Making of a Magazine

Hello! Today I want to share with you a small part of the process of making Stitch Craft Create. When I was asked to be the art director of Stitch Craft Create in June 2011 I was excited about the challenge. As someone who still considered herself a "recent graduate" this was an amazing opportunity and I felt so fortunate to be given the task. My creative process always starts with sketches... lots and lots of sketches. It allows me to create a narrative and a visual flow in my mind before committing to it on the computer. Below are sketches I did while working on the first issue of Stitch Craft Create.

Cover ideas and planning before the photoshoot.

Layout ideas. 

Gift idea notes and sketches for the Holiday issue.

This magazine is a team effort through and through! We all contributed a few projects for the first issue. Here you'll see sketches of my ideas for the screen printed pillows and the finished project/article below. 

And here I sketched out some simple cross-stitch ideas, we decided to use the reindeer for the magazine! 

The editor's page / mood board. It was a little challenging to style this photo since we needed to be sure we had plenty of room for the text of the editor's letter--but it worked nicely, I think!

How do you get your creative juices flowing?

Be sure to order the latest copy of Stitch Craft Create at store.marthapullen.com!

Courtney Kyle is the art director of Stitch Craft Create as well as Sew Beautiful magazine. She lives in Alabama with her husband, Jackie, two dogs, and two cats. When Courtney is not working she's at home stitching, painting, gardening or diving into some other variation of DIY goodness.