Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

Every Family Has A Story…

Although I’ve scrapbooked most of my life, recently I’ve been focusing on family heritage albums and pages.  I found as I was sorting my older photos that I was very curious as to who all these strangers were in my photographs and just how I was related to each one! Genealogy helps us map all our family lines to create family trees.  Family trees make understanding our family connections a little easier. 

A family tree page can make things very straightforward for you.  The page has spaces for writing the names of members of your family tree including the family relationship (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins). 

You can also use the Family Tree Guidebook, which is an easy to read, easy to understand handbook for helping you create a lush family tree.

I’d also like to recommend the following websites, all of which are filled with great genealogy information, resources, printable forms, and research tips. Cyndi’s List is world famous and very user friendly.  Resources For Family Historians provides endless help in many areas of family research.

My favorite family heritage story is also a little embarrassing.  I wrote a book called, Creating Your Family Heritage Scrapbook: From Ancestors to Grandchildren, Your Complete Resource and Idea Book for Creating a Treasured Heirloom, with an editor I’d been working with for years.  Once the book was published, my cousin Jeff, our family’s serious family historian called and asked me why I didn’t tell him I’d written the book with a relative.  Basically I told my dear cousin Jeff that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard in my life, I’d written the book with an editor who happened to be a friend, not a family member. 

I even called my editor to tell him just how crazy my cousin Jeff was!  Not fifteen minutes later the editor called back to say he’d checked with his aunt (his family historian who happened to be a genealogist) and it was indeed a fact that we were related.  Our great great grandfathers were brothers.  How wild was that!  I humbly called my very sane cousin Jeff to tell him what a brilliant family historian he was!  Families do have the most wonderful stories to tell, we all just need to be quiet and listen.

Do you have a family heritage story to tell?  Have you created a family history or heritage page or scrapbook?  Please share it with us. And if it turns out we are related? I promise not to call you crazy!

I’ll confess that I love jewelry even though I don’t wear a lot of it.  I especially love jewelry that my friends have made just for me!  Jewelry is the craze no matter what the season, but look for big, bold, chunky, and sassy to be the style of jewelry for the rest of 2008.  Think hot pink, fuchsia, turquois, deep blue sea, and in your face green!  Beads are going to be bigger than we’ve seen in a few seasons and with lots of fun crazy shapes.

Clasps aren’t just for keeping a bracelet on your wrist or necklace around your neck.  Top jewelry designers are making clasps part of the overall design of the jewelry piece.  Just like a focal bead, the beautiful clasps are front and center.  While clasps are being shown off, earring findings are getting petite and very simple so that the finding almost disappears allowing a focus on drop gems, stones, beads, and more.

Buttons also seem to be having a revival in jewelry making.  You’ll be seeing all kinds of button jewelry from rings to hair bobbles to anklets.  Old buttons are being mixed with new buttons.  Plain buttons are being mixed with novelty buttons.  It’s a great craft for young and old.  I’ve got a stash of buttons given to me by dozens of people and I store the buttons in old glass jars as part of my studio décor.

Jewelry is always in fashion.  Making your own jewelry pieces allows you to personalize your jewelry to your personality, wardrobe, and mood.  You can string, weave, glue, sew, and so much more in this craft category.  There is something for everyone!

Classic: a trend that has survived over a long period of time; examples are “that little black dress” or the teddy bear

Color: a phenomenon of light or visual perception that enables one to differentiate identical items

Color Value: lightness or darkness of a color.

Consistency: the thinness or thickness of a medium

Contrast: the sharp difference between two colors

Fad: interest followed for a brief time with exaggerated zeal or craze

Hue: the name of a pure color or interchanged with the word color

In: current trend; for example, nostalgia is in

Intensity: color’s purity or strength

Lifestyle: broad view of an individual or society’s beliefs, habits, living, career, and home

Medium: material or surface being used; examples include wood, fabric, paper, clay, or plastic

Motif: another term for theme

Out: no longer a trend or fad;

Primary colors: red, blue, yellow

Secondary colors: mixing of primary colors; green, orange, purple

Shade: a color plus black

Technique: Skill being used; examples include weaving, cropping, photography, rubber stamping

Theme: subject, topic, or motif; examples include nature, family, or friends

Tint: a color plus white

Tone: a color plus gray

Trend: a general direction taken, a current style or preference, vogue; usually builds over a period of time as opposed to a fad.

Trending: trying to predict or examine large-scale popularity of a theme, motif, or item

Yesterday: same as Out

Trends by definition should be techniques, motifs, colors, and supplies that grow in popularity over time versus a fad, which comes and goes in a blink of an eye. There are trends that are standing the test of time and should be taken into consideration when you are ordering, scheduling classes or demos, and planning your merchandise displays.

American lifestyles began changing as we entered the new millennium. Americans wanted more time to spend at home with family and friends. The tragedy of 9/11 and war brought this change in lifestyle to a new level. This change explains the popularity of many of our current motif or style trends. More often than not, these trends and themes represent a journey or visit back home or to childhood. Places where the consumer can relax and unwind.

• Garden & Nature
• Western, Lodge & Country
• Simple Lines & Patterns
• Collectibles like teddy bears and dolls
• Quiet Blues, Greens & Browns
• Roses, Bees, Butterflies & Dragonflies
• Water Fountains
• Sea and Sea Life
• Family & Friends
• Photography
• Digital & Cyber Communication

Help In Finding The Trends

Lifestyles make up our trends, but lifestyles always change is subtle ways. How do you keep up with the changes? Here’s a basic list of ways to keep up to date. These basic tips are helpful to all of us in the creative industry.

• Try to attend at least one trade and consumer show a year
• Read scrapbooking and craft consumer magazines, as well as Craftrends Magazine and its exclusive MemoryTrends section
• Watch the gift market
• Read home decor magazines
• Visit a local art and craft show for inspiration
• Observe the displays in furniture and home accessory shops
• Keep color, fabric, ribbon, lace, yarn, and other swatches handy
• Keep a notebook and pen handy for quick notes
• Keep a file system organized by themes like Americana, Garden, Victorian, and also by craft like paper, painting, jewelry, or dolls
• Find the common themes and threads of what appeals to you … these are the trends

Exercise In Trend Spotting

Here is an activity you might try quarterly or yearly. Involve your entire staff and maybe a few of your regular customers.

• Look through all types of magazines and catalogs. Cut out pictures and colors that catch your eye. Collect any photos available to you.
• Divide a poster board vertically in half. On one side glue or tape down pictures and photos. On the other side, write: Colors, Textures, Objects/Themes, and Techniques, leaving space for you to fill-in with responses from observing the pictures and photos.
• For example: You cut out a bright quilt, a family at a picnic, and an ad for Christmas toys. Colors: Bright, Bold, Red, Blue, and Pink. Textures: Soft, Warm, Flat, and Smooth. Objects/Themes: Home, Family, Outdoors, Fun, Pleasure. Techniques: Quilting, Sewing, Cooking, Woodworking, and Staining.
• Place finished Trend Board above your work area and keep adding to it as the year goes on. It can be a reference guide when deciding new lines and updating current product lines.

A Few More Tips

• Create an index box of ideas to develop … one idea per card.
• Sit in a mall or visit stores and watch the customers. Look for common bonds or common themes.
• Cut out appealing displays and designs from magazines and catalogs. Keep these clippings in a folder to review when you need inspiration.
• Take a minute to review all new books and current magazines.
• Talk with customers. What are the customers doing with the products they purchase? Did they find everything they were looking for?
• Visit model homes in your community. Most are decorated by top interior designers who stay on top of trends in color, motif, and textures.

You Are The Expert!

Don’t let trends and trending overwhelm you. As a member of the creative industry and of your own local community you probably know more than any “expert”. Trust your instincts when selecting new products and incorporating new trends. Trends are to be used as guides. Trends let you know what is happening in the big picture and you need to use the trends to help in your smaller part of that picture.