Tutorial by Helen Klebesadel: Using SpoonFlower to Design Your own Fabrics

 Wallflower Lady Slippers, watercolor, 15 x 22

by  Helen Klebesadel

SpoonFlower Print on Demand Fabrics

As an artist I am best known for my large-scale highly detailed watercolor paintings with environmental and woman-centered themes.  For a long time I had thought that my Wall Flower series featuring flowers rendered from careful observation, could make a natural transition to fabric.  Encouraged by fiber artists I know I started researching how to bring this vision to reality.  Daunted by the process of figuring out how to put together a portfolio for fabrics I did what any contemporary artist would do…an internet search.  

Two years ago I stumbled on SpoonFlower.com, a print-on-demand company situated in Mebane, North Carolina that is in its Beta phase (test mode).  It has been giving artists the ability to design their own fabrics since 2008.   The company’s mission is to give people who make unique things with fabric greater power to express themselves and to make their work available to others. The company is eco-conscious, with fabrics printed using eco-friendly materials and methods, and has been slowly expanding the line of organic cotton fabrics it has available. Click here for sample packs available of the range of fabrics Spoonflower offers. 

The idea for the company was inspired by a casual comment of the founder's spouse when she mused about how wonderful it would be to print her own fabric.  An idea was born.

Spoonflower has now blossomed into an interactive community of 70,000 individuals participating in an online designers’ community and marketplace where users can create, share, and purchase a huge variety of unique fabric patterns and designs.   Designers can choose whether to make their designs public or not, and whether to make them available for sale once they have proofed designs they are happy with.  Purchasers can order swatches as small as 8x8 inches for $5.00 of any fabric in any design available for sale.

Designers have formed a creative community who follow each others work facilitated by the ability to make comments about each other’s designs on the site, and communicate through the Spoonflower Blog, Flickr Group, and Facebook page. Textile design veterans and amateurs alike can enter the Fabric of the Week contest, which is voted on by Spoonflower users. Winning designs are offered for sale as limited-edition fabrics at Spoonflower's Etsy shop.


DIY Designs on Spoonflower Tutorial:

1) Create an account on Spoonflower.com.  This takes less than 5 minutes.

2) Create a pattern you would like to print. Designers often start with a scan of a painting or drawing or they might compose the image in Photoshop. Illustrator, or another graphic design application they are comfortable with.  Spoonflower shares several free graphic design applications here.

A firm believer in only learning what I need to accomplish my next project, I personally find that Photoshop Elements does everything I need so far.  For other complete novices at digital design there are a series of very useful tutorial on designing and color calibration on the blog Mama Made. 


3) Your design will need be a digital image that should have a resolution of 150dpi (dots per inch). Meaning a 10" x 10" pattern, the width and height of your image should be 1500 pixel by 1500 pixel (150 dots times 10 inch = 1500 dots).

4) Your pattern should be designed in a way that allows seamless repeating (also called “tiling”). For a guide to creating seamless tiled pattern in Illustrator click here, and for the same in Photoshop go here.  (I will share how I create a tiling image using a pattern from my paintings and Photoshop Elements at the end of essay.)

If you don't want your image to be tiled, set up your image to the size and exact dimensions you want it to appear on your fabric. For instance, if you'd just like to order an 8" x 8" swatch, your pattern size must be 8" x 8". Check out Spoonflower's fabric sizes and prices for more information.

Advanced users may find that colors (especially reds and yellows) may become inaccurate when transferring from screen to fabric. For best results, set the color space to 8-bit LAB color. More info can be found here.

5) Once you have it the way you want it save your design as a JPG or TIF (8-bit, uncompressed) format. I recommend TIF for its image quality, but Spoonflower does not accept files larger than 25MB, so you find using a JPG allows you to upload a larger images.

6) Upload you design to Spoonflower and see how it tiles. You can use the Spoonflower preview window to experiment with different layout options and fabric sizes.  You can also use some of the tools Spoonflower provides to tweak your design.

Start with one design and see how it goes.  If you are like me you will become immediately addicted.  I now have over one hundred designs and find myself appraising every new watercolor painting experiment for its potential as a fabric design.

7) Once you are happy with your design you can order a swatch as small as 8x8 inches, for $5.00, to test your design. Once you have proofed you fabric you have the option of making it available for sale on the Spoonflower website or keep it private for your own use or sell it separately.

If you are like me and tend to do a number of designs all at once there is a useful feature that allows you to proof a sampler of a  ‘collection’ of designs all at once with of 1-12 designs costing $20, and 13-24 designs costing $35.

If you sell it on Spoonflower you will get 10 % of the sale of any of your designs and the same discount in printing your own fabrics.  (If you are like me all your earnings will be spent ordering more fabric).

It generally takes 2 weeks for the fabric to be printed and shipped but it's more than worth the wait! If you have any questions or problems with your order, do not hesitate to email them. Stephen Fraser, one of the site founders, will respond quickly with a detailed and clear answer.

Spoonflower can also be used for more than just textile design. Some designers mass-produce patterns for dolls, stuffed toys, clothing, or DIY kits.  Other, like me, explore its potential as a tool in art making.  The service is still in beta and as the founders explore what is possible new material choices and fabric treatments are sure to continue to appear.

How I Design a Fabric From a Watercolor Painting Using Photoshop Elements

1) Chose a section of a painting and resize it to 150 dpi.  Go to the FILE pull down menu and select ‘Duplicate.’  This will give you a copy of this first image.

 

2) OFFSET the Image 2 using the FILTER menu. You will find the OFFSET in the OTHER category of the FILTER menu.  A box will appear where you can set the degree of offset you want. If your image is 2000 x 3000 dpi you would set the Offset to approximately 1000 x 1500 to quarter the image.  The center of the original image is now at the four corners.

3) Go to the SELECT pull down menu and select ALL.  Go to the EDIT pull down menu and COPY.  Then PASTE the offset Image 2 over the top of Image I.

It will layer to look like Image II.

4) Choose the eraser tool from the Photo Shop Elements toolbar and erase the center and the obvious seams, in an artful way revealing the image in the layer below.   Save the finished image with a new name and without layers.

Final Layered Image 3:

5) Upload to Spoonflower and see how it looks:

If you are happy with the outcome your next step is to order a proof or add it to a collection to proof later.

Check out my fabrics on Spoonflower.com and have fun designing your own fabrics!

Helen Klebesadel

*****


Helen Klebesadel is a TAFA member.  Check out her profile here.   When she joined TAFA, I was intrigued by what she was doing with SpoonFlower, so I asked her if she would be willing to share the process.  She kindly agreed and came up with this wonderful tutorial!  Just think of all the doors that can open through having control over the design process!  Many thanks, Helen!

Helen also wrote a post as part of the series, "TAFA Members Talk".  See it here.

-Rachel Biel

Tutorial by Helen Klebesadel: Using SpoonFlower to Design Your own Fabrics

Pictorial Log: Quilt-On-The-Go by Donna Hussain

Wedding Quilt by Donna Hussain, 120”x130”

My daughter recently married and asked me to make a quilt for her as my wedding present.  How could I refuse her request?

Over a period of several months I sent the newlyweds sample pictures of quilts that I thought might appeal to them.  Their final choice was a quilt design that I found in a Keepsake Quilter newsletter (www.keepsakequilter.com). The pattern has large-scale patchwork blocks that are easy to sew. However I decided to add side extensions to the floor and a pillow tuck of my own design to the queen-size quilt. With these additions the quilt grew quite large.

To sew the quilt on my home sewing machine I chose the method of quilting-on-the-go. That is to say I would first join and machine quilt the center blocks of the pattern, then add rows of patchwork blocks to encircle the center. In this quilting method each added section, usually one or two rows of patchwork blocks, is machine quilted before adding additional sections to the quilt top.  For detailed stitching directions read How To Machine-Quilt A Large Bed Quilt On A Home Sewing Machine, an article I wrote earlier for this blog.

 Pieced quilt center ready for quilting

The major problem in sewing a large quilt is handling the bulk of the fabric and batting. I do not have a quilting studio or a long arm quilting machine.  My quilting hobby occupies half of the master bedroom that I share with my husband.  The surface for my domestic sewing machine, cutting boards, and sewing supplies is a door purchased from Home Depot that sits on table legs.  The only way I can machine quilt a large quilt is to quilt-on-the-go.

My work space

Unfortunately, I lack a large design wall, so I built the quilt design by laying out sewn patchwork blocks on the bedroom floor.  My ironing board, bed, dresser, and sewing table all helped support the quilt bulk during various phases of construction as you will see in the pictures.

Two rows added to one end of quilt center, ready for quilting.

Joined rows ready for machine quilting

 

Marking the machine quilting pattern

Machine quilting

Edge blocks ready for quilting

 

 

Close-up of machine quilting pattern

After completing the quilt center I added a narrow brown and blue frame to the center design. The squiggly free motion quilting pattern that I chose for the blue stripe required movement of the fabric (changes of stitching direction) while sewing, a flexibility that was possible when quilting the blocks along the edges of the quilt. 

 Fabric frame of quilt center

 

 

 

Machine quilting the blue stripe

Next, I added one of the sides to the bedspread.  I cleared my dresser for workspace when smoothing out the wrinkles as I bundled the back, batting, and patchwork together. Note that the bulk of the quilt center is lying on the floor.

Bundling the patchwork side blocks with batting and back.

 

 

 

Preparing a side for quilting

 

 

 

Quilting the side

 

 

 

Checking the look of the attached side

Once the two sides of the quilt were attached and quilted I worked on the section for the foot of the bed.  This addition has the same pattern as the sides but needed additional blocks at both ends so that the section would extend the full width of the quilt.

Preparing the end section for quilting

 

 

 

End section quilted

The final hurdle before completing the quilt was to add the pillow tuck. My choice of design was blue and green stripes because stripes would be easy to quilt. Believe it or not, the pillow tuck caused me more problems than any other part of the project because I failed to get the back smoothed and stretched adequately before machine quilting.  The result?  Back puckers. Correcting my carelessness caused me many hours of “reverse sewing” and stress.

Last week I presented the wedding quilt pucker free and complete with binding to my daughter and son-in-law who are celebrating their first anniversary. Their appreciation is reward for all the time and effort I spent making their wedding quilt.




California quilter, Donna Hussain, has exhibited in major quilt shows around the country, authored books, and is a regular contributor to Fiber Focus. Click on her name to see all of her past articles.

The photo shows Donna with her husband, Pascha.

Pictorial Log: Quilt-On-The-Go by Donna Hussain

A Conversation With A Quilt Judge by Donna Hussain

 

Points don't match up.

A few weeks ago I had a “business” lunch with Jody Ohrt, a quilter and judge of many quilt shows in California, including the Pacific International Quilt Festival. I wanted to know how she became qualified to judge and the method she uses to evaluate quilts entered into a quilting competition.  I was prepared to challenge her with my dismissive attitude toward the fairness of judged quilt shows, but she disarmed me with her quilting knowledge, her informative responses, and her fair-minded approach to judging.

Jody began to quilt in 1995.  Six years later she took a course sponsored by the Northern California Quilt Council (NCQC) on judging quilts and wearable art. We were just beginning our conversation when Jody gave me an information sheet that she had written titled Preparing Your Quilt For Judging which outlines criteria for evaluating a quilt. Her worksheet is printed at the end of this article.  All quilters, even those who never enter judged quilt shows, will find the information useful.  I plan to use the worksheet to evaluate my own quilts when they are under construction to help me identify quilting skills that I need to improve. The pictures that accompany this article illustrate common problems in quilt making.

 

Not enough quilting.

In the mind of many quilters the word “Judge” means someone who is critical of their sewing skills and dismissive of their quilting passion, hard work, and beloved quilts. Jody is not that type of judge.  She considers herself a quilter’s advocate.  She believes that her role as a quilt show judge is to support quilt makers by noting and praising their strengths, and suggesting ways to enhance the quality of their handiwork. She takes care in choosing the wording of her written comments. Quilters, she says, need encouragement and specific advice, not negativity or generalizations like “Appliqué technique needs improvement.”  When I complained about comments regarding the back side of my quilts, (My exact words were, “After all, the back is the Back!”) Jody responded gently that the job of the judge is to evaluate the whole quilt, which includes the back, an integral part of a quilt.

 

Rounded corners.

Jody noted that many quilts she judges at quilt shows have rounded mitered corners instead of sharp ninety degree angles.  To correct this fault she recommends the following formula for cutting the strip of fabric used for the mitered binding. (The directions below are for quilters with knowledge and experience sewing mitered corners.)

• X (desired strip width of the completed binding) times 6 plus 1/4 inch. The seam allowance when sewing this binding onto the quilt should also be the same width as X.   For example, to sew a mitered binding that is 3/8 inches wide when the quilt is completed, start with a strip of fabric: (3/8 inch times 6) plus ¼ inch = 2 ½ inches wide

• When sewing this binding to the quilt the seam allowance should be 3/8 inch.

• Before actually sewing the binding to the quilt, place a mark on the edge of the quilt 3/8 inch from each of the four corners.  This mark tells you when to stop sewing the binding to the quilt in order to make the miter fold.  To ensure a precise miter, remove the quilt from the sewing machine while you make the fold.  Then place the quilt back in the machine to sew a 3/8 inch seam to the next corner mark.  Repeat for all corners.

Jody assures me that these directions for cutting, folding, and sewing the binding strip will produce crisp right-angle mitered corners.

Another common problem in quilt making is that stretching sometimes occurs during the construction process, distorting the quilt.  Jody recommends that quilt makers wash and block their finished quilts to ensure that their quilts lie flat and that opposite sides have the same measurements.

Jody reminded me that there are no fixed standards for a blue ribbon. A blue ribbon merely signifies that a blue-ribbon quilt has been judged as the best quilt in its category. Keep in mind that some categories have few entries at a quilt show while other categories may have many. That explains why an outstanding quilt may fail to win a ribbon while its neighbor at a show, a quilt of lower quality, sports a ribbon.  Also, the visual impact of a quilt - its artistry, creativity, theme, and originality- is not all that is judged.  The sewing skill of the quilt maker, much less apparent without close scrutiny, is equal in weight in a judge’s mind.

 

Seams should meet.

My conversation with Jody gave me new respect for quilt show judges. They encourage quilters to strive for excellence and try to help quilters improve the quality of their workmanship.  I also learned that judging is hard work, given the number of quilts and limited time set aside for judging …usually three to five minutes per quilt.

A few days after my conversation with Jody I attended a local quilt show. After a quick overview of the quilts on display I decided to quietly assess some of the quilts as if I were a judge. I had just begun my subterfuge when I realized that my usual focus at quilt shows is presentation value.  Unless the sewing is atrocious, I seldom notice construction quality.  I now understand why my ribbon choices seldom match the choices of trained judges.

Preparing Your Quilt 

for Judging

   
Design
Look at your quilt top design.  Is it balanced?
Does the arrangement of dark, light and medium values create the needed contrast?
How do your color choices work together?
Is the scale of the printed fabrics compatible with the block size?
Do all the parts of the quilt look like they belong together? Is the design unified?
Is the visual impact pleasing?

General Appearance
Is the quilt clean?
Does it have pet hairs on it?
Does it have an odor of smoke, mustiness or mildew?

Technical Aspects

Piecing:
Are your blocks square?
Do they meet squarely at the corners?
Do your blocks lie flat?
Are your points (triangles, squares, flying geese, Etc.) sharp?
Have you cut off any points when piecing?
Are your sashings straight?
Do the rows meet up in a straight line?
Are your corners square?
Is the size of your sashing relative to the block size?
Are your seams well sewn? Are they free of gaps or open places?
Do dark fabric seams shadow through light fabric?
Are your borders straight?
Is your border size compatible with the center field?

Thread Color:
Is your thread color distracting?
Is the thread color compatible with the quilt top?

Applique:
Are your points sharp?
Are your curves smooth?
Are your inside edges smooth?  No frayed areas?
Does you appliqué thread match your appliqué or is it distracting?
Are your appliqué stitches small? Do the stitcheds attach the appliqué piece securely?

Quilting Techniques

Density:
Is the quilting evenly distributed over the quilt surface?

Distortion:
Has the quilting caused any distortion?
Are there any puckers, tucks, or pleats that should not be there?
Has quilting caused the borders or sashing to be crooked?

Hand Quilting:
Are your stitches the same length on the front and back of the quilt?
Is your thread tension consistent?
Are your start and stop knots buried?
If you have traveled your thread does it show on the quilt top?

Machine Quilting:
Are your stitches the same length on the front and back of the quilt?
Is your thread tension consistent?  Does it need adjustment?
Are your starts and stops distracting?

Marking Lines/Basting Thread:
Have you removed all marking lines?
Have you clipped all thread ends on the front and back of the quilt?
Have you removed all basting threads, including appliqué basting?

Binding:
Is the width of the binding the same on the front and back of the quilt?
Is the binding securely attached with small even stitches?
Does the batting fill the binding?
Is the binding smooth and not twisted?
If you rounded the edges of the quilt is the binding smooth and not twisted?
Are your mitered corners 90 degree angles?

California quilter, Donna Hussain, has exhibited in major quilt shows around the country, authored books, and is a regular contributor to Fiber Focus. Click on her name to see all of her past articles.


The photo shows Donna with her husband, Pascha.

A Conversation With A Quilt Judge by Donna Hussain

Intarsia Concept Offers A Basic Online Product Photography Course

by Tara Agacayak, Intarsia Concept Co-Founder

My partner Figen Cakir and I met through our love of art and craft which is ironic considering that our husbands work together - a fact we didn't learn until months later! With two separate businesses selling handmade, culturally-inspired products from Turkey, we naturally began projects supporting local artisans in our community. Figen runs The Knit Box, featuring natural Turkish yarn, handknits and knitting accessories. I started Citara's Handcrafted Boutique to highlight modern home and fashion products reflecting traditional Turkish techniques and motifs.

In building our online businesses, we conceived of Intarsia Concept (IC) as a venue to share our experience and learn from the experiences of others. IC is for people who want to turn what they love into what they do. For us it is our love of Turkey, art, design and culture. For you it might be rugs, quilts, tapestries ... (fill in the blank here).

One of the things we learned working in a digital environment is that selling products online is vastly different than selling them in person where visitors can see and touch our products. In person they get the full impact of color and texture. Because they are handmade, our customers understand the care that goes into each product because they can see all the detail imprinted by the artist.

But selling online is completely different. In this two-dimensional environment your potential customers are people who click away in an instant if there is nothing to keep their attention. So when we started IC, one of the first things we wanted to do was put together a course teaching basic product photography skills. We're proud to report we have finally done this with Diana Brennan from D.S. Brennan Photography. We hope that this course will not only help independent designers and artists like you take good photographs of your projects and products for the purposes of selling, but more importantly that it will also help you present your work in a way that honors the love and care with which you have created it.

Because it's not just about what you do, it is also about how you communicate that to others. Good photography is one way to broadcast your artistic message. Whether you are selling something or not, a well-photographed image speaks a thousand words.

If you're interested in attending the Basic Product Photography Course to learn how to present your work at its best, registration is now open. The self-paced e-course begins Monday, February 22nd but is only open to the first 50 students who register. As a special thank you to Fiber Focus readers, anyone who registers from this blog will receive a $5 refund with the coupon code {prodphoto10}. In addition, for each registration that comes through this community, member Catherine Salter Bayar will donate $5 to Nest, a nonprofit that gives micro-loans to female artisans.

Tara Agacayak

 Figen Cakir

Note from Rachel:  Catherine has contributed several posts on life in Turkey and her business, Bazaar Bayar.  Click here to see them.

Intarsia Concept Offers A Basic Online Product Photography Course

Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!

A screenshot of my personal page on Facebook

Facebook?  I have lots of friends who are on it and we all enjoy the spontaneous access it gives us all to our humor, insights, links, photos and whatever else we want to share with each other.  From the ones that aren't there, I get groans, moans, disgust or misinformation.  "I don't want the whole world to know what's going on in my life!"   Facebook has definitely transformed how we communicate with each other, replacing email for many of us.  It's a household name that has millions of avid fans and as many avid enemies...

I was one of the converts who joined kicking, screaming, rolling my eyes, and foaming at the mouth.  Now I have been on there for several months and I have been completely, irrevocably brainwashed into a convert, one who stands at the airports with my flowers and invites the public to join.  Facebook is a tool that you can control and tweak to match your needs.  I think it is the best network out there and it has so permeated our social fabric that as a business or artist, it's as essential as having a phone.

The problem with Facebook is that the way it is set up assumes that the users know how to use it.  Most don't.  Most figure out how to add new friends, respond to updates, add photos and links, and that's about it.  Those are all nice tools, but they just explore the tip of the iceberg.  Learning how to use it well can really help artists and businesses get the kind of exposure they long for.  This post is for those of you who use Facebook minimally or not at all.  In the end, I hope that you will also want to join in and become part of this Facebook revolution.

Yep.  Being on facebook does mean having a public persona.  Social networking is a pretty recent phenomena, but it has become such a part of life on cyber space that it's hard to remember the days before we had all these venues where we could, for better or for worse, put ourselves out there.  Social networking falls under one of the many tools we now have under the umbrella of "Social Media".  Do you look at videos on YouTube?  Have a blog?  Tweet?  These are just a few of the more popular venues that people use to connect with each other, but there are many, many more.  Wikipedia has a good history and list.  Basically, social media has replaced the face-to-face interaction we had with our neighborhood shops and hang-outs.  As these tools developed, the mainstream marketplace was forced to adapt and include customer feedback, reviews and other interactive tools.  Unbelievably, Facebook was created by a Harvard student in his dorm room in 2003.  (see Wikipedia again)  It was one of those creations that came along at the right time and place.  The market and the people were ready.  When something catches on like this, it is said to have viral qualities and that is what artists and businesses hope for when they join facebook.  How exactly does this work then?

I've taken a bunch of screen shots to walk you through the different features Facebook offers which I think are important.  Click on the images to see a larger image, or you can go to my public page, Rayela Art, to follow along, or to your own page, if you have one.

First of all: How do you get friends?  You can have Facebook check your email address book and it will tell you who is already on there.  You can then choose who you want to invite to become your friend.  Then, once you have friends, you can check their friends and see if there is anybody you know.  The search bar also brings up names and if there are too many, you can narrow the search by location, school or job.  Somehow people start finding each other and last year was marked as a wonderful reconnecting for me with friends from that past that I had lost contact with.  Mine are grouped into family, Brazilian friends, missionary kids, high school and college, peer artists, Chicago people, and so on.  A creep from the past wants to be your friend?  Just say no!  Most of my re-connections have been treasures, but there are a couple that have raised my eyebrows.  "You were such a nice boy!  What happened to make you so bitter?" Believing in diversity, I try to find the common ground we share rather than keeping my friends limited to the same code of ethics, but I've noticed that some have "unfriended" me, which is just fine.  Not everyone wants to have a bleeding heart liberal flower child type in their midst...

Comment, Like and Share: the virus effect on Facebook.

Everybody who joins Facebook has a profile page where you can link to another website, upload a photo or video, or make a comment.  If this person has any "friends", those friends can comment, like or share, giving a reaction to what was posted.  Comment is straightforward.  You type some kind of a response.  If you like what you read, you click on that and you will be able to follow what other activity happens on this post.  You can set your settings to receive emails whenever any action like this happens on your page.  Now, the third option, Share, is the most important as far as achieving that viral effect. When a friend clicks on that, that post goes to their Home page and all their friends see it.  The hope is that those friends will also like it, click share, and on and on.  This is the viral effect of Facebook.  In theory, one post could have thousands of viewers.  However, this only happens on links or images that have public settings.  All personal comments get deleted in the sharing and the friend can say whatever he or she wants to about that link.  If you say something silly and you have private settings, the comment cannot leave your page.  Make sense?  Hopefully, this concept will become clear as we move along.

Friends, Fans and Members
There are three kinds of pages on Facebook and each has a different relationship.

• You have your personal profile where friends are accepted or rejected.  
• Personal pages can have sub-pages that are created for the public.  These are usually small businesses, special interest, artist, or music pages.  I have three: Rayela Art (for my business), Afghan Tribal Arts (for a friend's business that I manage) and Falamos Portugues (a just-for-fun page for Portuguese speakers).  Pages are public and anyone interested in the content can join as a fan.  An icon of that page pops up on that person's profile page and they will receive updates in their home page.
• The third type of page is for groups.  Larger organizations, families, teams, museums and non-profits would normally select this option.  This is also a public page and whoever joins becomes a member and receives updates in their home page as well.  Groups joined are listed in the personal info page.
  

 

Now let's look at some of the features in each of these structures.



Personal Pages
Whenever I start using a new site or software, I click around on the tabs and links and look at what happens.  Usually, I can figure out what they mean and if I don't get it, I will ask friends or use the search or help functions.  I numbered the most important parts of a profile page:

Key spots on a Facebook profile page.

1.  Your latest comment or post shows up here.
2. The space where a new comment can be posted.  The small icons under it mean that you can attach a photo, video or link.  Videos have to be ones that you made.  If you post a youtube video, use the regular link option with the video's url as the address.
3. The all-important Share button.
4. Recent activity.  This shows up differently to different viewers depending on your privacy settings.
5. At that bottom, left-hand corner, some little icons lead to applications and other functions.
6. Chat function.

The top bar shows that this is the profile page.  If you click on "Home", you see all the activity that has been posted by your friends or the pages and groups you have joined.  Click on "Friends" to find one of your friends and on "Inbox" to send a private message to one or more friends.

The "Home" page on Facebook where you see all the activity of your connections.

The home page is the one you will check and your profile is what others will look at when they want to see more info about you.  I normally check my home page in the morning and at night.  I do a quick scroll down and screech to a quick stop if something interesting catches my eye and then I'll banter with a friend, watch a video, or give feedback on something that was posted.  One could spend hours and hours doing this, but I try to limit how much time I spend here, even though I do enjoy it.  Most of my friends are actual people I know, family,peer artists, and the organizations or pages that I follow are ones that I am truly interested in, so the content does interest me.

Friends who are diligent about loading photos make their page more interesting.  It's a great way to see new artwork, view the kids who are growing up, see rehab projects and just get a better mental picture of what is happening in their lives.

Those who have videos have a special page for them, too.  I'm just learning how to do this, but have a couple.  Business pages and groups also have these features.

Facebook has hit on the most interesting and vibrant way of sharing news and information.  I am terrible at making phone calls, often do this non-business stuff late at night, so I can browse and comment when the rest of the world is asleep.



Business Pages

Business pages have many of the same functions as a profile page plus a few others.  You can include photos, videos, discussions, and events.

Screenshot of Rayela Art

One of the things that I like about Facebook is the clean template and consistency among pages.  I had only seen My Space before and hated the chaotic jumble of images and glitter.  But, you can still personalize your page with photos, logo and how much information you add on.

You can set up your pages to allow fan photos, one more way to encourage networking among peer businesses and customers.  If someone posts something you think is inappropriate, you can delete it.

Screen shots of Afghan Tribal Arts.

A great tool for artists who do a lot of shows is the events page.  Your customers and fan base can keep track of you and try to attend a live performance, sale or opening.  I use it to post an occasional event that is happening locally in Paducah or a festival that I wish I could go to.

List your events on your business page on Facebook!

Many of your friends on your personal page will probably be interested in your business.  You can invite them to receive your updates.  Click on "Suggest to Friends" and a window pops up with icons of your friends.  If the image looks cloudy, they have already become a fan.  This is so much better than spamming people who don't want to receive your emails!  These people choose to follow your business, become a fan and get your news because they are interested.  Your job, then, is to come up with information that is interesting enough to make them want to share it with their friends.

Messages can also be sent through Facebook's Inbox (your messaging system on Facebook).  This should be used sparingly.  It can be really annoying to get multiple messages from one of the pages you became a fan of, especially if those messages aren't even in a language you understand.  Again, you can always leave a business page that gets on your nerve an "un-fan" yourself.

A nice feature when you become a fan of someone's page is that you can add them on as a favorite on your page.  I've added like-minded pages to Rayela Art because I think my fans will also find them interesting.  Of course, the hope is that these businesses will reciprocate and give you some floor space on their page, too.  If you click on the "See All" in the box, you can scroll down and see larger icons and names of the pages.

 

The one big complaint that I have of the business pages so far is that you cannot become a fan using your business.  So, when I fan people that have similar businesses, I show up as Rachel Biel instead of Rayela Art.  I would much rather drive people that I do not know to my Rayela Art page than to my personal one.  In the same way, I would like to know if my fans have businesses that I can interact with professionally, but if I click on their icon, it will go to their personal page.  It would be nice if Facebook would give you options of how you become a fan or how you join a group.


Groups

Groups are organized in a similar but slightly different manner from the other pages on Facebook.  I won't go much more into them, except to say that one can find any topic or theme under the sun on facebook.  When you do a search for groups, the results will show you which groups your friends have joined and what the latest activity is on the groups you belong to.  Once again, that viral potential in action. 

Group search on Facebook will come up with endless possibilities.

Applications

Applications are little independent programs that interface on facebook.  Some have to do with business, family or school connections, many with general silliness brought to life by people with too much time on their hands.  It's important to understand how to find and use applications as they can be useful tools.  The first icon at the bottom left-hand corner is where you will find them.  Click on it and a box pops up:

If one of the applications you are looking for is there, click on it.  Otherwise use "Browse More Applications" and a new page will open up.  This is where you go to create your pages that we discussed above. "Networked Blogs" is an important application for any of you who have blogs.  You join the application, are given a profile page with public snippets of your blogs and recent posts.  Every time you create a new post on your blog, it shows up in your news feed where all your friends can see it.  I have it set up so that the posts will also go to my pages.  Most applications will give you an option to create a box or tab on your profile page, too.  Interested friends can then click on that tab and see your blog posts and sign up for them.

  

Networked Blogs on Facebook, an important application.

Applications can also bring on a nightmare of games and stupid stuff.  If you do open that applications page, you will see that there are business tools, education, lifestyle, sports, and the dreaded games and just for fun.  The two top games that my friends enjoy are Farmville and Mafia Wars.  They are addictive and they go on and on and every time they do something new on it, it shows up on our personal page news feeds.  I just have no interest in knowing that so and so just bought a new pig for their farm or however it goes.  I've got a couple hundred friends right now and just imagine if 30 or more of them are playing these games!  As my group of friends got bigger, the number of games increased and my annoyance level grew.  I was about ready to quit the whole thing and get off Facebook, when one of my friends told me that if I hovered my cursor next to the application, a box pops up that gives you the option to hide that person or that application.  Ha!  Well, I still wanted the other stuff from that person, just not the games.  Once you hide the application from one person, it is hidden forever!  Good-bye farmville!  Relief!  Facebook became fun again for me.

 Farmville and Mafia Wars, application nightmares on Facebook...

Settings
One of the greatest fears many people have about Facebook is whether their privacy will be protected.  This is a legitimate concern according to the Wikipedia article I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Hopefully, they will continue to improve this, but meanwhile, just make sure that you will not post things that might shame you later and check your settings so that they reflect the level of privacy you want to have.  I keep my updates so that only my friends can see them, but allow my photos to be seen by friends of friends.  If you have friends on your photos, you can tag them and that photo will show up in their photo page as well, so I figure that it's nice for their friends to be able to see them as well.  You might want to make an art album public to anyone.  The settings options can be accessed on the top bar, next to the search box.

Linked accounts and privacy are the two important settings to check whenever you have doubts about who is seeing what.  Many of my friends kids are on Facebook and they revel in silliness.  I think about how it will be for them, if they still have the same accounts in 10 years, where they will have mountains of records of how they behaved as teens...  Will they want to delete it or look back on these times with a smile?  Who knows where the world will be then, but never before has our private life become so public.

Pages also have settings that should be monitored.  You can decide how much fan input you want to have: whether they can submit comments, post photos, participate in discussions and so on.

Interfacing
As if all of the above is not enough to convince you that Facebook can be a powerful promotional tool for your business, there is one more feature that I really like.  Increasingly, Facebook is linking with other social media so that updates and information can be shared back and forth.  As an Etsy seller, I was thrilled when they became linked to each other.  There is an Etsy application that pulls items from your shop on an Etsy page that has its own tab in your profile page.  Click on an item and it takes you to the Etsy shop.

 

I have my Etsy shop application on both my personal profile page and on Rayela Art and Falamos Portugues.  I created one for Afghan Tribal Arts which is on the Afghan Tribal Arts page on Facebook.

When you post something on Etsy, there is a Facebook icon which you can click and send that item to your Home Page's stream.  Again, I wish this went to my business page instead of my personal one, but in time, maybe it will.

Twitter is also linked in.  I don't have the patience to post on Twitter, but know that I have to be there, too, so I was relieved to find that I could set up my Rayela Art Facebook posts to go there, too.  And, they go to my Linked In page.  All of it helps, all of it has viral potential, the sneeze we all want for our businesses!

There is much more, I am sure, but hopefully, this tutorial has helped you understand how to make use of Facebook your tool to fit your needs.  As a final tip, I would like to point to the Search box.  This is such a great tool in itself!  Once you become friends with someone or join a page or group, start typing the name and it pops up.  This is how I travel between my pages.  You can also search using any key word and all related pages and entries will pop up, giving preference to the ones your friends have created or posted.  Here is an example using the keyword "textile":

Topics show up, grouped into pages, groups, or posts and you can enter anyone of them to see more results.  You will certainly find more information than you ever imagined!  Facebook can be addictive and I even had one friend who was kicked off the site because she was accused of spamming.  She is an incredibly talented artist who was just enjoying the site and networking with other artists.  All of her information was lost and she had to start over from scratch.  There are definitely improvements that need to be made, but you can be that when things like that happen, the people start screaming and Facebook listens.

It's free and interesting.  I advertised there over the Holidays and got a couple thousand hits on my Etsy store.  It's not cheap and I don't know if it generated any extra sales, but my Google Analytics tells me that both my Etsy store and my blog are getting more and more traffic from my presence on Facebook.  As my fan base grows, it can only help my other endeavors.

Of all the social media efforts I engage in, I find Facebook to be the most valuable use of my time.  Get on there and expand your base.  You never know who will want to be your friend!

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Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!