I devour a wide range of business related media. If it’s available to be read or listened to sign me up. Here are a couple of my online favorites right now:
- Modish BIZtips – this is a new to me blog that I’ve been following for a couple of months now. It features articles by Jena Coray, the publisher of the blog, and several additional contributors with expertise in specific areas of business. I like the creative business focus.
- Seth Godin – I’m a total Seth Godin groupie. Me and a million other people (he has 129,000 subscribers on Google Reader alone). I read his blog every morning with a fresh cup of coffee in my hand. His humor combined with insightful commentary on marketing and business never fails to ignite creative ideas I can put to use in my own business. I’ve read and/or listened to many of Seth’s books. My favorite being Purple Cow. I like his attitude most of all, he takes no advertising on his blog and always tells it as he sees it.
- The Professional Quilter – Morna McEver Golletz is the very passionate Publisher and Editor of this content-rich magazine. While it has ‘Quilter’ in the name I have found it to keep me up to date on every facet of the industry which extends to fabric, patterns, designers, any business that somehow touches the quilting industry. I have taken two telecourses. The most recent being Boost Quilt Business Profits with Internet Marketing. I never participate real time, I always download the class after the fact and listen to it on my own schedule. I highly recommend signing up for the free newsletter (there’s a sign up box on the front page of the website), Morna always has interesting tips to share.
Please share your own favorites!
Good Morning,
Whew, it has finally cooled down. I enjoy reading lots of different blogs. Here are two of my favorites for inspiration, color and design.
http://marystanley.blogspot.com/
http://pamgarrison.typepad.com/
Besides playing with a variety of sewing, needlepoint, knitting, crocheting and other paper projects, I am a librarian. Visit my blog for lots of good book reviews.
Love your picture of sweetpeas. Mine are just starting to bloom.
Laura
Kathy,
I’m not sure if my blog address shows up in my post, since I entered it above. Will you add to my post, if it does not show up.
Have you read The Other Boleyn Girl? The BI Library just sponsored a lecture by the author! Look for Rebecca Wells and Barbara Kingsolver later in the year.
Laura
This is right on time! I JUST started my first quilt (FINALLY) so I will keep my eye on this post
Not related to craft business, but I love your sweet pea photo! They are one of my favourite flowers
Such an informative post, I am looking forward to checking out all of the links you mentioned. The sweet pea image is gorgeous. Hope you are having a wonderful week.
Thanks for the resources. I’d really like to get out of my creative/working girl rut and eventually have a crafty business. I’ll be checking these out right now.
Thanks fro the great info Kathy! Just added some good stuff to my reader
Hope you are having a good summer!
I’ve been following Seth Godin! He has such good advice.
Valerie
http://valerieaheck.blogspot.com/
Didn’t Seth write for FastCompany a long time ago? I have (ashamedly) fallen away from the “business” side to nuture the creative, but alas, my library and master’s program await…thank you.
Yes Pam! I remember reading that magazine in the 90’s and really liking it, Seth talks about his experience at Fast Company from time to time.
I wish I had more to add to your post, but instead I just got to learn from it all! Thanks so much for all the resources, it’s just what I’ve been looking for lately.
Thank you very much for sharing these resources, Kathy! They are very timely for me. (Pretty flowers, sigh)
Thanks for this post. I am currently organizing a Professional Development conference for Quilt Canada 2010, I need to investigate more resources, so I will be watching this list closely. I think it is important for people to understand the reality of business before they decide to turn their hobby into career.
Hey…thanks for the great post. I’ve learned some things (always a good thing) and found http://www.craftcult.com to be a great site to check out.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Kathy: I’ve been reorganizing my sewing room and re-reading older tutorials that I printed. So this will take you back a couple of years. When you posted about Brie’s quilt you mentioned that you printed your label on your jet printer.
Can you expand on printing labels a bit. Do you just create a label in MS Word and then print it on a special type of fabric that goes through the printer? I try to hard to get a nice label with hand stitching but the results are never satisfactory. I would appreciate any info you can send me way on this.
thanks,
Joann: I’ve tried a lot of different methods for this and ultimately I’ve settled on using Printed Treasures. They are pre-treated sheets that come in a pack of 5. They are backed with paper so they go through the printer with no problems. They’re sort of expensive if you price them out per sheet. They meausure 8 1/2 x 11 inches and I cut my in half so I get two out of a sheet. I use MS Word and fun fonts to write up the label. The fabric has a really high thread count and can be a little difficult to hand sew the label on but it’s doable.
Because of the cost I’ve experimented with Bubble Jet Set which comes in a bottle. You soak the fabric in it, let it dry and that makes the ink permanent when you print on it. A lot of people back the fabric with freezer paper but I’ve had so many jamming problems that I back the cloth with a full sized label. Those are expensive too so by the time you factor in the hassle of preparing the fabric I decided it’s just not worth it unless I needed a LOT of fabric to print on. I used the Bubble Jet Set when I printed the kids artwork onto fabric for a teacher’s quilt.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.