Category: Blog

Craft Industry Alliance & Podcast Interview

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Abigail McMurray, yeiou paper objects, standing in workspace holding finished framed paper sculpture

One of the things I love about living in the Boston area is how many other small creative businesses there are around here. Many are even run by kind, brilliant, energetic people who are game to share and learn and be welcoming and generous. Since I started yeiou with really no idea what I was doing, I have always been curious to hear other people’s stories and processes and peek “behind the scenes”. Early on, I discovered Abby Glassenberg’s blog, While She Naps. I really appreciated how open she was about how her business works, what work earns money, how things shift year over year, and just generally being frank about the realities of working solo. When Abby co-founded and launched a professional organization, Craft Industry Alliance, I jumped at the chance to be part of something created out of this attitude of generosity and open sharing!

CIA is a great organization for people in the craft industry, especially those making and designing kits or patterns, but even as my business has shifted from craft kits to fine art, it is still a valuable conversation to be a part of, and they’re adding new benefits all the time – discounts on tools and services, exclusive online courses and webinars, and ways to interact with the community. So good!

If you’re interested, you can join Craft Industry Alliance.

The CIA Podcast Interview

One of the other great services of the CIA is the podcast! The podcast grew out of the podcast Abby had been running as part of her blog for years but has been migrated recently to be an official part of the Craft Industry Alliance. There are so. many. good. interviews on this podcast. A lot of them are geared toward fibers/fabrics/knitting sorts of people, but Abby’s interviews always touch on the business side of things, so there’s great learning regardless of your specific interests.

I had the immense honor of hosting Abby at my studio/home in December. We had a wonderful conversation that aired on the podcast earlier this month. I still can’t really believe my face is on the Craft Industry Alliance Podcast page with so many of my small biz heroes, but it did happen, and I figured I should mention it here!

In my interview, we chatted about how I ended up making house portraits, how the Etsy Design Award nomination game around, and how I came to be someone who works for myself making things out of paper, among other things! You can listen to the podcast below, head over to the Craft Industry Alliance site to listen, or listen on your favorite podcast app!

Many thanks, again, to Abby and to Craft Industry Alliance. I am so thrilled to be a part of all of the good things you’re doing in the world!

Paint Chip Paper Art Commission

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a sign that is on the side of a wall

I like to say that I can make anything out of paper, and every once in a while I get an inquiry that challenges that statement! A client reached out a few months ago to see if I could create a logo out of paint chips. Of course I said yes!

Even before I started this paper crafting adventure I’ve been a fan of paper art and paper illustration. There are so many talented artists out there making amazing work, like Nikki McClure’s beautiful black and white cut paper illustrations, this Sherwin Williams advertising campaign, and a huge range of work by the members of the Paper Artist Collective.

It was so interesting to learn how to work with paint chips, which require a slightly different handling than plain paper. It was exciting to work with such a range of colors, since I tend to work mostly with white paper. And it was a fun challenge to pull the whole thing together.

Etsy Design Awards 2019 & Custom House Portraits

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a paper model of a house with the words easy design awards on it

Earlier this year, Etsy put out a call for entries for their first ever “Etsy Design Awards” or “The Etsies”. I submitted my custom house portraits to the contest, and then went on with my summer. Between keeping up with commissions as they came in, and making sure I had inventory for my summer events, my days were full!

I got a call late summer letting me know that Etsy chose me as a finalist. Out of all of the entries, my house portraits were chosen as one of the 150-ish finalists! There are some amazing items in my group of finalists, the “Creative Collaboration” category, all products that are custom or customizable.

When the winners were announced at the end of September, I was thrilled to see my custom house portraits in the “Honorable Mentions” category of the list – what an honor!

I’m now focused on getting through all of the orders I promised in time for holiday gifting, and orders are still coming in for shipping in early 2020.

As part of the publicity around the Design Awards, I was interviewed in my studio by our local NBC news station. We talked about the Etsy contest and I shared a little peek behind the scenes. They filmed me going through each step of the custom house portrait creation process. It was so much fun to spend a few hours in my studio with the crew! They did a fabulous job telling my story, and you can watch the video here:

I realized I have all sorts of random scraps and pieces and materials that I’m “saving” for a “special” project, and that in addition to the mental health benefits that come from doing something fun, it might be good to experiment and see if I land on any new product or project ideas.

I’m 32 days in, as of today, and it’s been really fun! I’ve made some random thing, tested craft kits and paper craft projects designed by other people, and had fun modifying and decorating my own products. Some days the open-ended-ness of “fun” is a little overwhelming, but I’ve been trying to be intentional about doing what feels good, and sort of following my energy (even if that meant taking a day off because I had no energy).

Highlights, in no particular order

I made a paper chicken, something that I’ve been meaning to work on for…a long time. 

I played with embroidery and cross-stitch on paper! I’ve been wanting to play around more with embroidery for a long time now, and combining that with paper was pretty awesome. Definitely planning on more of that in the future!

I made an Easter basket, by weaving strips of paper together:


 

I’ve also done a few experiments with cutting and folding tabs, this one was hand cut, so it has a nice organic feel (that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway), almost like fish scales or something. I’m thinking about ways these sort of shapes/tabs might be interesting as elements on a 3-dimensional form or on something flat, like a card, or maybe even a shadowbox? 


 

You can see the whole project at #100daysofpaperfun on Instagram, and basically everything I post there is paper fun, technically, so if that’s your jam, follow along!

If you’re looking for ideas to have some paper fun of your own, I’m collecting project ideas and finished projects on my Paper Fun Pinterest board.

100 Days: Weeks 3 & 4

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Week 3+4 of #100DaysofHouseandHome

I’ve moved 10 times in my life, but since my parents still live in the house I was born in, that counting starts when I left home 13 years ago. I generally refer to “home” as the place I’m currently living. And I’ve been in the Boston area for long enough now (8 years??!) that it feels more like home than Illinois does, but I still occasionally refer to my parents’ house, or the midwest in general, as “home,” since I did spend some important time there…but honestly, maybe also just because “my parents’ house” is a lot more syllables than “home”!

It’s a strange feeling, though, to know a place intimately, then leave it for a while, and then come back – some things are the same they’ve always been, and some things are totally different. It’s almost like time travel.

We spent some time traveling to and through the midwest last week, to visit the in-laws and roadtrip from Illinois to Oklahoma to see more family. When we go back to visit I’m always surprised at how much sky you can see from the side of the highway driving through rural Illinois. We have clouds here in Boston, but they’re harder to see without craning your neck.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been working on! We were (obviously) far away from my studio, so these things are mostly cobbled together from the few supplies I brought with me, crafted on grandma’s kitchen table, and photographed in …exciting… lighting conditions.

(These are just my favorites, since it seemed like overkill to embed all 14 images here. You can also see all of the current #100daysofHouseandHome images here.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 2: 100 Days of House and Home

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Week 2: 100 Days of House and Home

This has been a really interesting challenge so far, just over two weeks in. The theme of “home” keeps coming up in all sorts of places! Some friends and I have been talking about neighboring, and how being a good neighbor can make a huge difference in daily life and in the life of a city. I worked on some house illustrations for that project right around the time the 100 Day Project was starting, and that helped kick off my theme.

I went to a talk last week at the Boston chapter of Creative Mornings. The speaker, Shawn Hesse, compared fictional zombie apocalypse stories to real disasters that have happened around the world that are connected to climate change. His main point was that in the case of a zombie apocalypse, science people have actually calculated that given a hypothetical “zombie virus”, it would only take 3 days for the virus to spread to the entire world, and civilization would fall incredibly quickly, with everyone fighting for food and resources, bands of survivors eventually finding each other to be greater threats than the zombies themselves, etc. He talked about the different hurricanes, droughts, and other climate events that have caused similar crises, and similar desperation, though on a localized scale.

The parallels are remarkable, and sort of terrifying. The thing that struck me, though, is the work people are doing in resiliency, to try to plan and prepare for disaster. He mentioned specifically the Rockefeller Institute in New York City, working to build resiliency in communities by focusing primarily on building community and connecting neighbors, along with work to build resilient infrastructure. Their theory is that infrastructure doesn’t matter if people can’t work together to take advantage of it.

I’ve been thinking about that talk all week. Then, on Tuesday we woke up at 4:30am to catch an early flight to Chicago and sneak some friend time in before our week of family time. We had the chance to visit the Art Institute of Chicago briefly with a friend who has a membership, he said we had to check out the Van Gogh exhibit, since it was closing soon.

We walked into the exhibit and the intro blurb reveals that the entire exhibit is a reflection on the artist’s experience of home. Van Gogh moved 37 times in his short 37 years, and spent a lot of time and words writing about home and belonging in letters to his brother. One of his most famous paintings is an image of his empty bedroom in the house he felt was the only place that was really his home. He was so moved by this image that he actually painted it three separate times.

Here’s what I made in week two:

 

 

What does home mean to you?