New year, new course!

Long time, no post…so maybe a quick update is appropriate. 😉

After having explored the world of colouring page design for almost two years, I realized last summer that it’s not as fulfilling as I had expected. I’ve always liked to create with many different materials, and my addiction especially to textiles, paper and mixed media is known, but I had very little time for them. And I also missed teaching.

Time for a turn-around

The past few months I spent testing and preparing a new direction:

World of Magnifica (where I used to promote my colouring designs) will become an arts & crafts & creativity site where I will promote my own courses in combination with tutorials and curated content. That will give me plenty of opportunity to get my itchy fingers stitching and crafting again…not that I need an “excuse” for that, but I think this added purpose will help me to give it enough space in my life.

Do you perhaps remember this one-by-one design? It’s the only “larger” piece I did last year…finished in February: 15 x 15 one-inch squares, some of them halved as triangles, and done as EPP. Although it’s all stitched together now, it’s still pretty much the same – still pinned to that fabric covered sheet of polystyrene because it looks so good on the wall that I can’t get myself to turn it into the pillowcase it was meant to be. 😀 Other than that, I experimented a little bit here and a little bit there, but without really knowing where I wanted to go with it.

And now I do:

Here on Quilting Oneness I want to focus on textile topics and blogging especially for crafters. I’ve collected so much information and so many great resources that I’ve never posted about that I believe I can come up with a post a week. These curated posts will be rather short, but at the moment that’s the only way I can keep them consistent. –  Is it just me who believed that a blog post has to be looong in order to be valuable???

My new site CourseShaper specialises on “all about course creation“. I started teaching adults in 1989, but when I looked into creating online courses a couple of years ago I was totally overwhelmed. There was so much more to it than when teaching locally, and a lot I had yet to learn: making videos, getting and staying organised with files and folders in many places (not just on my computer), promoting courses, launching, finding new ways of communicating with students and engaging them online,…

Although now there’s quite a lot of helpful information about how to create and market courses, there a still gaps, especially when it comes to practicalities, efficiency and making things simple. My goal with CourseShaper is to eventually offer all that I wish I’d had when I started out and which since then I’ve created (and am still creating) for myself.

One of the first of those “tools” was a process for coming up with images for blog posts, social media and Pinterest. For a long time I had a total block (still unexplainable to me, considering that I’d been teaching design!) when it came to creating them. If I really wanted to blog more, and professionally, then I needed to find a quick and easy way for coming up with good quality images.

I did – completely without using complex programs like Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator – and I also found a way of teaching it to others – you, if you like. 🙂

So you may take the title of this post literally: New year, new course!

Today, I’m happy and excited to present to you my very first CourseShaper course (via CourseCraft):

Valentine’s Day Image Design for Non-Designers

For non-designers, creating eye-catching images for their blog or social media can seem to be a daunting, time-consuming task.

If personal style is important to you, you might consider outsourcing image creation to a professional…but wouldn’t it be much more fun (and save you a lot of money) if you could do it yourself? Not just once or twice, but as often as you like?

Convince yourself that creating your own, one-of-a-kind images is far easier & quicker than you might think!

As you’ll see on the course page, the description and the Table of Contents are very detailed, so I don’t want to explain here. You’ll also find there many examples of quick designs that I made using the exact process that I’m teaching.

The course launches next Thursday 17th January 2018. Until then it’s in pre-launch mode – with 50% discount! Here’s the link: https://coursecraft.net/courses/z9Tm4

If you have any questions regarding this course, please post them in the comments!

And if you’ve also decided on a new course this year – I mean for yourself and your life – I’d love to hear about it!

Wishing you a happy, creative and abundant 2018!

Maria xx