Thank You

Just over five years ago, my soon-to-be-bigger family moved into a new home. A new scrapbooker myself, I spent my lunch hours working on the moving announcements I had meticulously designed. Excited about how they turned out, I listed them for sale on eBay. Wouldn't you know, I received an order for 100 of them while I was in the hospital delivering "Thing 2."

Those first few nights (or couple of weeks) with my newest newborn were spent making the order. Exhausted from the baby, and even more exhausted from not sleeping while he was so I could finish the order, you can imagine how elated I was when a couple weeks after having shipped the order, I received a "bonus" from the customer, who was so tickled by how they turned out!

Five years later, I look back at my business with mixed emotions. It's been a bumpy road, to say the least. Like my grand idea of listing hundreds of custom, hand-made cards for sale while eight-months pregnant, many of my ideas haven't been so "grand." In fact, there have been catastophic mistakes. But along the road I have made WONDERFUL friends, and have received many thoughtful Thank You cards from customers. I can't even express my appreciation for these tokens.

The last five years have taken me from a little shop on eBay to a lovely office in downtown Troy, Ohio. They've seen me through a serious illness (please, everyone, have your thyroid checked regular if you're feeling fatigued, are gaining weight for no reason, and/or are regularly facing serious depression), the loss of my full-time job and also the loss of several family members. Most recently, they've seen the business go full-circle from having just me, to having one employee, then two (different) employees, and just this week back to only me again.

If you're still reading this and are wondering "What's the point?", I'll sum it up. I want to say thank you. Thank you to all the customers I've had over the past five years. Thank you to those of you who read to the bottom of this post. Thank you to those of you who were patient with me when orders were delayed, or when I had family emergencies. Thank you to my friends and family who have been there for me when I needed someone to vent to, or to bounce ideas off of. And thank you to second chances... and third ones...

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and remember to take time to reflect on all the blessings you have in your life.

~Kim, Owner

Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts

My Family, Thanksgiving 2005

Surviving in this Scrappy Economy

It's been four years since Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts "officially" started selling supplies on eBay, and in August we will celebrate our fourth anniversary for Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts's website. While there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about how great it would be to have a retail location, I can't help but to feel fortunate that we haven't had to shut our doors, er, site, like so many of the stores and manufacturers around us.

Since November 2007, I have seen 9 local stores (that's ALL our local brick-and-mortar scrapbooking stores) close their doors, and at least 3 of my favorite manufacturers have either closed or are getting ready to close up shop. The latest casualty is one of my all-time favorites, Rusty Pickle. One of the first manufacturers that I ever carried, Rusty Pickle designed and manufactured supplies that truly catered to the one-of-a-kind scrapbookers.

Two of my favorite Rusty Pickle papers were "I Will Not Kiss Boys" and "Vintage Crayons."

Six months ago, the loss of Daisy D's made me think about all the themes I would love to see in the scrapbooking racks. I won't deny, I've now got a bucketful and have been working on designing the Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts scrapbooking collections. Look for the first releases to occur in late 2010 or early 2011!

While scrapbooking, don't forget to support your local scrapbooking shop (or online shop). While convenience may draw you to your local Target or Walmart, it is the small, non-big-box shops which keep all the super-creative one-of-a-kind smaller manufacturers in business. And if the individuality and creativity of your scrapbooking layouts mean as much to you as they do to me, you truly value these manufacturers.

Some of my favorite manufacturers are:

Piggy Tales

Jenni Bowlin

Paper House Productions

QuicKutz (yes, they are a relatively small company, but with a BIG reputation!)

Flair Designs

I know we've all heard the expression "on to bigger and better things", however I encourage everyone to seek out the smaller and better instead!

Sketch of the Week 02-28-2010

I've learned to carry a notebook with me wherever I go. This afternoon I picked up Creating Keepsakes and Paper Crafts magazines, and while waiting for Thing 1 at his guitar lesson was lucky enough to get through 20 pages of CK (February 2010) undisturbed. You must understand, it is a rare occasion that I can read 2 pages of anything undisturbed.

While I have been inspired by the Sketch of the Week notion in the past, this CK issue made me decide it is a MUST for Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts. I immediately felt inspired to design the first week's sketch and when I got back to the office I laid it out on Illustrator right away. You may now find Kaleidoscope Cards and Crafts first weekly Sketch of the Week on our Facebook page or look down just a little further!

Why should you be interested in our Sketch of the Week? Because of the potential to win a $25 KCC store credit!

I'm stokked about the possibilities the Sketch of the Week will offer to me, the company and our customers. Not only will it allow me (and force me, ha!) to prepare my own layouts for the neglected scrapbook albums, but hopefully it will give inspiration to our customers as well!

If you decide to participate in the Sketch of the Week activities, please post your layout for the week in the Facebook album and/or Kaleidoscope gallery by 11:59pst Saturday night. To be entered for a chance at this weeks $25 prize, this first week's layout is due by 11:59pm EST Saturday, March 6.

Fontastic!

This past week I have been studying typography, and I must say I find it VERY interesting! I always loved finding the "perfect" font for my projects, but I never understood all the ins and outs of typography. That's not to say I do now, however I know a little more than I did last week! For instance, a "Serif" is the little cross-stroke that comes off the end of letters. (See the bottom of the S in the picture below)

When preparing our scrapbooking layouts, there are so many font options available to us, including our own handwriting. Even on a tight budget, a layout can go from "Blah" to "Ah!" using only your computer, printer and internet connection!

Several years ago my "Thing 1" was Shrek for Halloween. Nearly nine-months pregnant with "Thing 2" and confined to the home, I was unable to visit the local scrapbooking store to buy Shrek scrapbooking supplies. (This was before I had a store of my own!) To my joy, after searching for "Shrek font" on Google I found one that resembled Shrek's head shape! I downloaded it to my computer, typed up the text I wanted, and printed the type onto regular printer paper. I then used removable adhesive to adhere the paper to my cardstock and used my X-Acto to cut the letters out.



After spicing it up with some gold embossing powder, this is how it turned out...






Today, with the help of my Silhouette Digital Craft Cutter, the act of cutting out the letters would take two minutes instead of two hours, however should I be at away from the office, I can still do it using X-Acto method.

If you're looking for new fonts, I have found the following sites to be great:

• 1001 Free Fonts
• Dafont
• FontLoft

If you're unsure of what you want to say or how you want your journaling to appear, take a step back. Perhaps leave the layout alone for a few days and let the project sit in the back of your mind. Rather than rushing into the journaling or title and committing to something that looks sloppy, put your best font forward and make it count.