Vote1Hello dear friends and Happy Easter! It has been 6 months since I have sat down to write about our growing business. We have been very busy, and we just had our 3 year anniversary! If any of you have been following us on our social media channels, you know that we have moved our studio into a real office space. In-between projects we are getting the space ready to photograph so we can give you a full tour! Here is a sneak peek of our craft room, which is already bursting at the seams. Believe me, it doesn’t look this tidy anymore.

Today I am going to talk about making videos and being on television! In my Confessions Part 1 post, I shared a bit about my vision of growing from a solo blogger into a community of designers, crafters and teachers that expands broad and reaches as far as possible. Yes! It is happening! And I talked about the dream of having our own TV show to give that extra reach. Big dream, right? I do love a good challenge.

Let’s start with videos: I have been deeply convinced for quite sometime that a video tutorial is one of the best ways to teach crafting. We are visual people! The bad news is that I am a bit of a perfectionist. Ahem. Okay, maybe more than a bit. In the beginning I just couldn’t bring myself to set up my iPhone and do the little selfie videos. Yes, hiring a video crew is an investment! Though selfie videos may have been a frugal place to start, I instead found sponsors for my self-produced videos and volunteered to teach for other sites. Any opportunity was a way to gather experience and learn to be comfortable in front of a camera. Confession. . . It is a lot of work to produce even a two minute video. The hours to prep, set-up, lighting, shooting, editing, recording voice over. . . all for few minutes of video. Even with the extra work it takes, I can not lie, I love creating videos! I love showing in motion how to create beautiful things. One of the best tips someone gave me early on was to act as if I was talking to my best friend. Ignore the camera! It takes a bit of practice and a lot of letting go of  the ego, but that method works and the butterflies have permanently flown out of my stomach. In the last three years we have built a library of 31 videos (a few produced by the Cricut team), I have taught 13 video classes for Creativebug, 6 video tutorials for Michaels and a 2 hour class for Craftsy. The best is yet to come. I am going to tell you all a little secret because I am so excited! Next week we are starting to shoot a new video series for our site. The first series will launch in May and there will be more to follow. One more step towards my dream. 😉

Moving on to television: This year, one of my goals is to get onto national media television. You know, as in Good Morning America, The Today Show and maybe even Ellen. Oh. . . and do I dream of being on one of Oprah’s shows. Yes please! For a national television show to consider me, I had to build a reel of local television spots. So far I have been on New Day Northwest in Seattle, Good Things Utah in Salt Lake City and AM Northwest here in Portland. Here is my reel of clips from these three shows. If you want to see the complete segment, just click the links in the text above.

Exciting new! With this reel I just landed my first national spot on the Hallmark Channel Home & Family Show. I will be there filming in just two weeks and will give you all a few behind-the-scene sneak peeks. This will be my debut on national television! (Update, see the video below).

When I went onto the Hallmark Channel Home & Family Show site to do my research, I noted that they are also offering a one week gig for a lucky DIY enthusiast. Why not? I know that every opportunity will open more doors to creating our own craft show so entering is a must. Here is my video entry for their DIY Star. (Update: I was disqualified because I had already been a guest. . . but it was fun making this entry video).

 Hugs to you and stay tuned for all of our new exciting things (there are many) to come!  ~ Lia

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