The “Sound” of the Qwerkywriter from Qwerkytoys, INC on Vimeo.
The Fox Princess
Our Mys.Coleoptera is a teen now and felt disconnected from her “Paper Princess” column. With our newly found freedom, it was good timing for her to come up with a new persona for herself. She will continue creating paper joy for all of us – prints, paper toys, and other lovelies as well as some new interactives – but her column will now be under the guise of her totem’s influence as “Rock. Paper. Fox”.
Reveling in paper-based creative joy on a daily basis is an occupational hazard of living in our house. We love playing games of every type, so the idea of rock, paper, scissors is playful. Add in that her totem is fox and and it becomes more personal.
So, to my Mys.Coleoptera: I wish you a future full of new ideas, enough time and focus to implement them, a wealth of paper joy to share, and the start of something beautiful! I’m proud of you, baby. xxoo
You can find her work online here.
Epiphany
“I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was.
If you know this, you can begin again,
with pure joy in the uprooting.”
― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters
When I first got the idea for Kraft Paper Muse in 2006, it was as a compilation of all of my loves and the desire to be able to use my talents and skills – design, zines, handmade, tutorials, and artsy-craftsy goodness – while bringing other creatives along for the ride so that they could share too. With technology taking more of a foothold in my life, my own design work was evolving with the times along with my skillsets and I moved toward a more time efficient way of thinking. Our relaunch last year bore one issue – our 2nd, Textile – as I was swept away by the rest of my life. Being a one-woman show on the backend was a learning process.
Above anything else, though, has been the desire to create something of beauty that could be shared. And I have never wanted that sharing of soul to be inhibited by money.
Doing Something Very Freeing
Everything has been evolving rather quickly on this end. We launched on MagCloud, a fabulous platform but not for us, then a few weeks ago I moved it to my personal Etsy shop with the hopes that it would feel more at home there. What I realized, though, was that it was the involvement of money that was throwing me off. So. Decision made.
Kraft Paper Muse will be available as a free download from now on.
I will change over everything next week, so for now it is still available on Etsy if you would like to make a “donation”. I’ll announce it on our social media as well as post to the site so stay tuned in. Increasing circulation will attract advertisers and sponsorship, which in turn will provide the funding to cover our expenses. With the interest we have gotten so far, I am confident this is the way it should be. And along with this very freeing act, we are making other changes that feel right too.
Thank you for being along for the ride. We are looking forward to sharing more with you!
Kraft Paper Muse magazine now on Etsy!
We’ve made a shift from our home MagCloud to Etsy! Now a digital only magazine, we are hoping to expedite things on this end to bring you more content. To celebrate, use the coupon code KPME02 at checkout for 2.00 off your instant download of our Textile issue, or use it for any purchase over 12.00. We’re at a publishing conference this weekend, but will be back with updates next week on our upcoming Sustainability and Education issues! Thank you for being here.
Organizing Contacts
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to spend a few days with our staff writer, Erin Thursby, while pitching Art for Cures‘ Pink@Heart project at One Spark in Jacksonville, Florida. The event was a huge success and we made some fabulous contacts over the course of the five day event. Coming home, the next few days were spent doing data entry and figuring out how to organize all of the contacts we had made into something actionable.
Being freelance and constantly networking, I am familiar with having to wade through handfuls of business cards and promotional postcards after events, art shows, and conferences. My prior system involved notating everything by hand with a date, location, and any notes on what was discussed or actions I needed to take. There was always a card (more than one) that wouldn’t take pen, or would smear beyond anything legible, and there wasn’t always an opportunity to stop and make notes.
Yay for digital. It changed everything.
A long-time fan of Evernote, and in an effort to go paperless, I wanted to find a way of organizing contacts to make everything accessible and cross-referenced. I’d already been tagging images – sorting them into mood boards and reference material for my work – so I played with it a little and came up with the following system for my business cards and I couldn’t be happier.
HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR BUSINESS CARDS AND GO PAPERLESS
First, sign up for a free Evernote account. Using this link will help us cover the expense of our premium membership…
- In Evernote, create one folder called “Business Cards”. One folder is all you will need, no matter how many projects you have, you can cross-reference everything using tags. You will want to keep ALL of your business cards in this one folder.
- Everytime you get a business card, snap a photo of it with your Evernote app on your smartphone or tablet. Do it as a photo, doing it as a post-it note creates a larger file and takes longer.
- Name your photo with the date, the contact’s company, name, or both; whatever is more relevant. This system is for you so do what works. For example, for me I would label it “042314_StateFarm_Kirk”. Sometimes I will include something identifying in the photo so I know where I met them, but most times I just make note of it via tags. Example, “One Spark”, “Jacksonville”.
- Cross-reference everything with tags, I don’t find a need to file business cards with their coordinating project. And even if you forget to title your photo, which I do on regular occasion, Evernote will date it for you and you can look up everything using your tags so you can add it in later if you choose to.
PRIORITIZING INTO A FOLLOW-UP PLAN
I prioritize all of my business cards (bc) by tagging them with the following system:
“bcAction” – Follow up this week as soon as possible.
“bcNext” – Follow up next week; make sure to shift your tags each Sunday as necessary.
“bcBack” – Valuable, but not actionable right now. Keep them in mind, but backburner for now.
Tagging everything with a specific project it may apply to will help as well.
IMPLEMENTING IT ALL INTO AN ACTION PLAN
Organizing things so you know what to act on won’t help you if you don’t follow up, so make sure you do. One thing that helps me is reviewing everything Sunday night for the following week. I make a checklist – usually by hand, but sometimes in Evernote – so I know what to pull. The best part of this system? I can easily change the tags in Evernote without having to move files around.
RELIANCE
With this system, Evernote syncs with online cloud storage so you are covered. But. I am working on another article, though, regarding my recent mobile dependency failure though so, trust me, it pays to keep an address book as a backup. Always have a backup. To go truly paperless, you need to tie in with Dropbox or some other type of backup storage online or off.
Happy organizing!
Office supply fetish gone wild
Tech-head or not, there is just something about office supplies that stirs the blood. Guillaume Blanchet, a French filmmaker based in Montreal, has taken it to a whole new level, though…and with a slew of awards and screenings! It was so inventive we just had to share.
Recycled inspiration
How to Publish a Magazine in Under 7 Years
The past few months have been a whirlwind of ideas, planning, thumbnail sketches, and research. It has also been an interesting learning experience.
I got my feet wet in the publishing industry working for MacMillan in the late 80s and was totally hooked. I got my first real experience on a Macintosh (back when you said the whole word and desktop publishing was the buzz) working as an Art Director and assistant-everything for a tiny, nationally distributed paranormal magazine. I later went on to publish a zine for a large roleplay group for over a year, with a staff of seven writers, the highlight of which was (poorly) interviewing Charles de Lint. Since then I have made handmade zines (including the original KPM back in 2006) both solo and with groups back when cut and paste with a glue stick, white out, and a photocopier were your tool options. Ahh, the hours of standing and the smell of toner…don’t miss it.
Publishing for mobile devices, whole new beast.
Being self-taught in most things has its advantages. There is a constant, inherent urge to research and a thirst to learn that drives you from day to day. I tend to jump in with both feet, reverse engineering things on my way down the rabbit hole. It works most of the time and, when it doesn’t, you learn to adapt and improvise very quickly. Being ADD means I have a million ideas all at once, and can multi-plan several issues, which makes for a very creative life that is never boring. Thankfully I am an avid journaler. The downside is that you constantly have to renew your focus when the world around you vies for your attention on multiple levels.
Our goal for Kraft Paper Muse, and something we will be pitching on Kickstarter, is to have the magazine printed versus going through a print-on-demand service. While MagCloud gives me a tremendous advantage in not having to front printing costs, print-on-demand base pricing tends to be high and doesn’t allow for a very good profit margin. KPM was started as an artistic outlet, for myself and others, but also to help fund Art for Cures; KPM will be making a donations quarterly and we are going for 501c3 status this year.
The other advantage to printing it ourselves? Lots of inclusions to tuck in and mail our readers, like a true zine.
Each month, we will be offering a bonus to our readers as well as giveaways here on the site. On a recent outing to visit friends in Jacksonville, they took us to Chamblin Book Mine, a 55,000 square foot used/rare maze of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (take string or breadcrumbs and a cell phone, no lie, we got lost) where I scored a stack of various Nick Bantock books prime for gifting. Bantock has been one of the biggest creative influences in my life, so I love inspiring others with his work…and I just love giving stuff away.
So with that teaser floating around your mind of things to come, I will leave you with the anticipation of our 3rd issue, Sustainability, on the fast approaching horizon.
Ria
And we are LIVE!
Though late, our Textile issue is live and available now through MagCloud HERE.
We hope you enjoy this first issue in our new format. We are fledgling, but love what we do, so we are looking forward to bringing you future content. We will be posting a little added content for our Textile issue here as well. We want your feedback, so please take a moment after you peruse our first issue and leave us some “constructive” criticism. We welcome reviews!
You can stay posted for future updates by subscribing to our newsletter below. Just add your first name (optional) and your email address and you will be notified when we have updates.
May’s issue will available this week, so we hope to see you then!
By Ana Maria Selvaggio in Kraft Paper Muse, 2013
46 pages, published 4/29/2013
Kraft Paper Muse is about merging the analog and digital sides of our lives into a creative whole. Every medium in the creative scope is fair game and we hope you will help us discover more! Every issue includes interactive components as well. The Muse is about you.
A test run in Paisley Pink
After our Textile issue interview with Stephen Fraser of Spoonflower, we decided to play around with Renmeleon‘s tutorials. After learning to draw a paisley by hand, we went digital and turned it into a fabric pattern! We have a lot to learn about designing textiles, this is our first Spoonflower design, so we welcome “contructive” criticism from any veteran Spoonflower designers out there willing to lend a hand.
Ok, back to reading our copy of Mastering the Art of Fabric Printing and Design!
Note: We will be making this available for sale as soon as we get a good look at our test swatch.