Have you heard about the Hello Craft Summit of Awesome? Have you seen the line-up? Keep reading and prepare to be wowed!

Hello Craft’s Summit of Awesome is 3-days (May 1-3) filled with business seminars for artists and crafters, hands-on workshops, the D.C. premiere of the Indie Craft Documentary, Handmade Nation, and a Saturday night party. Through a partnership with the MidCity Business Association, all Summit seminars and workshops will take place in the wondrous and vibrant independent businesses in MidCity (14th and U Streets NW).

The Summit is a great mix of learning and crafting from discussions to hands on workshops, with a little something for everyone.
Special Craftnote Speakers:

• Maria Thomas, Etsy.com CEO
• Jenny Hart - Sublime Stitching

Demos/Workshops:  Learn a new technique or make something awesome with guidance from our amazing speakers.

• Fun with Duct Tape with Kristina Bilonick
• Simple Mold Making with Adam Maron - Pearson Maron
• Fiber Demo with Jamie Chan and Blas Herrera - Urban Fauna Studio
• Embroidery Demo with Jenny Hart - Sublime Stitching
• How to Photograph your Work with Sherry - Dandelion Blu
• Sew a Felt Broach with Beth Baldwin - Tiger Flight
• Make a Snow Globe with Esti Gerson
• Plate Breaking Demo with Juliet Ames - The Broken Plate
• Sewing Demo with DC Threads
• Make a Small Book with Esti Gerson
• Screen Printing Demo with Christy Petterson

Learning Sessions:  The main part of the weekend is to learn and grow your crafty endeavors. Visit Hello Craft for a full list of speakers.  Session topics include:

• Am I a Business? How and when to form a business for your crafty endeavors
• Tax Implications of Starting a Business
• Developing a Product Line. Deciding what to make and sell
• Branding and Identity
• Copyright and Tradmarks, How to protect yourself and your work
• Customer Service. Crafting with a Smile
• Selling Successfully Online 
• Craft Fair Booth Set up and Displays
• Selling in a Brick and Mortar
• The Ins and Outs of Trade Shows
• What’s a Social Network and How to use it for Good
• Street Teams. Why you should connect and collaborate
• Crafting a Green Craft
• Consumption and Sustainability. How DIY will Save the World
• Navagating the Art world with Craft
• Going out on a Limb
• Organizing a Craft Fair
• Event Sponsorship

Also in store for the weekend, you’ll have access to a screening of the D.C. premier of Handmade Nation, a make something awesome crafting area and the first even Handmade White Elephant gift exchange and swap!

Register by this Friday to get the discounted price of $150. After Friday, the cost will be $180. Discounts available for groups and craft collectives. Email hellocraftinfo@gmail.com for group rates.

On Friday, May 1st, Hello Craft will host its first ever Summit of Awesome in the heart of the Nation’s Capital.

Geared specifically for independent artists and crafters, the Summit of Awesome is 3 full days of seminars and hands-on workshops, which will provide business and technical educatation for those in the handmade arts communtiy. The Summit also includes the D.C. premiere showing of the Indie Craft Documentary film, Handmade Nation - A highly anticipated film that captures the superstars of the indie crafting world, and documents how the handmade community began and took it’s current shape.

The entire Summit of Awesome will take place in the independent shops, restaurants and bars in the MidCity area of D.C., along 14th and U Streets NW. The film screening of Handmade Nation will be hosted at the DCJCC’s Theatre J.

Seminar topics include Business Identity and Branding, How to Green Your Craft, Small Business Basics, The Ins and Outs of Trade Shows, and many more. An exciting line up of speakers who are leaders in their field include Maria Thomas, Chief Operating Officer of Etsy.com, Laura and Allison from DC Threads, and the founders of Cosa Verde, Liz Grotyohann and Jeff Fein-Worton, just to name a few. A complete list of speakers and topics will be posted soon. There will be hands on demos and workshops from some of your favorite indie crafters (wanna see Juliet Ames break a plate?!). But best of all, you will get to meet and hang out with artists and crafters just like you. People who love to make and learn.

Registration includes all programming from Friday through Sunday and is open now.

Are you looking to expand or refresh your knowledge of the business side of craft? As fun as it is to make crafty goods, practical knowledge is needed for your business to succeed. The Baltimore Etsy Street Team (BEST) will be hosting its first business meet-up at the Creative Alliance on Sunday, January 25th. The meet-up will feature round-table discussions led by:

• Cynthia Blake Sanders, MD Lawyers for the Arts;
• Rebecca Cason, former director of the Buyer’s Market of American Craft;
• Jen Menkhaus, working crafter and one of the founders of the Baltimore Etsy Street Team;
• Nita Gale, web designer;
• Ariella Levin of Baltimore’s Best Bookkeeper; and
• Thomas Wynn, professional photographer.

Practical discussions will include legal and accounting basics; marketing, wholesale and pricing; and looking your best– on the web and in promo photos. Lunch will be provided, a great time to get connected with other local artists and crafters to make new friends, show off your work, and share ideas.

Details:
Sunday, January 25
10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
At the Creative Alliance on Eastern Avenue

Advance registration $25 [$20 Creative Alliance & BEST members]
Walk-in price $30 [$25 Creative Alliance & BEST members.]
Lunch is included.

Register online through the Creative Alliance.

Set a reminder to tune into NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, November 23 to catch Liane Hansen’s interview with Crafty blogger, Tina Seamonster.

Tina was asked to discuss making gifts for the holidays and provided a couple simple how-to’s for listeners to try on their own. The piece has already been recorded and you can read about Tina’s experience in the entry she posted on HelloCraft.com.

From Tina:

NPR Weekend Edition Sunday (11/23).
You can find out what time via your local NPR Station as each station plays the show at a different time. Locally in DC, WAMU plays it from 8 to 10. I will also be doing a live chat online at 1:30 EST at npr.org/gifts. You will have to register to chat. You can also upload photos of your projects to their holiday community page while you are in there. Please stop by and ask me a nice or funny question.

Listen in as Tina shares her indie craft wisdom with NPR’s listners. And don’t forget to join the Live Chat! We hear there will be video, too. Oooh, talking pictures. Fancy.

I’ve wanted to learn how to sew since I was young, but I’ve always shyed away from classes where you need to shell out big bucks to use machines that intimidate the hell out of me… so I say thank goodness for the DC Threads Sewing Lounge.

The DC Threads Sewing Lounge is a free program held on the second Saturday of each month at the North Michigan Recreation Center (1333 Emerson St, NE, Washington, DC 20017) from1-4pm. The first session will be held on October 11th.

Participate in a “sew-n-tell” hour where you can bring projects you are working on to share tips and exchange ideas, followed by guided projects that are fun and beginner-friendly. You’ll need to bring your own supplies, but sewing machines are provided, and best of all… the sessions are FREE!

DC Threads is a great resource for local sewers. Get info on their Lounge and local sewing classes, find out where fabric stores are near you, and lots more at www.dcthreads.org.

The Design*Sponge Biz Ladies meet-ups are designed to connect local women running their own design-based businesses. The event is a fun, informal session that will provide free advice and information in the following areas: Marketing/PR, Wholesale/Retail, Business/Legal issues and local designer Kat Feuerstein will tell her story of turning their passion into a successful full-time business (Gilah Press). The event is free to attend and is open to anyone running, or considering running, their own business in the field of art and design.

The event will be held Thursday, July 31st from 6:30-8:30pm at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

For more information and to RSVP, please check out the web site.

The Crafty Bastards Discovery Series is in full swing! With our second workshop in the series under our belt, we’re gearing up for the next one in August.

The Crafty Bastards Discovery Series has crafting experts come to Whole Foods on P Street once a month, to talk to the Crafty community about ways to make crafting a successful endeavor on many levels. The first workshop, hosted in June by Tina Seamonster, gave crafters all the info on how to sell successfully at craft fairs.

Our last workshop, Crafting Online 101, was hosted by Caitlin Phillips of Rebound Designs, who went over various web tools and popular online programs to help artists and crafters sell and promote themselves on the web.

Below is a brief summary of what was discussed at Crafting Online 101. For more details, check out Caitlin’s blog on her site at rebound-designs.com.

CRAFTING ONLINE 101
Having a strong online presence is quickly becoming essential in the crafting world. With the huge boom in the popularity of indie craft, competition is fierce, so the more people who see your work, the better. Here are some tips on how to use the Internet to get your craft business going, or to promote your existing business to new audiences. Don’t get too overwhelmed - you don’t have to do it all at once. There are so many different tools to use online and new ones are popping up every day.

Your Online Presence: Yourshop.com vs. Etsy
Having a place online where customers can find you is essential to success today. There are two main options: Your own website vs. an Etsy shop. There are pros and cons to each.

You can always have both an Etsy shop and your own website, and link to your Etsy shop with an Etsy mini. (See example here: www.rebound-designs.com ) Etsy minis can be put on a blog, or a Myspace page as well.

A few thoughts on Myspace and Facebook: These can be useful tools for promoting your business, but they should not be the only online presence you have. If you are sending customers who are attempting to shop to a Myspace page with blinking graphics and embedded MP3s, it makes you look very unprofessional. Use sparingly.

The #1 Most Important Rule of Websites: Have good photos! Your online store is the only way a customer across the country can see your products, so make sure your pictures are well lit, in focus, and show the product properly. There are lots of good tips on product photography if you search online.

Accepting Credit Cards Online
Having awesome photos isn’t enough. Customers have to be able to buy your work easily online. The simplest way to get started with accepting credit cards online is through PayPal. You can do this in several ways. For no set up fee, and no monthly fee, you can use Website Payments Standard. This lets you either install a cart system, or single purchase ‘buy it now’ buttons, which link to the secure PayPal site. https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-standard-overview-outside.

Blogs
This is a huge marketing tool for the craft world. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of blogs devoted to discussing indie craft and design. Some are personal blogs of artists who share their creations, how to tips, favorite things, and so forth. Some are more commercial blogs, with semi- to full-time professional writers keeping up with the hippest new things, and with paid advertisements.

Some of Caitlin’s Favorite blogs include:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/craftybastards/
http://www.designspongeonline.com/
http://indiefixx.com/
http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/
http://www.ohmythatsawesome.com/
http://blog.craftzine.com/
http://extremecraft.typepad.com/
http://modish.typepad.com/
http://readymademag.com/blog/
http://www.boingboing.net/
http://www.ilikeseamonsters.com

Twitter
Twitter is sort of a microblogging tool, which lets you send out short messages under 140 characters. You can send them from your phone, or the web, and you can include links (tiny url is useful here). You can follow other people’s twitters, and they can follow you. You can twitter about a new blog post, or a new item in your shop, or to let people know about a craft show you’re doing.

Flickr
Flickr is a great site for sharing pictures of your work. You can have a gallery of past work, works in progress, your booth displays, or whatever, and you can tag them so others can find them. You can join groups with similar interest, and this is really the best way to get your pictures seen.

It is against the Terms of Service of Flickr to exploit it for commercial purposes, so just posting pictures of crafts with the intent to sell them or advertise them is not cool. But, you can still drive traffic to your site in many easy, legal ways.

Social Bookmarking
Check out Wikipedia for a good breakdown of this bookmarking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking.

Mailing Lists
A mailing list is an efficient and direct way to keep in touch with all of your customers and fans. You can send out announcements for shows you are in, upcoming sales and promotions, shop updates, etc. It’s great because past customers that may have wanted to purchase again often forget, and an email is an instant reminder. Every time I have sent out a mass mailing, I have received orders in return. The best way to send out a mailing list is to have a program that collects, manages, and sends the mail for you.

Overwhelmed?
The most important thing to remember about online marketing is that you don’t have to do it all. Try a few things out and see what works for you. But as crafting as a business gets more and more popular, it will get more competitive, and the more ways you have of reaching potential customers, the more sales you will make. The more customers are personally interested and invested in you, the more excited they will be about your work, and it doesn’t get better than that.

Read more from Caitlin on her blog, at rebounddesigns.wordpress.com.

The Next Crafty Bastards Discovery Series workshop is coming up in August. If you’d like to get the exclusive invite, just sign up for the Crafty Bastards mailing list and you’ll automatically receive the invite about a week before the event. You must have an invite to attend, and our friends at Whole Foods provide the yummy treats… cause you can talk about crafts on an empty stomach!

Crafting that is!

Yes, I am telling you to knit, crochet, draw, whatever it is you craft in public! If your craft is portable- why not take it outside the house and socialize? One fun group is the Drink and Draw social group, which has “chapters” across America. If you’re curious about the outcome, the LA group put out a compilation of their drunken drawings.

Of course dear to my heart are the Stitch and Bitch groups (or whatever the non-copyrighted name is now) that have long been bringing yarn out of the living room. Knitting meet-ups are a historical activity of women, but one that has evolved with the years. Help each other with stitches, while showing the world that knitting is not just for grandmothers anymore.

But of course you don’t need to have a group in order to craft in public. I love bringing my knitting with me to a bar, although I will admit to a couple of messed up stitches now and then. And yes, I promise I can knit and pay attention at the same time! At a Crafty Bastards info meeting at The Quarry House, I was happy to see crafty vendor “Woolarina” knitting among the beer and burgers. Also if you sell your crafts, being out in public can create interest and even sales of what you are making. Right now I’m hoping to break into a gay men’s knitting group, maybe I’ll be the token girl. I want to see you out there crafters!

In this video, Ira Glass of “This American Life” explains why we should all keep working on our craft. He talks about storytelling, but I think this can apply to just about anything. I haven’t seen someone so eloquently express that it takes a long time to get good at something creative. This is something that I have totally reminded myself and others of over the years; that the best makers or storytellers or artists are those people who keep at it.

Tina Seamonster blogs her life and craft at I Like Seamonsters.com. She finally found something useful on YouTube.

It has been two weeks since my first post about learning to use my new woodburning tool. During those first few nights of learning, I didn’t think this follow-up post would be as positive as it is about to be. I didn’t think I would get the hang of it, I didn’t think it would be as fun as it is. I thought I would go running back to my trusty Gocco printer to finish my pieces for Artomatic. I was wrong and this is rad.

In the past few weeks, I have completed about 25 pieces, only ruining about 3! So far, I have only mastered transferring words, not images. Words are easier because you can concentrate on transferring each word, one letter at a time, making sure not to burn the paper into the wood. This is done by using the tool with one hand, while gently lifting the paper as you transfer. It is kind of how you check to see if a fake tattoo has transferred to your skin. Hard to explain. The instructions on the tool actually explained it, but until I messed it up a few times, it was hard to figure out. Transferring images has proven more difficult, so I am still working on that.

This piece is a combination of the star stamper that actually burns stars into the wood and the laser transfer (with multiple fonts):

Close up of the little stars:

Here is how it looks on the wall!

While this piece came out the best so far, the message is a little too cheerleader-y, so I held it back from the two shows I am making these for this month. (I wrote the text after having given birth to twins, so cut me some slack!)

You can see how the transfer really works well on the unpainted wood. I have found, though, that painted wood can be a little more difficult. A few tips so that you can learn from my mistakes.

1. Only let the pen/tool heat up for 5 minutes. Don’t turn it on, go off to watch Battlestar Galactica and come back an hour later. That thing will be too hot! It will then ruin the first half of whatever you are about to do. Along those same lines, don’t try to use a tool that hasn’t heated up.
2. If you plan to paint your pieces, do so the day before. Your paint needs to be completely dry before even trying this.
3. Don’t forget to reverse your images on a computer and then print them out. This can easily be done in Photoshop.
4. Read and follow all of the instructions on the package. I didn’t and this is what caused stress the first night.

Here are a few pieces that were painted before using the tool to transfer laser prints:

You might notice on these that the tool will sometimes transfer a faint clear bit when you run it over blank paper. I tried to minimize this by cutting my designs out very close to the ink. It isn’t a big thing, but might bother perfectionists. Transferring onto the painted pieces takes a bit more patience than the bare wood ones. Don’t be afraid to mess up and if you do, just paint over it and try again.

Of course, this tool can do like 20 other things. I urge people with drawing talent to try it out as a pen! I would love to see something other than deer heads and cowboys drawn on wood! I would really love to see what people with actual artistic ability can do with this tool. Don’t hesitate to comment on the blog if you do try it out. Along those lines, let us know about any kind of new craft you are trying to learn.

Tina Seamonster blogs her life and craft at http://www.ilikeseamonsters.com. Oh! You can see a whole wall of these finished pieces at Artomatic, 8th floor (SW, B7).