Can you tell us how you ended up becoming a professional paper crafter, what was your journey into this career?

Oddly enough I started out as a radio announcer. I had wanted to go to art school having painted all through my childhood but my parents thought that was a risky career so I got a degree in broadcasting and worked as a disc jockey for a few years. One day I was browsing the classifieds and saw an ad for an artist and I checked it out and started teaching art classes part-time. Eventually, I worked up the clientele to teach full time and I did that until my twins were born in 2004. I already had a toddler and I knew I wouldn't be able to run a business with 3 little ones running around so I closed the business to stay home with my kids.

I got into scrapbooking with all the photos of my babies and started reading scrapbook magazines and thought "I can do that!" and started submitting projects every month in hopes of getting published. I decided to try it for a year and if got published, great, if not at least I tried. It was on month 11 I got picked for a digital magazine and then a piece of jewelry in a physical magazine! I was so excited! I was getting published regularly but I was frustrated that I had to submit 20 projects to maybe get one accepted so I decided to start a blog and publish my own work. That lead to brands contacting me to work with their products and me designing my own digital products to sell.

I have design rubber stamps for companies as well because of the exposure on my blog. Then YouTube came along and it was a perfect meshing of my communications training and my love of teaching. I rarely submit work for publication now because I can reach so many lovely crafters with my blog and YouTube channel and it's nice to be able to hear from my readers when a new project is posted. I have also begun teaching painting classes in my online school. It's wonderful to be a crafter and artist in this digital age!

What are your main influences when it comes to inspiring your new videos for your channel.

Great question! I am often inspired by new products that are coming out. I like to review them and also compare them to what we already have to see if the expense is justified. I like to use old supplies to make trendy new things because it can be so easy to forget what is in our stash all ready when something shiny and new comes out! I am inspired by junk, I like to turn trash into treasure. I like to find new ways to organize our supplies and share those ideas too. Because my channel is an art and craft variety channel I can pretty much do any type of craft that I feel like.

If you had to pick a favourite from all of your videos - could you? Or perhaps a top three - it's not always about how many views they get, so we'd love to know which projects you are most proud of.

Oh, wow, that's tough, ironically one of my favorite ones is the most popular, my European style paper bead video: Watch Here because I had so much fun developing the project and it was done at a time when my business wasn't so busy and I could spend days just playing with paper and not worrying about the outcome. What a luxury that was!

My video making pace has picked up a lot since those early days and I am grateful for that but I do miss the more leisurely crafting pace. I also love videos where I can deep dive into a type of supply like I did in the Watercolor pencil 101 video: Watch Here I feel that videos like that can help people get a lot more versatility from their products.

I am also really fond of this watercolor tutorial as it was one of my first live streams: Watch Here That said my most favorite is usually the most recent but since I post several times a week it doesn't keep that spot for long haha!

What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps and make crafting their full-time job?

My advice would be to learn to teach or develop products because that's probably the only what you will be able to earn a full-time income. It is unlikely that you can publish frequently enough to earn a living from publication fees from magazines or brands and most design team positions are unpaid. Craft fairs and Etsy can supplement your income but I think it is unrealistic to make and sell enough handcrafted items to fully replace a full-time job, and making quality crafts by hand takes lots of time and you might feel more like you are working in a factory rather than crafting. Ironically, now that I work full time in a creative business I have less time to create for pure enjoyment. Having to make your living from your hobby can take the fun away from it. I think that's why I do a variety of crafts and painting, it keeps it fresh and fun and less like work LOL! The bottom line is that you should enjoy it. I love my work and the autonomy it provides but there are days when I just want to make paper beads for no reason at all LOL!

Can you let us know what you’ve got coming up and what you will be sharing with us in your first LIVE show with CraftWorld!

I have all sorts of things coming up! The holidays are right around the corner. Halloween is big in the States where I live so I will be doing some Halloween cards and home decor items. Fall themed crafts and painting projects are on the horizon and for my first live show I'm going to show you how to use up your stash and make some "Franken-papers" and we will make some cute Halloween cards! I'll share some techniques you can use for any theme tho so if you don't do Halloween you can still follow along and have fun!

Follow Lindsay's expert page here on CraftWorld for more details coming soon!