Calling All Artists!

This is a little shout-out write up of a website that I love using and exploring. Carbonmade is a site that you can create and manage an online profile. At the moment, they asked for bloggers who use Carbonmade to write about it. I'm not an eloquent master of the English language, but Carbonmade deserves the love! And they asked nicely.

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Carbonmade is a site I found out about through a friend and fellow NC State textile student and dork, Jenna. I shall clarify, she's a graduate student now, and I'm an alum. I stumbled upon the link on Facebook, and curiosity led me to clicking. I was pleasantly surprised to not only be able to see her portfolio - I had never had the chance to see it before and it's a very good one - but to see such a clean, well-designed website. I've dabbled in website building and while I'm capable at a simple Dreamweaver website, I'm not exactly a website artist.

Realizing the convenience (if not the value, at that point) of having an online portfolio, I signed up. This was almost a year ago, exactly. February 20th, 2008. Having had a small, but growing, apparel and fabric design portfolio started, the free option was perfect. But before I knew it, with the time I had taken off from school, I had more and more projects created. Finally being able to play catch-up on projects from NCSU that had never had the time for actual portfolio creation, all of a sudden my portfolio went from small to at least average!

Carbonmade has a huge value to me. I live in North Carolina. Yet I studied and graduated from college in apparel and fabric design. All ye creative people know that these two fields aren't exactly booming in North Carolina. In desperate need for work experience, I started sending out resumes for summer internships last spring. With some luck, a small company was interested in me. Financially, I could not afford to go to New York to interview, so instead, through my online portfolio and a phone interview, I got an internship! While my actual design skills aren't vital for being an intern, it's something companies desired to see. Simply having this web address on my resume is allowing companies far and wide to view the little ole portfolio of a North Carolina girl. Whether they love it or hate it, more eyes are seeing it, and in my mind, that holds more value than I can imagine!

Another smaller value to Carbonmade is allowing me to share work with friends - they can give their input, criticism, praise, to help me refine and rethink how I look at my portfolio.

So I thank Carbonmade - not only is the website incredibly easy to use, they also have amazing customer service. Yes, this was actually me, and I could not be happier with the response I received from you guys!

Come check me out, strangers and friends alike! Share your thoughts about my portfolio, and if you're an artist of any kind, check out the site in general.