Just in time for the holidays is Kitchams Crafting a fun e-book written by Brittany Sherman of Va-Voom Vintage, which I recently purchased and thoroughly enjoyed.
The book has over 20 retro inspired holiday craft projects and lots of family stories. Each project includes easy to follow instructions and step by step pictures. Plus, the entire book is written in a casual down to earth tone much like Brittany’s blog Va-Voom Vintage.
If you are not familiar with Va-Voom Vintage, I suggest you check it out. Brittany’s blog is full of vintage/retro inspired projects from home decor to sewing.
After purchasing the book I asked Brittany would be so kind to do a little interview for Akram’s Ideas about her book and she said, yes!
Here are a few questions and answers from Brittany Sherman about her book.
- How did you get the idea for your Kitschmas e-book?
Last fall, my grandma gave me a trunk load of vintage Christmas decorations, vintage craft magazines and my beautiful aluminum tree. She goes to country auctions all the time so she had a surplus of this stuff, plus a bunch of boxes that belonged to my Great Grandma. She knows how much I love vintage so she passed it all on to me. Many of the decorations and ornaments were handmade and the magazines were loaded with wonderful ideas for projects that I wanted to share so I thought it would be fun to put them all together with step-by-step tutorials in an e-book. When I was a kid, we made lot of Christmas decorations too and they are still some of my favorite memories.
- What did you like most about the whole process ?
I love to craft so this was an absolute blast! I started in June and basically had my house piled with boxes of Christmas stuff and craft supplies for 4 months. My favorite projects were the ones that my family helped with. My kids helped make the felt garland and my crafty husband, Pj helped me to figure out how to take my pretty ideas and make them functional. We are serious DIY-ers in my house so there were a lot of times when I’d have to say “We can’t use the blowtorch, honey. We have to use supplies that normal people would have!”
- Which project did you most enjoy?
That’s such a tough question to answer. Each project was picked because it really spoke to me either from a memory as a kid or because I fell in love with it. I really loved the little felt deer because he’s just so adorable but the putz houses reminded me of the tiny versions that we made when I was little. I was really impressed with myself for my egg diorama ornaments too. I remember dancing around the living room with them cheering to my husband “They look just like real vintage ones, don’t they? Ooohh look at the tiny styrofoam snowballs!”
- Any plans for another e-book of any sorts?
While working on Kitschmas Crafting, I had a billion ideas for more ebooks that I’d love to write eventually! First, I’m working on turning my blog e-course into a pdf e-book. Right now, the course is in blog format so it reads like a blog, which is kind of neat and unique but I think a PDF is so easily accessible on different devices and that’s nice to have while you’re working on your own blog. Also, since I wrote it a few years ago, social media has changed and I’ve learned some good stuff so I’m adding all of that in a new chapter. After that, I’d love to write one on vintage fashion.
- Any other comments you’d like to mention.
This was a big learning process, especially in designing the e-book. I’ve never done that before but it was fun! I wish I would have taken some behind the scenes photos while I was working. I spent a lot of afternoons sitting in a pile of felt and sequins, digging through a basket looking for more glue sticks. We had a lot of funny moments writing this book- like the time my tree-shaped Jell-O salads melted into a big blob or explaining to my kids in October that mommy has to take pictures of the Christmas tree, Santa isn’t coming until December. They do love to help set up that aluminum tree, though! I think we all had fun and made some great memories!
I want to thank Brittany for taking the time to answer these questions. As I said before the book is a lot of fun to read and I plan to make a few of the projects from the book, this holiday weekend as a matter of fact.
I am excited to hear about Brittany’s plans for future e-books and will let you know if I hear more on that front. In the meantime get your own copy of Kitchmas Crafting here, and it just so happens that Brittany is offering 30% off this week with code WACKYTURKEY.
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