Time flies! Semester II is almost here, and we will be offering six new courses available from January 13th:

WATERCOLOR II

Our first watercolor course (aptly named Watercolor I from Semester I) focused on color theory and understanding the colors and paints you're working with. With this second step in Watercolor II, we will be building on our previous knowledge, moving on to more color mixing as well as understanding how different base shades mix together.  

We'll be mixing custom colors to match Pantone or printed shades, perfect if you're a calligrapher mixing ink to match a clients invitation.  We'll also look at how to mix custom ink for dip pens. 

PRICING II

This second semester pricing course will dig a bit deeper into the world of pricing. We'll look at specific pricing examples in two industry categories: custom calligraphy projects, and building a pricing sheet as a paper pusher (i.e. stationer).

When we talk about pricing for custom calligraphy projects, this includes oddball projects such as large scale quotes, wedding vows, family crests, large menus, large seating charts, etc. We'll talk about how to price your time as well as the cost of product for these situations. In addition, we'll talk about building your pricing as a calligrapher and the different pricing structures that are available.

The second example we'll get into is pricing paper, printing, assembly details, and your time as a stationer. Having estimates of these costs will help to dramatically cut down the time it takes to return quotes to clients while ensuring accuracy in your pricing. 

CYANOTYPE PRINTING

We love to include interesting creative techniques in our course offerings. As creatives it's so important to continue to explore new techniques and expand our horizons when it comes to our craft.

Cyanotype printing was a method of printing invented in 1842. With its origins in reproductions, specifically blueprints (hence the name), it uses the photographic printing and development process to create gorgeous cyan or prussian blue prints. 

Aside from using cyanotype printing on paper products, I have successfully used it to create lovely unique prints on fabrics, most recently a silk scarf. While it is a process that requires patience and time (and a dark space with no light!), the results are phenomenal. In this course, we will be learning the ins and outs of the process and create some botanical prints! 

DESIGN BOARDS FOR CREATIVES

This course focuses on design boards and how to utilize them in your own creative process to hone in on and communicate design scopes to clients. It works great as a follow up to the Sketching for Creatives and Establishing Your Creative Process courses from Semester I. In fact, we would highly suggest taking at least the Creative Process course before this one, so that you can best put your design boards to work within your creative process. 

Further narrowing your creative process allows for less time doing the back and forth with clients as well as reducing the amount of time spent with too many ideas flying around. Design boards help both you as the creative, as well as your client, keep the end design goals in mind, stay focused, and work more efficiently. In this course we will discuss what design boards are and their purpose within your creative process and go through how to create one effectively. 

BRANDING

In a creative market, branding is king (or queen, but she's a hereditary queen, so the king doesn't outrank her. There's a little monarchy humor for you!). How you brand yourself affects how potential clients view you before they've ever even made contact. 

In this course, we'll look at how to go about branding your company, how to define your brand style, define your market and how to brand for it, and how to design for yourself (we're our hardest clients!).

We'll utilize design boards and sketching, working through our own creative processes, so if you're signed up for class passes of all the Semester I and II courses, definitely consider taking the other ones first! 

TIME MANAGEMENT

Whether you run your own business from a studio, balance a full time job with a side hustle and family, or anything in between, knowing how to prioritize your time is integral to running your business effectively and getting things done.

Learning how to prioritize, eliminate, stay on task and delegate is life changing - it certainly was for me! Going from working 80+ hours a week to working 36 or less and taking the month of December off gave me the energy and drive I needed to build my business and stay sane.  

I've gotten a lot of questions and feedback from students about the difficulty they face in finding enough time in the day to do all the things they need to do. In this course, we'll get into the nitty gritty of necessity, learn how to prioritize our time and tasks, and get more done in a shorter period of time. 

As we finish up 2016 and head into our second semester of Design House Prep School, we are incredibly grateful for all the support we've received from the community. Semester I has been such a great experience for us -- we're so excited to continue offering those classes until the end of next June, and we look forward to continuing to build our community in the spring! 

 

 

Creative: Watercolor I

In our first watercolor course, we will explore color theory, basic color mixing, supplies, and basic applications (we'll be painting fruit!) using several techniques.  The watercolor courses, like the business and pricing courses, are meant to build on one another semester to semester.

 

Establishing Your Creative Process

Honing and refining your creative process is such an incredibly important part of owning and running a profitable creative business.  A consistent workflow helps us manage our clients, set client expectations correctly, correct our time management problems, elevate our client's experience, and ultimately be more profitable.  It also allows us as the creative to drive the creative process rather than our clients being the drivers.

 

 

Finding & Exploring your passion

Many people have a dream to quite the hustle of their day jobs and follow their passion, but that's such a broad idea, where does one even start?  We'll talk about how to find your passion, the "four letter word" (day job), how to leverage it to your advantage, how real the hustle needs to be, what to expect, and when is the right time (if any) to quite the day job to fully pursue your passion.

 

Paper Marbling

So much of what we stand for is establishing, maintaining and nurturing a positive work/life balance and that includes indulging and nurturing your own creativity outside your usual work.  Each semester will hold several creative courses, just to keep the inspiration alive and to expand your horizons.  This creative course is to explore the basic art of paper marbling, the supplies, process and applications.

Beginning in September...

Join us for our maiden semester in learning and growing together.  Design House Prep School is an online workshop series geared toward creative entrepreneurs who want to grow, build and explore their passions, with a focus on creativity, business management, and profitability. 

Our goal is to create a community together to support one another, learn together, and curate a better work/life balance.  Our first semester will begin with 7 courses, combining business focus as well as creative learning.

2016 has brought some really exciting new things for me so far, and we're only a week into it!  I have a really awesome second announcement in a few days that doesn't even have anything to do with workshops!

I've taught calligraphy workshops in the past both in hosting them myself and teaching at Paper Source for several years.  I love teaching and being able to share my passions and obsessions with others, but I've really strayed away from it for a while now and I miss it!  I have so many passions and loves, and anyone who knows me personally know that those passions tend to overflow into all other aspects of my life.  There are so many hobbies I've collected over the years, experiences I've learned from, and business mistakes and successes and I want to share that!

That all being said, I've decided to teach a series of workshops throughout the coming year to touch on all sorts of things.  My current obsession and the focus of my attention is how to make money as a creative; creating a solid and consistent brand, and using that brand to target your ideal client and learning how to turn that into a money making business.  I'm obsessed with studying it and can't wait to share it!

Many of the workshops will be geared towards creative businesses (experienced or inexperienced!), but don't fret!  There will be plenty for the hobbyist as well!

2016 brings another big change in my life.  I'll (FINGERS CROSSED) be moving soon (yet again.  This will make five major moves in two years, in addition to another 6 moves in and out of storage units and a 3,000 mile cross country move).  Johnathan and I are house hunting for our forever home and are getting our currenthouse ready to sell.  Something that is in the forefront of my mind as we house hunt is finding a home that has a large enough space or studio that I can host workshops in my own home (I mean, how awesome would that be!!).  It would make set up a breeze and I would be able to host anything from an intimate class of just a handful all the way up to a full sized class. 

Being from California where everything is so spread out, I love how (relatively) close together everything on the east coast is!  I would love to also be able to host traveling attendees who are driving in from other cities to attend (Hello, DC and NYC, I'm talking to you girls!).

Right now, I'm asking for anyone who is interested to get signed up so I can see which classes are the most requested and who's interested, that way when I have some dates solidified, I'll be able to let you know. 

Head over here to get signed up!