karyn

It’s officially official for the world to know! I wrote a book with Jacqueline Sava called, Handmade Getaway. I am also the photographer! We’ve been working on the Handmade Getaway for a couple years now and there are a lot of stories and fun images to share about how we got to where we are now. I hope you’re ready to hear all about it because it’s been really hard not to talk about it for so long.

We’ve decided to independently publish this project and we’re counting on our community to help us get the presses rolling. Last week, on February 1st we launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us fund the printing and editing costs. We were so hopeful that our project would be well received but we certainly didn’t expect to watch the numbers rise to over $18,000 on our first day! We are now seven days into the campaign and just about to hit 70% of our funding goal. We are so grateful for the support and excited to reach our goal so quickly. We would love to surpass our initial goal of 50K and create some stretch goals to make Handmade Getaway even better.

The idea for Handmade Getaway came to life at one of our winter cottage retreats. It was the last afternoon. We’d just made a lunch from all our leftovers (one of our last day tricks) and we were feeling pretty good about how smoothly the weekend had gone and how many projects we had all worked on over the last few days. Jacqueline wondered aloud if we should document all the tools, charts and systems we had created over the years. We all started throwing out ideas and memories about what we had figured out through trial and error. Mostly, we knew what a special time these getaways had become for all of us and the idea of sharing this part of our lives was really exciting. Jacqueline and I decided to come up with a table of contents to see if we had enough to talk about for a whole book.

It didn’t take long for us to look over our years of getaways to start pulling out the best projects, pro-tips and tools. Not only did we have a lot of information to share, but I had also been documenting each getaway with my camera since the very first one. Next, we developed some brand new projects that you’ll have fun making on your own or with your friends. We’ve found that friends and sewing are inseparable for us, thus each chapter starts with our theme Fabric, Friends and Food.

In total there are –

• 12 individual projects
• 5 group projects
• 4 mini projects,
• 4 group activities
• 3 planning charts and
• tons of pro tips

I’m not going to lie, I’ve always wanted to publish a magazine or a book, so I feel very honoured that I’m getting to embark on this wild endeavour with Jacqueline and Andrew Cloutier, our brilliant graphic designer. We’ve been a tight team from the beginning and have such a strong vision for how awesome we want this book to be. Handmade Getaway is so beautiful, but also full of inspiration, ideas and information. You are a big part of helping us make this dream a reality.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit our Kickstarter page, I hope you will. Our Kickstarter video was shot and edited by my talented brother, Mark Valino who really helped us to capture our story. It’s beautiful and sweet and somehow it’s even under three minutes long! There are many fun rewards to choose from and we’ve just posted up some new ones, including a class with me to make my Design Notebook Cover from the book!

If you have already supported this project. THANK YOU! If you’d like to share your support, we’ve made some fun icons you can download here. Post them and tag us @handmadegetaway and #handmadegetaway!

p.s. Not only was Handmade Getaway written, photographed, and designed in Canada, it will also be printed in Canada too! We are extra proud of this on top of everything else.