Coloring books for inspiration

Sometimes it is a mystery where you get inspiration from but trying to force it hardly ever works. However, taking a break from making greeting cards and relaxing can be a great boost to your creative energy. Doing something else creative can be a big help and for me that is sometimes completing a coloring book like the one below.

Why not give it a go, not only will the down time give your greeting card making batteries a chance to recharge, you may also gain inspiration from the images or even the color selection that you use in the book.

Secret Garden: An InkyTreasure Hunt and Coloring Book

Good news for all SECRET GARDEN fans! All editions of SECRET GARDEN now feature thicker and heavier paper stock, fighting bleed-through from ink pens.

Experience the phenomenon that has sold 2 million copies worldwide and launched the coloring craze for adults.

This beautiful and interactive coloring book features delicate and highly detailed pen-and-ink illustrations—all waiting to be brought to life with color. As added entertainment, tiny garden creatures are hidden on the pages, waiting to be found, and a key and index are included in the back. The book's cover and jacket are also colorable.

Appealing to all ages, SECRET GARDEN is the original and first book by Johanna Basford.

Learning how to

Sometimes I see a wonderful greeting card and think that I would like to use an element of that greeting card into my own greeting card designs. Some elements can be easily worked out on how to make them while others are a little trickier and only become obvious when the technique has been shown to you. For me, I like to see another person perform the technique and then correct me when I try it out. I usually get this when I attend craft shows, as there are no craft courses on offer local to me.

Although one to one training is great but unless you get it by the end of the class you could need something to refer back to, this is where books come into the mix. Some people can learn new techniques straight from a book and a little practice on their own, for others books can be a great asset for keeping skills up. With this in mind, here are four books that you might find useful and inspirational.

Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation

By Maggie Oman Shannon

In this wired, wild world, it is harder than ever to shut out noise and busyness in order to truly calm yourself, but in Crafting Calm, a D.I.Y. guide to peace of mind, you'll find inspiring ideas for how to do exactly that through a wide range of creative exercises. In this book, author Maggie Oman Shannon explores crafts and creativity as a practice with enormous physical, mental, and spiritual benefits. By immersing ourselves in a craft with intention and mindfulness, we can quiet those voices around us and in us—we can enter sacred stillness. Through revealing interviews, personal stories, and forty suggested activities, the author shows how creative processes can become spiritual practices. Whether you're an aspiring artist, longtime craftsperson, or someone who has never set foot in a craft-store (yet!), you'll find something inCrafting Calm to inspire you.

Crafts and how-to ideas include contemplation candles, visual journals, prayer shawls, collage mandalas, intention beads, finger labyrinths, personal prayer flags, spiritual toolkits, and tabletop altars.
Features inspired craft ideas from luminaries such as Angeles Arrien, Mary Ann Radmcher, Shiloh Sophia McCloud, Sister Marianne Heib, May Ann Brussat, and many more.

The Encyclopedia of Greeting Card Tools & Techniques

by Susan Pickering Rothamel

This classic resource by Susan Pickering Rothamel belongs on every crafter's bookshelf. Featuring hundreds of handmade cards from leading artists, plus step-by-step photographs of key skills, The Encyclopedia of Greeting Card Tools & Techniques contains a treasure trove of information and projects. Sidebars on today's most creative card makers showcase their areas of expertise, from Dee Gruenig's rubber-stamp designs to Alli Bartkowski's quilling. This crafty celebration is sure to inspire.

How to Make Greeting Cards: step-by-step tips and techniques for card making

By Catherine Pooler

Making cards is an amazing creative outlet. It's also a great way to make someone's day! 
How to Make Greeting Cards will show you exactly how to make cards with easy, step-by-step tutorials starting with the basics with how to cut card stock, choosing supplies, then moving on to making simple cards. 
After the basics, we'll take it to the next level by showing you how to incorporate a few fun techniques with glitter, punches and sponges. 
You will also learn how to save time and money by making several cards at once. Great for gift sets and holiday cards! 
How to Make Greeting Cards will get you started with this great hobby and inspire you to take it even further! 

29 pages long. 
Photo and written tutorials. 
Video links are included! 
If you are having trouble viewing this e-book on your Kindle, there is a link to download the beautiful, full color PDF format. Questions? Please e-mail the author.

Starting Your Own Line of Greeting Cards

by Stephanie Laird

This kindle book will walk you through what I have done to create my own line of greeting cards and where I sell them. This is definitely a short and sweet book hence the 1.99 price tag. I could fill it with a lot of filler info and repeat information that is already available to you. I choose not to do that as I believe all our time is valuable. I did include what works for me and hope that you find some inspiration for what will work for you! Thank you for your interest!

I hope that you find some of these books useful, let me know if you have or if you have found any other books useful. 

More Links for Inspiration

I will start with my favourite sites, if you are looking for inspiration, free stuff, supplies, tips and more then you might not get past the first few sites. The other sites are well worth a look even if you do not like my first few as I have tried to mix things up a bit. In my life before crafting I have trained thousands of people and even trained people to train other people, so I know that people learn in different ways, so that what may work for one person may not work for another.

If you like the style of this blog then great, why not leave a comment and let me know what you like and what you want more of. If you do not like this style then that is ok as well but before you go why not have a look at some of the sites that I have listed, they may be better suited to your needs, after all I am only trying to pass on information to help others.

Crafts U Print  if you only look at one site then look at this one. It has supplies and kits for sale, tips, tutorials, forum, free stuff, competitions and much more.

My Grafico A selling site where you can get supplies and kits, tips, tutorials, free stuff and more.

Digi Design Resort A site where you can buy supplies and kits to make greeting cards, they also have a forum, tips, tutorials and free stuff.

Other sites worth looking at.

Noths selling site for every thing crafty and gifts.

Biscuiteers selling site for biscuits.

Craft Seller craft magazine website.

Clive Photographer website of Clive Sawyer Freelance photographer.

Dottie 4 Crafts selling website for supplies.

Craft Creations selling website that has a blog and forum as well as free projects.

ihubbub an all in one site for you to sell you crafts and help on how to do it.

Pond Skipper Crafts selling supplies and offering free stuff and links to other great sites.

Boriana Giormova social media profile of a crafter on Google+.

Sites that have regular competitions to win stuff.

Pinkgem Designs

Funky Hand

Ladybug Crafts Ink

hotp

Sarah Paris

Some more sits that offer freebies.

The Girl Creative

Design Eat Repeat

Cruzines

I know that this has been a short post but I hope that you find it useful. If you have please let your friends know about or even leave a comment to let me know what you liked and what you would like more of. Next time I will be looking at forums where you can find like minded people that are willing to offer help and tips as well as links to other great sites. All links were live at time of publishing.

Greeting Card Universe for Inspiration

 

Many artists now use print on demand sites (POD) as a great way to get their art out in front of the public. This brings many advantages to both the artist and you the buyer of art, not lest of which is the cost and access to people from around the world.

 

 

For the artist is the saving of not having to pay up front to have a selection of their art printed in different sizes and on different products so that their stall at the local craft fair will look appealing to the public. Not to mention the cost of renting the stall at the craft fair and cost, hassle of getting their work too and from the craft fair and setting up the stall. For some artists the though of selling their art or worse still being face to face with the public and having to talk about their art gives them such anxiety that they give up before they even start.

 

 

POD sites take a lot of this away for the artist, for a relatively small up front fee and or a percentage the artist can upload all of their work onto a POD site and even have their art available on products the artist had not even though of. In addition to the above the artist also has no worries about taking payment, packing & shipping, printing or returns as the POD site takes care of all of this and more.

 

 

So what about you the buyer, what do you get out of the POD site? First and foremost is a huge selection of art and artists, on a range of products, far bigger than you would get at any craft fair. You get to see and buy the art of up and coming artists from around the world that can not be found any where else. You also get to see styles and subjects of art that you like and not what is dictated by some manager whose main concern is how well the greeting card will sell!

 

 

So who are these POD sites? Well they come in all sizes and styles but two of the biggest have to be Zazzle and Cafepress they both offer art on a huge range of products as well as greeting cards. Then you get sites like Redbubble and Fine Art America that started off more focused on the artists needs but over time have grown to look after the buyer as well.

 

 

If you are looking for greeting cards then one POD site stands out from the rest, Greeting Card Universe as they only sell greeting cards, their motto is “Any greeting card imaginable” this is followed up with “if you do not see what you are looking for just ask”. If you can not find a greeting card for the occasion or with the subject or in the style you want, then you can leave a message on the site telling them what you want, this is then passed on to all the artists on the site, you will then be sent a link to where the new cards that the artists have produced. Secondly, if you find a greeting card that is almost perfect but just needs a few changes then you can contact the artist directly and ask them to make the changes, all this at no extra cost to you.

 

 

Greeting Card Inspiration on Twitter

Cute Dazzled Bug Birthday Cards by borianag
Shop for a card with zazzle.com

Following on from my last post this time I will be looking at finding inspiration on the social network site Twitter. At first look social network sites can be a bit overwhelming, from how you set up your account with followers or groups, circles of friends, family or others. Then there is how you interact on the site and what type of language is acceptable, even if upper case letters are classed as shouting. Once you have got past all the tech stuff they all break down the same way and that is the people using them.

Abstract Christmas Tree in light green with season Greeting Card by martinspaperstore
Check out Christmas Cards online at zazzle

The first type of people that use social network sites only want to interact with their friends, family and colleagues. Most of these people believe that the internet is for their own privet use and get quite upset even hostile when they find out that strangers can “listen in on their privet conversation posted on the internet!”. Avoid these people like the plague.

Happy 34th Birthday Flower Pansy Greeting Cards by martinspaperstore
Check out more Happy 34th birthday Cards at Zazzle

The next group of people take the social network sites on face value, they accumulate friends or followers and they like to share what they have found on the internet. These people can be a great resource of inspiration but are erratic in the subject matter that they deliver, be careful some of their friends or followers will fit into the category above.

Color Pencils Cards by hlehnerer
Browse more Color Cards

The next group are companies that are hoping to grow their brand and interaction with customers. Some companies are a source of inspiration in of them self’s, while others share inspiration of others. Companies tend to have quite a narrow area of inspiration but a very rich one as they have lots of money and people to invest in it.

Card with Quote - Baby Grey Owl by PhotographyByPixie
See other Grey owl Cards at zazzle

The last group of people are artists; some of them only share their own art which in its self can be a great source of inspiration but many of them not only share their own art but the art of others as well. This can be a great source of inspiration on a wide number of subjects and styles. Best of all, many of the artists below are willing to share your art with their followers if only you interact with them, once you have got your inspiration back that is.

Purple Spiral Fractal Art Pattern Greeting Card by hippygiftshop
Browse Purple pattern Cards

On twitter if people want others that are not following them to find their tweets (posts) they use an hash tag # like #Birthday, #art, #photo or #Christmas. If you want to find tweets on a subject then just type in what you are looking for. On twitter you only have 140 characters per tweet so the search results are targeted unlike some sites where you can add a thesaurus of tags that have nothing to do with the post.

Red and Black Swirl Hearts Birthday Card by PhotographyByPixie
Check out more Red black Cards at Zazzle

Below are some links to people on twitter. Their art work is awesome, they are grate to interact with and they are very generous in sharing other peoples work to their followers. 

@PhotoByPixie @FotosFred  @ztevetevans  @valleerose24 @martinmelia @countryfreshmus @AgentBertram @LitArtMagazine @ScottysPhotos @hlzazzle @Finkorzak  @TickleArt @HippyGiftShop @moscowmartin @DonnaSiggy @JustWhat0i0want @CreaturesStore @pipnbling @laurieshan @kumebryant @LuisaVenturoli @trendy_artist @JourneyProducti  @juanitamart47 @ZeanaRomanovna @fantasysite @charsfavorite 

WARNING! If you follow all of the above people you could lose months of your life viewing links to great art work.

Very Red Rose White Outline "Love" Cards by FloralbyFred
Look at Flower closeup Cards online at Zazzle.com

Seriously if you want to know what Twitter can do for you then following the above people will give you a great insight as to what Twitter can do and the inspiration it can bring. Do not be mislead by how many followers the above accounts have, because of the power of Re-Tweets most of the above people have their tweets seen by hundreds of thousands of people every day and some of them number in the millions.

Sea at Night Card by PinkHurricane
Browse more Paper Cards

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