Calling All Designers!!

Have you ever thought to yourself, "gee, I'd sure like to be on that Lotus Paperie Design Team"?? If you have - or even if you haven't- this is your chance to submit your work for our Calling All Designers Open Call. May concludes the current DT session and the next is set to begin in June.


Read the stuff below to find out the details of the Open Call...
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You are:
creative, passionate, committed and know the importance of deadlines and also that your best work is what you want others to know you by.

You scrapbook for fun or to save your sanity but you do so with conviction. You scrap because you love it and rise to a challenge. You are comfortable sharing your personal journaling and photographs without censoring (unless they're addresses- we don't need any creepy stalkers showing up at our front doors! or boob shots from those breastfeeding photos - or worse, the graphic birth photos...Eeew!) You don't take life or yourself too seriously and are an open communicator. You are sensitive to others' feelings but have a positive, easygoing attitude. You are moderately computer literate and are a regular blogger and enjoy sharing your work in the public forum.

We (Lotus Paperie) are:
first and foremost, a business but we understand that it's the people who make our business. We openly welcome constructive criticism (and random gifts during birthday week!) and are eager to make being on the Design Team as positive an experience as humanly possible for all involved. We are deeply committed to bringing creativity & joy to the lives of those who share in our passion for paper arts and all forms of crafting and have great respect for what others share with us. We are a warm and grateful group and eagerly anticipate growing the Lotus Paperie Team!

To make a submission you will need to email the following:
-3 of your best pages, one of which needs to be brand new (never ever published anywhere) and created from the sketch found at the bottom of this post. Please only submit this page to this call and we politely request that you refrain from publishing it elsewhere until you hear back as to whether or not you are invited to join our team. We want that page to be a big surprise to all our faithful blog readers.

technical sidenote: please ensure that your images are sent in .jpg format and please don't send humongous files.

-write a brief bio about yourself including your scrapbooking interests/experience, as well as links to your blogs/online galleries and other design teams that you are on currently or have been in the past. Please be sure to include your mailing address & email address in your bio. Also, a photo of yourself that you love, please to include that too! For our ease of file management, please include your bio as a Word file attached to your email rather than writing it in the body of your email. :)

-email the above items to info@lotuspaperie.com and put "Design Team Submission" in the subject line. Emails received after 9:00pm PST on April 26, 2009 will not be considered this time.

Here's the deal if you are invited to join the Design Team:
-You agree to make pages/projects reflecting each of the weekly challenges posted to the Yahoo group throughout the entire duration of your 6 month term (June 1, 2009 - November 30, 2009).

-Artwork can be created all at once or week by week, whatever works best for you. You will not be contacted if your submission misses the weekly deadline (thursday night, 9:00pm pacific time). If you miss more than two deadlines, your will be dismissed and your spot will become available to someone new.

-You will submit well photographed/scanned digital images of your artwork. You will make efforts to eliminate unsightly glare & shadows from your submissions. Poorly captured images will not be posted and will qualify as a "missed deadline", however, those who are invited to join the team will be given pointers to help them make the best possible digital reproductions of their work. Please request this information if you need it. Macro/detail images are welcomed to accompany your full-frame layout images.

-You will promote Lotus Paperie on your blog by either a link, gallery, weekly postings of your Lotus Paperie projects or all of the above. We politely ask that you maintain & update your blog weekly (or more if you prefer) as we link to you every time we post your pages and our readers do follow the links.

-You will not post pages created for the DT anywhere on the web (except for our private Yahoo group- see next point) until they have been published to the blog. NO EXCEPTIONS. If this is not respected, it will have the same consequences as a 'missed deadline' after two occurrences, you will be dismissed and your spot will be available to someone new.

-You will upload your pages to our private Yahoo group. You will receive an email invitation to join the group where there will be an album for you to upload your pages to.

-You will regularly visit our Flickr group and leave positive feedback on as many of the uploads as possible to keep everyone's mojo going. Everyone likes kind words said about their work and it's important for our challenge participants to know that we are seeing their contributions.

-You will participate in the once-monthly request to select your favourite submissions to our Flickr group. You will be asked to email links to your favourite page to us so we can post a poll for our blog readers to vote on. You will be permitted to cast a vote.

-If you need to terminate your position, please try to give us as much notice as possible so that we can find someone else to take your place in the team.

Having said all that, we are regular folks just like you and sometimes things happen that get in the way of our plans. We are pretty flexible and understanding. We want this to work for you as much as we want it to work for us. We want you to be happy so if life gets in the way of something crazy has happened like the dog ACTUALLY ate your page, dude, let us know so that we can come up with a solution together!

international applications are totally okay! Bring it on!!. Please make all submissions by 9:00pm PST, April 26, 2009. The new DT members will be announced in Early May and will be introduced throughout May. We are also opening up a few more spots on the team so don't be shy, get those applications in the mail!

One more thing, if you are a new scrapper or you've never been on a Design Team before, don't let that stop you from applying. We want to see everyone's work! Show us what you're made of!