Cameesa - The Blog

Loud Splash by Carolina Molina

Females are always requesting more female designs on Cameesa. They want to see designs that are more appealing to themselves, and their taste in clothing.

We got a chance to interview Carolina Molina (aka Cmolina) from The Dominican Republic, a female artist who answers many questions that we have had from day 1. Carolina is a great artist with designs that literally scream out at you.

Could you please give us a window into your background, and personal life?

I come from the a little island called Dominican Republic, though most of the time I think I come from LALA Land. Ive been painting since I was 7 years old, and I just loved colouring and making things from scratch. I love all forms of art, music, theatre, plastic, you name it, I probably love it.

I think of myself as unique, just like everyone else. My native language is Spanish, though Ive been speaking English since I was four. I attended a private British school owned by the sugar factor in my town. I moved to the United States when I was 18 yrs old and stayed there for about a year and half. I try to go as often as I can, at least once a year, though I plan to move there in a year or so.

Describe your typical day.

Carolina Molina

I wouldn’t say typical day, because I create at night. Basically I’m like Superman, I live a normal life during the day and create t-shirts by night. Unfortunately I cant fly, working on it though. I sleep three or four hours a day, and work during the morning and design at night.

Where else can we find your artwork, other sites, stores etc.?

Well I am working on a project right now called Unique 909, and you can find it in zazzle. There is not much to look at right now, but soon I will post many designs Ive been working on. I guess I want to post them all at once. In addition, I have started a new group on MySpace, called Tees and T-shirts. Come by and check it out.

How did you get into design, and what do you like most about it?

I haven’t been designing t-shirts for very long, but design has always been part of my life. I started designing t-shirts for 5th and Ocean in Dominican Republic. And found out it was something I wanted to do, and I learnt as much as I could about the printing process, and all of that good stuff. They were not too creative, or aloud us to have a voice in the designs so I quit and decided to fly solo.

Favorites

Carolina’s Inspiration, her backyard

TV show: When it comes to TV, I watch whatever is on…I love TV.

Magazine: I don’t really read magazines, I rather read blogs, and I read many different ones, not one in particular.

Artist: Ha. These are my favourite questions. Let me say Jason Mraz is playing wildly in my ipod, I usually play it when am designing, that and The Doors.

Favorite course in school: In school I loved math, yes I did, I still do.

About 10% of our artists are female, do you encounter any challenges being a female artist? If so, what are they and how have you overcome them?

I think the biggest difference is that although a lot of girls wear t-shirts, they don’t wear them as often as guys, so the main audience people want to target are guys. Guys don’t want to wear flower and cute designs, so some girls might find it hard to create designs guys will like.

So far I haven’t encounter that problem because I started by making t-shirts with slogans instead of designs, and I take pride in being a tom-boy, so thinking about phrases that dudes would like on t-shirts was not hard.

We have had numerous requests for more girly designs on Cameesa, do you think of this when designing or do you just go with what your hear tells you?

It is possible to make designs that girls and guys could both wear. If you mean butterflies and flowers on a t-shirt, then that might be challenging. I think of things I want to say, or wish I could say, or moods I am in. Its nice to have t-shirts that represent the mood you’re in or that says something about you.

Carolina’s Workplace

In your opinion, what is the difference between a male and female artist? What is the difference in their art?

See, Ive seen a lot of t-shirts designed by girls that you would not imagine it came from a girl, or the concept that girls like girly things. Maybe not too many female artists are recognized, but people assume they are guys because they don’t see rainbows and unicorns. Not that there is anything wrong with unicorns, I like them.

How did you find Cameesa?

I came across Camessa in the Pop culture t-shirt blog.

Being a new Artist on Cameesa, what advice do you for other artists out there?

I remember reading the comments on the first t-shirt and using it as fuel for my next design. The first one might not be the one, or maybe the 20th, but if you read the comments you will be able to produce better designs.

Cameesa is a site were the comments are usually constructive, not destructive. They will always find a thing you did right and point out what can be improved. So don’t give up!

What are you most proud of?

Im proud of being a free spirit, it takes a long time to able disconnect from the real world.

What is your advice in Life?

Everything comes on its own time, no need to rush.

Her by Cmolina

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Thank you very much for you great insight Carolina, we look forward to seeing more of your art very soon.

This past Wednesday, Andy and I were very fortunate to be interviewed by Jeff Woelker from The Chicago Tech Report.  This was our first video interview and we actually did not know what to expect.  To tell you the truth, I was a little nervous.  Andy says that I get really goofy when I am put in a serious situation (I guess it’s some sort of defense mechanism, a good one at that.)

Jeff did a great job as an interviewer asking great questions, and keeping things informal (nice work Jeff).  Since we were a little anxious, we stuck to the format of the interview and didn’t branch out to talk about much more.  One thing that we regret was that we failed to mention YOU, and we learned this very quickly.  YOU, our Supporters, our families, and friends……a huge reason why we are still running Cameesa.

So, we want to thank you all for everything that you have done for us.  From responding to forum posts and Buying Tees, to telling your friends about Cameesa and putting stickers on your MacBook laptops.  2008 was the beginning of Cameesa and we look forward to our first full year as Cameesa in 2009.  Thank you.

1. Watch the interview by clicking here, The Chicago Tech Report Cameesa Interview.

2. p.s. WE WISH THAT WE WOULD HAVE SAID THIS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO:

I’ve decided to start a crowdfunding blog. I think there a lot of good crowdsourcing blogs out there but not that many dedicated to solely crowdfunding. I will document the developments in the space as well as taking an in depth look at some of the platforms that are out there today. I will post some of the material on the cameesa blog as well. Get the RSS feed!

So…….a few months ago, we decided that the Cameesa concept needed to be explained with a video. Trying to use CommonCraft as an example, we attempted to explain it in a video.

Andy and I  spent 15 hours putting this video together…..and then 15 minutes deciding that IT SUCKED…..HA. We needed to share this with you, there’s actually one other explanation video but I don’t know if we want to embarrass ourselves even more.

p.s. Check out our new Cameesa YouTube Channel

I subscribe to Google Alerts for the terms crowdfund, crowdfunded, and crowdfunding, among other things. The other morning when I awoke I was alerted to an article on crowdfunding from the Sydney Morning Herald.

I checked it out, and noticed a few familiar names on the crowdfunding scene: Sellaband and MyFootballClub. But there were two other companies that I had never heard of: Catwalk Genius and BeerBankRoll. After poking around a bit, it appears that Catwalk Genius plans to use crowdfunding to sponsor fashion designers. A noble cause, but I didn’t learn much more since their website is not currently functional.

The other company, BeerBankRoll is much further developed, and aspires to be a crowdfunded brewery. They have received a fair amount of press around the web, and appear to be steadily signing up people who believe in the idea. As I lurked around the nether regions of the site, I noticed that they are actually located in a suburb of Chicago!

It’s rare to find crowdfunding companies, but even more rare to find one in your own back yard. It was encouraging for me to see that crowdfunding is starting to proliferate in the United States. Hopefully we can catch up to our UK/European brethren soon. I feel like the biggest challenge is education on the concept. Once people grasp the premise they start to feel comfortable with participating.