New Conference Product Book!

I am so excited to see my new completed product book! I have been super-busy updating my TpT products with my new logo, uploading them, making new png's, and updating my book. Yet, I was in such a rush to get it mailed off to Michelle Luck (who travels the U.S. going to conferences for a whole group of sellers) that I forgot to take pictures!

However, tonight I realized that I can post the PDF, in case anyone else wants to see my new baby. :D

My Updated Conference Book

Just click on the caption to see the rest. I would love to hear what you think! Please leave a comment below. :)

Thanks! "See you" soon!

NCMSA Conference Celebration!

I love educational conferences! I am a member of a cooperative group of TpT author sellers, led by Michele Martin-Luck, who participate in conferences across the country!

The latest conference is occurring today, and for the next couple days, in North Carolina!

To celebrate the conference, everything in my TpT store, Carol's Garden, will be 20% off from March 15th through 17th! Just click on these photos to see more!

Look at the Savings!

Hurry, while the savings last!

20% Off Sale in My TpT Store!

Have a wonderful Spring Break! "See" you next time!

Conference Booth at SCMSA

I am so fortunate to be one of the TpT sellers represented by Michele Martin-Luck at conferences around the country! The SCMSA conference at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is being held this weekend. Michele posted some pictures on our private FB page, and I wanted to share them with you! :)

Our TpT Conference Booth

Here's a slightly removed angle to show the size and location of our booth.

Up Front and Center!

Michele was really excited to find that our booth was at the front of the area. Yeah!

Before the Conference Began

Here's another photo. I am ridiculously excited about this! :D

Right-hand Side of the Sellers Display

You can see some of the sellers' display books in this photo, plus our coupon books (including all of our stores' information) are shown at the top.

My Display Book Is Located on the Upper Right

Although it's difficult to see in these photos, Michele has also placed "goody bags" with our stores' business cards and freebies in back of the display. These are handed out to conference attendees on a first-come, first-served basis.

To celebrate this conference display, all the sellers you see represented here have their TpT stores on sale this weekend. Everything in my own TpT store Carol's Garden will be 10% from March 6th through midnight on the 8th.

Thanks for reading my post! Have a wonderful week!
Until next time!

MSEA Conference and Sale!

I am one lucky lady! I am fortunate to be able to participate with Michele Martin-Luck and a group of fabulous TpT seller-authors at the MSEA Conference in Maryland this weekend. While I will not actually be at the conference, Michele will!

Michele is kind enough to represent a group of us at conferences around the country. Here are a few pictures from the latest one. (All photos were taken by Michele Martin-Luck.)

You can see my product sample book standing up in the middle of the table. :) It's so exciting!

Here's another shot taken from the side.

Teachers who attend the conference receive this free coupon book. It includes QR codes for all our stores, plus links to freebies from each of us. :)

If you're in Maryland, I hope you'll stop by and say hello to Michele, her husband, top seller Lindsay Perro, and a few others this Friday and Saturday. It's the Maryland State Education Association Conference, held in Ocean City, Maryland.

Even if you can't visit the conference, you can still benefit. My entire TpT store (including bundles) will be 10% off all day Friday and Saturday, October 17 and 18. I hope you'll stop by and save!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Getting Ready for the Conference

At last it came time to put all my Louisiana SDE conference materials together and get them shipped to Jennifer of  4MulaFun.

First, I stapled my business cards to the small packages containing the flower seeds and labels. If I had to do this over again, I think I might buy a little bit larger bags so that the card could go inside with the seeds. I do like the insert, though, and it does have my name and website on it again, so I’m not sure. What do you think?

Carol's Garden Business Card with Seeds and Insert

Next, I counted out 50 of the card/seed packet combos and bundled them inside a large Ziploc baggie. I did this eight times to make 400 all together.

Business Cards with Seeds/Inserts in Baggies of 50 Each

My laminated task card sample was wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a tiny box I had left over from something I received in the mail. I put both the task cards and the Ziploc baggies of business card/seed packets in one large FedEx box.

Laminated Measurement Task Cards Sample with QR Code

I wrapped my product book in bubble wrap, then placed it inside another large FedEx box.

Business Crds with Seeds/Insert, Product Book, and Task Cards

Finally, I went down to FedEx Kinkos and mailed both boxes to Jennifer. She received them a few days later, and I waited for the conference.

Here’s a photo Jennifer posted showing our products at the conference. My product book is lying on the table on the right-hand side, and my task cards are hanging from a small display tree at the front. You can’t see my business cards/seed packets combo, because they’re inside the white goodie bags at the back left of the table.

Louisiana SDE Teachers of TpT Conference Table

Jennifer barely had time to take this photo. The conference display was so popular with attendees that all 400 goodie bags were gone THE FIRST DAY of the three-day conference. She said that teachers were screaming with excitement when they saw all the cool stuff inside the goodie bags! Wish I could have been there. :D

If you want to see the stores and blogs of the other TpT sellers who participated in this conference, check out Jennifer's Teachers of TpT blog here.

If you liked this post or have any questions, PLEASE leave feedback. You rock!

Have a wonderful week!

Filling My TpT Product Book (with Video)

Once I had the front cover and table of contents complete, and the template theme saved, I was ready to fill the pages with my products. Looking at my table of contents, I started with the first section, “Math,” which is the largest section in my TpT store.

Since I created these products as I needed them, I started with the earliest sets and worked my way forward in time. I opened the file containing all of the thumbnails for one product at a time. Then I copied, pasted, shrunk, and arranged them on the page. Since I knew I would have the book bound at the top, I made sure to leave plenty of empty space at the top of each display page. I played around with the design a LOT over the next few weeks, but finally settled on what you see here, minus  the QR code and standards, which I added later. I spent weeks making a page for each of the sixty products in my store, minus the freebies, which need no advertisement. J

Next, I went back and added a QR code for each product. I don’t know why I had always been so intimidated by QR codes! They are so easy to make, once you know how. However, I am not very good at following written directions. I need visuals to follow. Once I had that, and some time to play around and make plenty of mistakes, I had that “Aha!” moment when I realized that the entire process was much easier than I had thought! (I promise to write about creating QR codes on a later blog post. Make sure to check back later. J)

Then I added the Common Core State Standards covered by each product to its own page. You can find the standards listed here. Jennifer (the conference host) had said in one of her posts that teachers at the conferences were very interested in this information, and I wanted to make it easier for them to find it.

Finally, I added a page to show teachers how to contact me, through my TpT store, Facebook page, blog, or email, and reminded them that I take requests. 

I checked over the entire book several times before saving it to a flash drive and taking it to Staples for printing, laminating (for durability) and binding. I also took along a PDF version of one of my task card sets so that it could be used on the display table.

Here’s a video to show the finished book:

You can also view this video on YouTube.

I hope you enjoyed seeing it! Please click on one of the icons below to “Like” or “Share” this post, or make a comment in the box below it. Then make sure to come back next time when I show all three of the finished items before shipping them off to the conference host!

Thanks for visiting! Until next time!

Have a fabulous week!

Designing My TpT Product Book for the Teaching Conference

Kind of like grading writing assignments, this project would be huge, which is why I procrastinated and left it for last.

Once again, I browsed through sample photos (and videos) created by other TpT sellers showing their own product books. Each of them was so professional looking! Because I already had my store logo and business card design (Thanks again, Catia Dias!) I wasn’t as intimidated by this assignment as I had been in the beginning.

Looking at the samples, I knew I wanted to keep the following things in mind while designing my product book.

1.     It needed to have the same “brand” as my other items. This meant that it would need to match my store logo and business card.

2.     My products would need to be highlighted in a way that would grab the attention of possible buyers at the teaching conference. That meant I would only have a few seconds to impress them, so I decided I would emphasize the visual aspects of my products rather than text.

3.     Everybody has a smart phone these days. I wanted to include a QR code for every product so that impulse buyers could quickly scan the code to locate the products and read the descriptions on the site.

4.     Make it last. This product book could end up going to many conferences, and be handled by thousands of teachers. I would need to make it durable enough to withstand the wear and tear of this kind of use.

5.     Get it done and shipped on time. This was a huge undertaking, and would take weeks to complete. I looked at a calendar to find out when Jennifer needed the book, then worked backward from there to figure out shipping time. Once I had a deadline for completing the project I was able to come up with a schedule for keeping myself on task and on time. I figured out how many pages I would need to complete every day. I could do more than that if I wanted to, but never less. In this way, I was able to finish early, without too much stress. I hate worrying about being late for anything.

The first thing I did was design the product cover. Using the business card which Catia had designed for me, I started with the front of the card, then added part of the back of the card to the bottom of the picture. This way I had all the information in one place. Then I added the burgundy border to the slide template.

Next, I started a table of contents. I wanted some kind of order to the displays, and wanted to give teachers a small indication of the types of products they would find inside. I kept the same background and color theme as the cover, so that all the pages of the book would match.

That’s all I have time for today! Thank you for reading. J I hope you will "Like" or "Share" this post, or leave a comment in the box below it. Please come back next time to see what I put inside my product book!

Until then! Have a terrific week!

Designing My Business Cards for the Conference

Part of advertising my TpT store at the teaching conference would involve giving out my business cards. Since I didn’t HAVE any business cards yet, I knew this would be a problem!

First, I browsed through the photos of business cards created by other teacher-sellers on our group’s Facebook page. Since it had been many years since I had even glanced at a business cards, I was surprised by the amount of color on each card, and by how each design was vastly different than those of the other sellers. I also read several posts in which sellers recommended either GotPrint or Vista Print as quality makers of business cards, so I decided to check them out.

I started with GotPrint and found the site was easy to use. They have many stock backgrounds which the user may use free of charge, but there were few font choices. I started with a flowery background, added text boxes for my store information, included my logo and store quote, then saved and posted it to the group FB page.

The response was underwhelming, LOL! The card and fonts were too busy. My next try looked like this:

The group suggested I design the card in a different program (for more design options) before uploading it to the site. Unfortunately, I use PowerPoint to design my products, and the program does not save in a high enough resolution to upload the result for a business card. Another seller offered to take whatever I designed and then complete it in a graphics program.

With this in mind, I decided to start over. My next card was much simpler, but lacked professional polish, and didn’t have my store quote on it. It did, however, have my QR codes. Here it is, front and back:

Third Try, Front

Third Try, Back

No sooner had I posted this latest attempt to the group Facebook page than Catia Dias from Always a Teacher Forever a Mom sent me a message to quickly check my inbox. When I opened my email, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!

 

Business Card Design by Catia Dias

It was as if Catia read my mind! The new design was perfect, and so professional! I asked if she would mind adding the QR codes for my various websites, which she did! The next email from her contained the design for the back of the card, too! 

Design by Catia Dias

She even checked to make sure the design would work with Vista Print, which it did! I placed my order with Vista Print the same day, and my new business cards were on their way to me a few days later. Thank you, Catia!

Of course, that meant that I needed to get to work on my product book, the largest assignment of all the ones on Jennifer’s list. I’ll write more about that next time. J

Thanks for reading about my adventure! Please take a moment to click on one of the icons below this post to “Like” or “Share” it, or leave a comment or question. I love feedback!

Until next time, have a fabulous week!