Creative Camper Connie – Day 2

My word for the day–Clip, clip, clip..

 Have you ever had a time when you felt like your brain was growing? A time when   “growing pains” were exploding in your head? In a good way believe me…

The Creative Camp is truly just that – you are stretched to your creative limits, pushed to expand your thoughts and ideas to be inventive, with suggestive guidance of course.

The teachers are all so knowledgeable, their collective years of experience are, dare I say, centuries’ worth of experience??

Ann Johnson worked today from   the   book,  The Curtain Maker’s Handbook, by Moreland written in the late 1800’s. Can you believe they used to do sketches on the actual walls around the windows back in the day? We are so lucky to have all the technology we have today with   the instant graph paper options we can use, click to scale, good thing we don’t have to make our patterns onsite at the client’s homes….of course, the homes they described in the book were probably vacant for months at a time, as they must have had numerous homes, don’t you think?

 Clip here, clip there…all I can think of is clipping the wings on a bird,   you see we’ve been making wings today, and clipping away most of the day!

 Karen Barnes had some awesome designs with her Specialty Shaped Cornices, and   we’ve each made some terrific samples. The hands-on experience with her guidance just made the project flow, just can’t imagine otherwise….we stapled, clipped and glued our way through the afternoon.

 So I am at “Camp”, and it is beautiful here, but what happened to getting some great outdoor time?? We are running a tight ship here, every minute is jam packed and  those mind bursting moments are about shoving me to ask for a nap time!  We are well equipped though, available  baskets ever ready with Bandaids, Excedrin, hand sanitizers, even Breathe Right strips for those “roomies” we listened to all night, but we really need to have some  Ginseng packs for extra brain  metabolism!

 Evening rolls around and we sit back and are reminded that yes, we all love what we do, but are we really getting paid what we should be? Missy Martin gave us all a wake up call, have you ever walked around your table looking for your scissors? Once, twice-even more- well  a new trick will help you pay for your vacation this year- you will save hours per year by attaching your scissors to your apron with a cording of sorts, you will never lose them again-  just be careful though- no elastic cording, flying scissors could cost you that vacation, or more!

Last but not least, the day wrapped up with Chris Watts and some fabulous solutions for   Roman Shades, what to do   to retrofit and new ideas for a realistic design in today’s market. We’ll get through this Roman Shade dilemma, with our creative brains, of course we will. The   latest challenge   I learned from her   though was about a new “Redesign” topic… The hot dog?  Do they really have an idea of how many kids have choked on hot dogs? Hard to believe, but true.

  A few tips from the day to share:

             A must read-Kitty Stein’s book, Price your work with Confidence- (I’d suggest re-reading it if you have it)

             Sharp scissors and “Creative clipping” go hand in hand- get your scissors sharpened!

Connie Valente