we'd see that!), well, we don't have video but we will bring you three blog posts. :) (read part 1 here, part 2 here)
Today is the second part of a very special series this week with two members who are soapers and upon first meeting decided to road trip to attend not one but TWO handmade conferences together! If this sounds like the recipe for a handmade buddy comedy movie (we'd see that!), well, we don't have video but we will bring you three blog posts. :) (read part 1 here)
We have a very special series this week with two members who are soapers and upon first meeting decided to road trip to attend not one but TWO handmade conferences together! If this sounds like the recipe for a handmade buddy comedy movie (we'd see that!), well, we don't have video but we will bring you three blog posts. :)
We are such fans of the community that Jessika Hepburn at Oh My! Handmade Goodness has created and were excited to hear about the Maker's Retreat that she was putting on. Everything about it seemed dreamy and when we heard that Arianne of design firm Aelodia had attended, we begged her for a download of all the thoughtful details!
There are makers of all kinds in our community and for some the typical craft fair isn't where they find their "people." If you do plush, toys, and anything related to cartoons, anime or fan art, then going to a con (Comic Con San Diego is the big one, but Wonder Con, Designer Con and other area Comic Cons) can be a place where your product will really resonate with people and you can gain some pretty loyal fans.
We are always on the hunt for great workshop experiences for you, our maker friends! Lucky for us (pun INTENDED), member Lela Barker of Lucky Break Consulting (known for great wholesale advice for makers) hosted a two-day in-person workshop called Get Lucky Live and member Jenn Lamb happened to be helping at the conference. We asked Jenn for the 411.
Wondering how to get your shop ready for wholesale? "Sell Your Products to Retailers", Megan Auman's CreativeLive, advertises that it will help you understand the ins and outs of wholesale. So we asked jewelry designer and metalsmith Amanda Lockrow about her experience going through the CreativeLive.
If you do stationery, you know that the mother of all tradeshows for your people is National Stationery Show (or NSS). Getting there and doing well can feel very intimidating once you see all of the amazing booth displays (and hear how much work is entailed!). That's why seasoned stationery pro Katie Hunt created Tradeshow Bootcamp (TSBC)-- to tell other paper people what it's like to go to NSS and run a successful stationery company. Katie offers a wealth of resources through TSBC and her signature event Paper Camp.
There are few social media powerhouses in the creative realm that rival the Bri Emery's designlovefest empire. Her consistently on-brand content is a marvel for anyone who has ever tried to fill a feed with content that truly reflects them. And while many bloggers have learned the ropes of Photoshop through her Blogshop courses, there are also opportunities to learn from her in a more intimate setting through the studio workshops she hosts on craft and social media. We caught up with designer Renee Pulve who recently took one of the designlovefest social media workshops.
Artist Lisa Congdon recently did a CreativeLive in support of her much-buzzed-about book Art, Inc. (Chronicle Books' "Inc." series is pretty awesome and I would encourage you to check out the whole series). In the Venn diagram of the worlds of art and maker, there is often much overlap, but there is also a lot of stuff that each don't do, care about or run into that the other does. We wanted to hear from a couple of our members who watched the live version of Lisa's to see if it would be worth it for makers. Thanks Jennifer and Maddie for your insight!
