The Diva and Duke take a road trip!

Hello Divas and Dukes!

I wanted to share with you a quick road trip we took last week up to Laguna Hills to visit a dear friend and recent radio guest on The Diva Craft Lounge, Jenny Doh at Stampington & Company. She is the editor at large for over 31 magazine publications per year! 'Somerset' may be the most popular brand you may recognize. There is 'Somerset Studio', 'Somerset Apprentice', 'Belle Armoire', 'Stuffed' (WAY too cute!), and The Best of Stampington & Company, 'HandCrafted', just to name a very few.

Needless to say, walking into the 'corporate' looking building and suddenly being hit with tables of art and craft projects was the best kind of sensory over-load that Danielle and I could have ever hoped for! She introduced us to some of her wonderful editors who are all busy heading up different magazine deadlines. All of this was so new to me, so it was fun to see each of their offices full of creative color, texture, projects and ideas in the making hanging on the walls, sticking out of corners, displayed on shelves above the windows, posted on bulletin boards, it went on and on! We could have spent hours in just one room alone!

The tour continued to where all of the art projects that are submitted to them through out the world are brought in, catalogued and then discussed for possible publication. We saw where they do their lay outs, talk about their themes, color choices for each periodical, etc.

We even discussed the intricacies of dealing with everybody's ideas, some that may not make it into a particular publication and how they have learned to interact with each other, respect each other's ideas and move on to the next project. Time obviously cannot be wasted and one learns very quickly that it is not about anybody's ego when presenting an idea as much as it is contributing to a much larger organism that makes each magazine the unique gem that it is. They do have to move FAST with that many magazines to get out! You can see they truly have it down to a quick paced science that is one of the most impressive 'well oiled machines' that I have ever seen.

Most of their photography is 'in-house' and it was fun to walk down the aisles of props that they collect and use to help embellish the pictures that will ultimately be published. I could have spent the rest of the day in there alone! There was even a cello sitting there!

Afterwards, Jenny was gracious enough to take the time and have lunch with us where we got to really talk about the art of creativity, the business end of crafting, all of which inspired Danielle and myself to continue to do MORE of what we do!!!

Jenny is also a cellist herself, (so THAT'S where the cello came from!) and really enjoys doing her own crafting in all kinds of different mediums as well. So with Danielle and I in our singing/theatre/composing backgrounds, we were never short for conversation! The two hours went by like two minutes!

We can't wait to do it again!

Oh, and just between you and us, listen to www.divacraftlounge.com in July when we will be interviewing Jenny again about a NEW magazine that will be hitting the stands shortly. And all I can say is, YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS OUT ON WHAT THAT'S ABOUT!!!

KEEP IT JOY-FULL!

RAYME ROYALE