Craftrepreneurs: Rosalie Gale, Tara Gentile & Megan Auman

I've come across some very cool, helpful resources for indie craft biz owners recently & wanted to share. I am simply in awe of the brilliant ladies behind these organizations. Hope you find them as interesting & inspiring as I have! ~Beth H

First up is Rosalie Gale, founder of Unanimous Craft, a tagable, sortable index of resources for crafters, artists and indie business owners. Rosalie says,

"I was inspired to build Unanimous Craft after seeing a huge list of links to different resources that The House of Mouse posted in the Etsy forums. I wanted to make a tool that our community could use to get organized and share information.

It's sort of like Yelp for the crafty community. People can submit resources (great articles on Twitter, awesome magazines, online tools, accounting spreadsheets, inspirational blogs - whatever) and the community votes on the usefulness of each listing. Then, people can curate lists of resources that fall into a common theme like: 10 things you should do when you start your indie business, 500 ways to deal with Twitter, etc."

Pretty awesome, no? Rosalie recently added The WonderCraft to the index - check it out! We are honored! And we'd totally love it if you visited our listing & rated us, so that we might place high in the Popularity Contest. : )

Next up is Tara Gentile of Scoutie Girl fame. Tara has long been an involved & highly respected member of the crafting community through her work as the editor & head writer behind Scoutie Girl, "the blog with a penchant for the passionately handmade."

Now she's taking it up a notch with the launch of her awesome new Big Thinking for Small Businesses blog & a "big thinking" consulting biz. The gist of it:

"We specialize in web strategy, branding, product development, community building, and marketing to help build your small biz empire. Specifically, I work with creative entrepreneurs: those interested in building their businesses by breaking down convention and finding customers who think outside-the-box too.

To help you reach your goals, I have a wide range of products & services. Here you will find self-paced products, a la carte services, and full-fledged invasion packages to suit your needs no matter what stage your empire is in. I only ask that if you decide to work with me or buy my product, you are committed to your own success – regardless of fear, opposition, and self-doubt – as I am."

Sounds amazing; Tara really knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter for small biz owners. I've been very inspired by her writing on her blogs & just bought her "52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion" e-book! I'm looking forward to getting re-energized about my creative work & revamping my own blog with Tara's wonderful advice.

And last, but certainly not least, Megan Auman, the genius behind Crafting an MBA. Her blog is filled with tons of great information & business advice for designers & makers. It runs the gamut from practical posts on making & manufacturing to extremely thought-provoking discussions on product development & growing your business. The blog covers everything in between & above & beyond these topics, too - it is a wealth of great information! 

You can even take part in the Crafting an MBA book club! Megan says, 

"One of my goals when starting this website was to create a community where designers and makers could come together and discuss business related books and concepts. Its partly selfish – I always find myself wanting to discuss what I’m reading with others. But I also want to help others read business books and figure out [how] to apply those principals to their own craft-based businesses."

I hope you'll check out these ladies' websites - they're all very engaging reads that inspire deep thinking about our field & offer many amazing resources for growing a small business.

Beth H's Appliqued Towels - Christmas in May!

On Monday we had a WonderCraft meeting & I finally gave my biz partners
their Christmas gifts! Geez. It's May.

 

I made a seahorse towel for Beth A, lover of island vacations & scuba-diving explorer of the sea.

For Kim, a true Parisienne at heart,
an Eiffel Tower in the clouds.

And I designed this Robot Chef character especially for Jen, lover of robots & all things sci-fi.

I had every intention of giving these handmade goodies out during the actual holidays, but... I didn't get them finished until February or so, then I wanted to wait until we were all together & our schedules were crazy (although there were several times we were all 4 together when I just forgot them). But anyhoo, I finally gifted them & they were a hit. Better late than never! : )

Renegade Re-Cap: It rocked and I bought some awesome stuff!

Last weekend's utterly amazing Renegade Craft Fair (in Austin for the first time ever!) was jam packed with awesome vendors and had a huge turn out to boot! None of us knew what to expect and we were blown away with the rush on Saturday morning. The organizers told us that 1500 people came through the doors in the first hour alone!

By Sunday evening, the crowd had dwindled, we'd run out of "timber" for our "Trick Out Some Timber" craft (luckily people still loved trying the image transfer onto cardboard). Around 6pm I took the opportunity to run around the fair to do my shopping and here is what I bought:


Two heart shaped bracelets from Verameat (I love hearts... I mean Paired Hearts represent!)
And two cutie onesies from harrilu. The toaster is in homage to my pup Toast and I thought the kitten was just adorable. I also ordered a custom clutch from Jenny N. Design, can't wait to receive it! -Like this but with a different leather:

My husband came and bought:


A cool tee from KDS Clothing, and a rad Tortoise poster from Empire Press.

Our booth was rocking it too, here are a bunch of pics to prove it:

Pre-opening, I'm up on the roof to do some cleaning & decorating.

From the time the doors opened on Day 1 until they closed on Day 2, our interactive area was hoppin'!

We showed guests how to "Trick Out Some Timber" with a simple image transfer technique, & then use decoupage &/or picks from our stash of cool ribbon, trims, buttons & baubles to give it some unique flair.

Here comes the Minor Mishap Marching Band!

A steady stream of shoppers enjoyed browsing the handmade goods inside Stella's Boutique (at times it was shoulder-to-shoulder in there!), & we had our famous design-your-own pinback buttons station just outside the door.

A big "thank you" to everyone who came out! We had such a fabulous time spreading the crafty love & made lots of new friends. Can't wait for Renegade Austin 2011! {Oh yes, I think it's gonna happen!} : )

Renegade or Bust! Only 3 more days!!!

Tissue paper, pipe cleaners & faux jewels, oh my! What are we doing with all of these craftastic materials, you ask? Getting ready for the Renegade Craft Fair, of course!

Beth A & our awesome intern, Caitlin, made dozens of pretty tissue flowers to decorate our booth. I made a sign for our crafty make & take: Trick Out Some Timber! And we made some other super-cool decorations, but you'll have to come out to the show to see those! We have to save some surprises to wow you, right?

By now you've probably heard all about it, but if not, hop over to the Renegade page to get all the deets! It's happening THIS WEEKEND, and believe me, you don't want to miss it. We'll be there with Stella's Boutique (that's right: we're bringing our Airstream right into the events center!) & crafty DIY fun for you guys. There will be over 200 indie-crafters, interactive awesomeness from our friends at The Stitch Lab, Austin Craft Mafia & sooo much more! Too much handmade goodness to list here, so come on out & see for yourself!

Wood You Like To Try This?

Jen here. The girls at The WonderCraft have been hard at work getting our crafty fun project ready for The Renegade Craft Fair that is coming up just around the corner (May 15th & 16th). I think you guys will have a blast with our project.

I will share a few of the things I did for the sample I made here. One of the things we will be showing everyone at Renegade is a simple image transfer technique. It's super-easy, fun and versatile.

Now, I don't want to spoil the fun on that project so I went with a different technique for this blog post, but the results are similar. I decided to use graphite paper and transfer an image. Not as easy as it sounds. But after drawing in the missing pieces with a marker, I was pretty happy. I embellished it with some pieces I cut out of a doily, then decided to Mod Podge the whole image. Well, it smeared a bit so after fussing with it, I just went with the results and played them up. The result is a much softer look than I had originally planned, but I like it.

If you want to make your own cute wall hanging or pendant then come on down and visit us at Renegade! We'll have a ton of supplies and some great techniques to share.

Project: Pretty Upcycled Jewelry

We recently hosted a super fun jewelry party and I thought I'd share the project we did together. We were asked to do a jewelry party, but we wanted to do something really different than just beading or basic jewelry techniques. Inspired by these new fabric flower necklaces we've been seeing everywhere lately (Kim and I had spotted a cute one at J Crew in the Domain but this one is from Anthropologie) we spent an afternoon playing with fabric and jewelry parts and designed some fun pieces.

I created this asymmetrical necklace using different fabric qualities straight out of my scrap bin and inserting a large jump ring into the middle of the chain. It was really easy too!
Beth H made the cute green earrings that Jen is sporting in this pic. Jen made several pins that can be converted into hair clips, the possibilities seem endless!




We'll be teaching similar techniques at the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair, so come on by and learn it! Or have your own crafty party or custom class and learn anything you want!

Green Crafts to Honor Earth Day's 40th Anniversary

Happy Earth Day, everyone! What are you doing to celebrate? I've rounded up some awesome green crafting ideas from the blogosphere to share with you. I hope you find them inspiring!

First up, my absolute favorite idea: Jessica Wilson's Garden to Go tutorial, which she shared on the Craft blog. She made pretty little gift jars full of seeds from her garden, complete with costume jewelry-topped lids, to give to friends.

What a wonderful way to share plants & spread the gardening love! As an avid gardener myself, I'd love to receive a gift like this. I'm now thinking of which of my plants I can collect seeds from to make my own jars to give...

Another awesome garden-sharing idea is making your own seed tape. Amber of Giver's Log has put together a fab DIY seed tape tutorial (thanks to Rachel for sharing it on Craft!). Amber's how-to explains how to make the seed tape as well as how to turn it into a super-cute gift.

Seed tape helps a lot when planting those extremely tiny little seeds. It allows you to create nice rows with the seeds evenly spaced. And what a great way to share the bounty of your garden & inspire others to grow their own!

Along with tending the earth in the form of gardening, being a good steward of our planet includes the three R's of course! This next idea helps you reduce the amount of plastic you send to the landfill: reusable food storage bags. Bells and Unicorns, a great Etsy shop with an even better name, stocks their shop with a plethora of reusable bags in lots of sizes & pretty fabrics. They have Velcro closures & a water-resistant nylon lining for easy cleanup. How cute is this "Give a Hoot" bag?!

There are also lots of opportunities to reduce & reuse in the ways we clean our homes. One of my favorite tools is my Swiffer, but I don't like the throw-away nature of the cloths. So I was super-excited to find The Quilting Mama, an Etsy shop that offers reusable cloth Swiffer covers (among lots of other great earth-friendly products).

I bought a set of these covers & I looooove them - I highly recommend them! You just throw 'em in your washer & they're good to go for tons more uses. Here's a tip, though: give them a quick rinse under the tap to remove major dust bunnies before throwing in the laundry; they'll come out of your washing machine a lot cleaner.

Etsy has tons of awesome, earth-friendly products, of course; way too many to list here. A search for "eco friendly" comes up with over 51,000 results!

And now for the grand finale, a masterpiece of recycling (or upcycling may be the more accurate term for these): reclaimed plastic horse sculptures by Sayaka Ganz (via Craft again).

Wowee-wow-wow! I can't get over these. So beautiful, and made from discarded spatulas & the like!

I hope these craftacular ideas inspire you to come up with your own ways of honoring Mother Nature today. Please leave any awesome green crafting ideas or links of your own in the comments - thanks for reading!