Get Green Before Saturday!

To celebrate National Craft Month,  Clearsnap is inking the world "green" with our favorite Clearsnap Products! 

Rollagraph, ColorBox, Smooch... show us your faves! To enter the "Green with Inky" Contest, Share a LINK TO a photo of you, decked out in your "greenest", holding your favorite Clearsnap Product on our FB Page http://www.facebook.com/Clearsnap or on the Clearsnap blog so we can pin it for a chance to win $100 prize pack of YOUR CHOICE!! 

Contest runs from March 1- March 17, 2012. We'll announce the winner on our blog: http://clearsnap.blogspot.com/ and post their photo as our Facebook Avatar through March 31st!

Like these silly photos from some of our DT Members and their families? These are just an idea of the kinds of photos you can take to SHOW US WHAT YOU LOVE about Clearsnap!!

Follow us all month long as we share crafty tips and more to celebrate National Craft Month.

The Brand New Yummies Are In Town

I spent the day treasure hunting on Monday with my top secret shopping pal -- 7 hours of hitting the pavement, dodging meter maids, and haggling with middle eastern and Latino men, we filled the car to the roof and headed home. Then yesterday I spent over an hour photographing just trims!!!!


I am so happy to be able to share these yummies with you in my shop at prices you can't even get in any store!!! Here are some of the new yummies up in my shop now:


And what good is sharing without really *sharing*? I'm giving away TWO assortments of 8 trims each -- that's 24 yards!! All you have to do to enter is:

• PIN the image of your favorite trim to Pinterest and include my etsy shop address http://hydrangeahippo.etsy.com   - then leave a comment on this blog post telling me you did it
• SHARE this blog post on Facebook - then leave a comment on this blog post telling me you did it
• TELL your friends to become fans on Hydrangea Hippo's Facebook Page   - then leave a comment on this blog post telling me you did it
• TWEET about hydrangeahippo.etsy.com   - then leave a comment on this blog post telling me you did it

Each time you do one of these things it counts as one entry. Pin 20 things and leave a comment here about each, that is 20 entries. This IS open to International friends!!!!!

I will choose TWO winners on March 16, 2012 and post them on my blog soon after. You have until Midnight PST March 15, 2012 to enter!!!

Thanks for stopping by and I can't wait to pop these two trims packs in the mail to the lucky winners!!!

--Jennifer

Still Time to Start Selling on Etsy!

Crafting a Handmade Business On Etsy

March 27, 2012

Online Class - 5 Weeks

with Jennifer Priest

Registration is open NOW

Have you ever been told you should sell your crafts? Are you looking to make extra money or even support yourself with an income from your crafting? Do you already have an etsy shop but are looking for ways to make it more successful? If so, then this class is for you!

During this 5 week course we will cover everything from choosing a shop name to having a grand opening. We will cover the material in a straight-forward way to help you take focused action to get your shop on the road to success. Similar courses online cost hundreds of dollars and require months of instruction. I have streamlined the process and distilled it down to what I have found to be most important and beneficial during my experience. 

I have been successfully selling on etsy since 2007, doubling revenue each year since I started. I will share my story with you, tips and tricks I have learned along the way, and how to stay motivated through tough times. By the end of the course, you should be open for business and ready to make your first sale!

Syllabus

Week One: What Do You Love to Make? Choose a Name, a Theme for the shop, create a graphic for the shop.

Week Two: Setting Up Shop. Set policies, add the headers, set up shipping profiles, link to Paypal. Managing the Business Side - Taxes, Business Licenses, keeping track of money, customer service, how to use etsy's billing system.

Week Three: Creating items, photographs, figuring out what to charge, how to package items, where to get shipping supplies.

Week Four: Marketing - where, when, how, and why?

Week Five: Go "live" and get your first sale -- this week will include a blog hop or cross promo activity with all of the students who choose to participate.

• Start Date: March 27, 2012
• Course Fee: $50

REGISTER HERE

Made by Matt

In the midst of the craziness that is CHA-W 2012 prep, Matthew scrounged some supplies from the floor and my chipboard box and made this face:

It was on our mantle because he put it there but I decided to move it to my stamp shelf, so I can see it when I look up. He is always so proud and confident about what he creates :) I hope to help him maintain that!

Supplies:

• 2 8x8 Chipboard Covers from Zutter
• 1 button from my floor
• 1 plastic backing from and American Crafts This To That Foam Dot
• 1 banner pennant, that I cut, from my chipboard box
• Scrapbook Adhesives Crafty Power Tape
• Pen to draw the mouth

Always industrious, that little one.

-Jennifer

The Hardest Working Woman in the CraftBiz

I plan to do some posts about how it is to work in the craft industry. I love to share and anyone who has ever talked to me will know that if you ask me a question about anything, I will tell you the answer and help you, unless it is about one of the 3 secrets I have (which are really silly little things but I keep them close). Anyways, for those of you working in the industry, no matter where you are at in your journey, and those of you thinking about it, I hope this helps you or at least makes you chuckle a little :) I am not a super star and I do not wish to be - I am just a scrapbooker turned craft designer and instructor who wants to eek out a living doing what I love. And if I can help someone else in their journey, then that is just icing on the crafty cake!

Every Woman (and Man) working in this industry is the "The Hardest Working Woman (or Man) in the CraftBiz". I made this video of me prepping for a class, my hair all nutso, so I could share an inside look at how much work it really is:

Over the last few weeks I have had a lot of phone and Facebook chat conversations about my job and working in this industry. I am overjoyed when I hear that someone has put in a good word about me, referred me to some amazing opportunity, or just recognized the hard work I have been doing. The majority of my calls and contacts are that way. 


But I have recently found that I have been the subject of rumors, jealousy, and just mean girls talking smack about me. People who I thought were my friends, turning on me and saying horrible things (though, a side note to that is that I did not see the warnings -- they talked smack about everyone else so why did I think I was immune?)


This whole realization really floored me. On the one hand I am too busy to pay too much attention to it. But on the other hand, it does hurt a little that people jump to some crazy conclusions with little to no information and then they feel they need to tell other people about their ill-thought opinion.


In my naivete I thought I would never get that kind of attention--jealous? Really? I am an over-educated, overweight, super short mom with alot of health issues living in the trailer park capital of So Cal trying to figure out how to change my business in this changing economy so I can keep doing what I love. I buy a new car once in every 10 years and I live in a house that was a repo that we are fixing up and we owe twice what it is worth. Oh, and I have a ridiculously large student loan that I have to pay off for a degree I don't even use. What on earth is there to be jealous of?!


I will admit; at one point, I was quite envious of those who I perceived to be successful in this industry, who I thought just got everything handed to them on a silver platter and weren't working hard for it. I nit-picked them in my head and sometimes in conversation (I know, it is terrible and I regret it), trying to justify why I was not successful by saying "they just got everything the easy way". That feeling and those thoughts got fewer and fewer over the 9 years I have been working in this industry. That has been a good thing. Yeah, I was in my 20's when I started and I was immature. No bones about it! Immature and stupid. Hopefully I am less of both of those now ;P


Some point last Fall, I realized that I had started to look at things very differently. For one, I had no time to focus on what everyone else was doing because I was too darn busy. I started meeting and talking more openly with other designers and instructors and I realized we all had the same things in common--we worked CONSTANTLY to keep the work coming to us. We worked late at night, early in the morning, pitching our work to companies, trying to work with stores to run classes, trying to keep up our momentum. We worked for free sometimes because a trade-off was that we could promote ourselves; it is advertising we could not afford to buy. We failed sometimes. We dusted ourselves off. And we kept going. We have been stiffed by companies who did not pay us but adored and treated like royalty by others. And we have had to take pay cuts or change who we work with because the companies are suffering in this economy. 


No one makes us do any of this and I am not trying to make people feel bad for us. We do it out of love, passion, and joy.


The point is, that despite every failure, change in plans, or curve-ball thrown at us, we pick ourselves up and keep going. Our passion helps us stay motivated. But we all have days where we wonder, "what are we doing"?!  "Should I just quit"?  The thing that makes us successful is that we keep going--we learn from our mistakes, we turn each experience into job experience that can help us, and we keep working at it.  Now I can't speak for the "stars" in the industry but I can almost guarantee that they go through the same thing 10x more intense than I have ever experienced. 


And there are days when we are hurt by what people say. And I guess what hurts most is that we KNOW the people saying mean things just don't understand. They do not comprehend that we are working constantly!!! That nothing is ever handed to us no matter how easy or convenient it looks on the outside. The minute we sit on our laurels for a few days, we can easily see the adverse affects on our business. That we put our heart and soul and then some into this business and we hear that someone was bashing us at a trade show, or that they were bad-mouthing our class at a crop, or that they were just making up insane rumors and posting them on Facebook.  That is like a knife in the heart! Sure, someone is reading this right now, misunderstanding, and is going to bash me for it. I hope they keep reading and maybe change their mind a little :)


The Women (and Men) who you see out there teaching, promoting the craft industry, and working for companies, are some of the hardest working and most under paid people in the craft business. Our commitment to the success of this industry drives us. Our passion rewards us. And sharing our love of crafting, be it through samples, classes, or whatever, so that we can inspire others is what keeps us warm at night. Yes, some of us make money at our jobs. And it is that, a job. 


For anyone who wants to work in this industry, who has ever wondered why some people are successful and they think they themselves are not, please leave a comment. My phone number and email address are easy to find. Call me. Email me. My Facebook Profile allows anyone to send me a message or start up a chat. Pull me up on chat. 


The first thing I will ask you is what is your goal. Then I will tell you to become a CHA Designer Member if you are serious about designing as a professional. And the next thing I will tell you is that you have to find your own path and work hard at it. If I can mentor anyone or at least give them a leg up, I will because there have been scores of women who in the past and including now mentor me and help me and guide me. We all support each other and together we become more successful.


Believe it or not, most designers and professionals in this industry LOVE to help others. We can't do every job ourselves!! There is definitely enough of the "pie" to go around. It is a way to give back, it is a way to build relationships, and it is a way to help the industry we love prosper. 


So next time you wonder, "How did she get that job?" or "How do I get to do work like that?" just know that there are months of hard work if not years of work behind that person getting from a crafter to being a professional. And it is possible for you too to achieve that kind of success if you are willing to put your nose to the grindstone, focus your effort on your work, ask questions, help others, and work hard.


I hope this inspires you to keep on keeping on! Now I am off to work!


Happy Crafting!
Jennifer

Organized Chaos

Right now, it is 5:10 AM and this is what is on my scrapbook table:

Remnants from one project and the beginnings of another and my efforts to make a video of me doing a layout. All that is missing is a coffee cup!

Hope you are having a crafty week or looking forward to crafty plans this weekend. Fingers are crossed that I'll be going to GlitterFest tomorrow! 

Altered Basics Blog Hop - Metal Tin Shadowbox

 

Welcome to the Altered Basics Blog Hop! The Clearsnap Design Team is inking and altering our Basic Necessities, a variety of packaging materials and containers released at the CHA-W 2012 show in Anaheim, CA earlier this year. These "Basics" allow you to create custom inkpads, mix your own color combinations of Smooch Spritz and Glitter, as well as provide a blank canvas for cute altered gifts, like the adorable tins our My First ColorBox Stamps are packaged in. You might recognize packaging from some of your favorite Clearsnap products like the salt shaker style jars from the Donna Salazar Designs Fairy Dust Glitter, an uninked ColorBox inkpad, and the Clear Boxes our Smooch Spritz Assortment Packs are packaged in. We think these Basic Necessities will allow your creativity to soar!

We're also excited about giving away a set of select Basic Necessities items as prize for one hop commenter! Just click on the blogs each day, browse through the post and check out the "Altered Basic", and then leave a comment about your favorite Basic Necessity to be entered to win.

For an extra entry, post the secret phrase "I love the Basics!" on our Facebook Page here: http://www.facebook.com/Clearsnap

We'll choose one winner from all of the comments on March 9, 2012!

March 7, 2012
Clearsnap Blog: Tami Sanders: http://clearsnap.blogspot.com

Sabrina Alery: http://sabrinaalery.blogspot.com

Mary Dawn Quirindongo: http://mypinkmexico.blogspot.com

Jean Okimoto: http://davebrethauer.typepad.com/inkollage

Daniela Dobson: http://danieladobson.blogspot.com

March 8, 2012
Clearsnap Blog: Jean Okimoto: http://clearsnap.blogspot.com

Steph Ackerman: http://stephaniescraps.blogspot.com

Jennifer Priest: http://hydrangeahippo.blogspot.com <----YOU ARE HERE

Charlotte Jenkins: http://suepup.blogspot.com <----GO HERE NEXT

  

Don't forget to leave a comment about your favorite Basic Necessity on each blog in the Hop (click on the chart above to make it larger or view on Page 85 in our online catalog). 

I chose to alter the super cute tins that Clearsnap's My First ColorBox stamps are packaged in. I removed the lid and then set to decorating the base of the tin to create a small inspirational shadowbox to hang in my scrap room. The depth of the tin is just enough to allow for lots of layering but is shallow enough that the tin lays flat against the wall when hung.

I used Smooch Accent Ink and Smooch Spritz to alter the colors of the elements to match the patterned paper I chose. This ballerina started out mint green, like the ones in my etsy shop, but a little touch of Smooch Accent Ink, rubbed away with paper towel, and she looks like a turquoise dream! I then used Smooch Glitz to add a fine touch of glitter to some leaves I hand cut from fabric. I'll be sharing a video a little later showing how i created this shadowbox from start to finish!

Supplies:

• Smooch Spritz in Ginger Ale and Green Olive
• Smooch Accent Ink 
• Smooch Glitz
• Authentique Paper Free Bird Series Patterned Paper, Diction Stickers
• Bazzill Cardstock
• Prima Pearl
• Trim, Felt, Leaves, Pins, and other items by hydrangeahippo.etsy.com

Don't forget to leave a comment on each blog in the hop--happy hopping!!!!