Projects of the month

Ok gang, I have a couple of new projects up over on the Wausau Paper Creative collection for November. A couple of teaser photos are above! Head over and take a peek! Here is the link-

http://mywpcreativecollection.com/BeCreative/Project-of-the-Month/archive.aspx

Crop project

Ok, as promised I am back to share a layout I created at the crop I was at this past weekend. The photo is from Universal Studios in Florida when we were on vacation last year. My daughter really wanted these light up bunny ears which were on a very large rack of hats and necklaces to celebrate Mardi Gras.

I tried to create the layout so it had lots of sparkle and bling which is always the feel of Mardi Gras. The stitching around each piece of patterned paper is not real but done with a journaling pen.

Crop time!!!

This last weekend I was fortunate enough to get to spend the entire weekend cropping. This was a large crop group of 57 and it was so much fun! I crop with my 2 girlfriends and the bonus is that I met a new friend (Melanie) at the crop last year. We have stayed in touch and had fun sharing and talking again this year. I created a couple of things I will share with you this week once I have taken photos of the projects so make sure that you come back in the next day or two for a peek!

So do you crop? If so, leave a comment and share a fun crop story with me!

The Creative Process

I am a guest blogger at Jump Create this week. Head over and take a peek at my article about the creative process...

www.jumpcreate.com

Then come back to this thread and let me know about your own experiences/stories!

Design Team tips!

So, you have been thinking you would like to be on a Design Team? You have no experience? Well over the next week or two I am going to do several posts about this process and how you can continue to move towards achieving your goal. This is all based on the process of how I went about it. I am sure there are many ways and many ideas and if you have other tips please post them in the comments section below each post.

So how to get started? How to break into the Design Team game?

I decided for myself that before I approached a manufacturer that I wanted to get some experience. So I found a kit club that I loved and I joined. Once I was a member for a couple of months I contacted the owner and inquired about the possibility of being on her Design Team. I sent her some samples of my work. She liked what I sent and said to contact me a couple of months later. So I put a note on my calendar and two months later I followed up. I attached more samples of my work. Well, she invited me at that point to be part of the team! So this was my very first time on a Design Team and I was thrilled! I had so much fun on this team!

The same owner of the kit club decided to become a manufacturer of papers and embellishments. So she invited me on to that team once she got things going as well and this was my first manufacturer team. She actually asked me to be the DT coordinator which was a fun job.

So this is how I broke into the industry as a project designer. I've got more to share so check back in a few days and I will focus more on the process of doing work for manufacturers. I thought I would start at the beginning and get any of you that do not have experience something to think about as you decide what direction to take in the industry.

There are tons of kit clubs out there but also think about your Local Scrapbook Store, online stores, and being a guest designer on blogs.

Once you are rolling with an entry designing gig then you will want to create your own personal blog to track your experience for people to view. If you notice on my blog home page there is a link to my resume. I have this set up so when I approach someone I want to do work for they can easily go and see my experience.


If you have any questions post them in the commnets and I will post a comment answering your question!

Looking for Design Team Information???

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, "how do you get on a design team"? I am sure there are many answers to this question and of course I have my own. I am wondering if any of you are interested in this information. If you are please leave a comment on this thread and I will describe how I have gone about it in the past. I've given out this advice many times and have seen first hand how effective it is over traditional strategies. So let me know if you are interested and I will do an entire post on this for you!

Party Invitation

So how many of you are already Christmas crafting or at least thinking about a plan for Christmas crafting?

Well as I previously posted I have been working on the invitation for my husband's annual employee cocktail party which we host at our home. I have my sample invitation done and thought I would post a picture and ask for some feedback from my expert blog readers!

So please leave some feedback and let me know what you like, what you would change, or what you would get rid of all together! I look forward to reading your comments!