classes
Carina currently offers online courses through Jessica Sprague.com. She specifically teaches to those who are learning to become designers. Click on the classes below to see if spots are available in her current courses.
Carina loves teaching and has taught graphic design at the University of Minnesota for five years including Graphic Design Foundations, Typography, Packaging Design, Design History, and Design Theory. Her online courses are clear and concise as she helps students with conceptual and practical thinking.
ILLUSTRATOR SERIES
Illustrator 101 is the dynamic tool that designers use in creating artwork and products. This self-paced class is set up to help you get comfortable in a graphic designer’s favorite tool. Build and design your own products, templates, cards, and more while streamlining your creative process.
Four week course | Offered anytime | self-paced class
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Illustrator 102 picks up from Illustrator 101 and shares how to designing your own artwork even if you have never taken a drawing class before!Take the concepts learned in this class and apply it to your own unique artwork!
Two week course | Offered anytime | self-paced class
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Illustrator 201 shows you the main tools you will use as a digital, graphic, or fabric designer! Prepare to see how you can use gradients effectively, master the pathfinder tool, and learn how to BUILD PATTERNS in Illustrator!!! The most basic building block of a paper, digital, or fabric designer is creating your patterns. Illustrator is an amazing tool for drawing these patterns and implementing them. I’ll show you how to save TIME when you create patterns in Illustrator (simple patterns that take a lot of time in Photoshop only take 20 seconds in Illustrator!)
This class is about PRACTICAL applications as a graphic, paper, digital, and fabric designer. We create projects for every lesson that will help you see how to use these techniques in your every day designing.
Four week course | Offered anytime | self-paced class
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Tips for Rockin’ Illustrator is a series of 20 tutorials to help beginners learn how to use Illustrator to build projects, brushes, and confidence in this program! Learn how to rock Illustrator in less than an hour once a week with these easy-to-understand tutorials! Never used Illustrator before? This class series is for you! Even advanced users can learn the simple techniques shown to develop faster methods for producing artwork, creating digital and organizational elements, and learning the ins and outs of using this program!
This subscription gives you access to all 20 episodes of 2012′s Tips for Rockin’ Illustrator as they are released each week, beginning with the first episode on March 2, 2012! Videos are meant to help beginners to advanced Illustrator users explore the tools and develop ideas for projects. Most of these topics are not covered in Carina’s current Illustrator offerings.
This series is both technique and project driven. The tools shown in the videos are meant to help inspire you to develop your own products and projects using the techniques shown!
Twenty week course | Offered anytime | self-paced class—Begins March 2012
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DIGITAL DESIGN CLASSES
The Art of Digital Design is a revolutionary class for new digital designers to learn the secrets of creating, packaging, uploading, marketing, and selling digital product. Jessica Sprague teaches this 4 week class with bonus 5th week with designer Carina Gardner. Carina also gives a in-depth critique of student’s finished kits at the end of the course.
Five week course | Offered once every two years
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Art of Digital Design II will grow your skills to a whole new level! Develop yourself as a strong and competitive digital designer through this 5-week course. Art of Digital Design 2 is feedback driven so that you can build confidence in yourself and your designwork! A course syllabus will be distributed on the first day of class, and you will get to submit your designwork for review and critiques. There are a total of 5 critiques in this course!
Here are a few of the topics we cover in Art of Digital Design 2:
+ Building strong papers with texture and distressing
+ Building strong kit collections: The rules and more!
+ Smart financial decisions when developing your products
+ Workflow of papers and elements: Making yourself a FAST designer
+ Changing clipart so that it is unique to YOU
+ Building previews that sell
+ Techniques for building scrapworthy elements
+ Making the move to other mediums: Transitioning to paper and fabric
Five week course | Offered once every two years
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Ready to take your designwork to the next level, but need to get some critical feedback before you submit it to a company, manufacturer, or client? Or just want to level up your own design skills and need an expert’s advice? Welcome to Designer’s One-on-One Workshop where you spend a session with paper, fabric, and digital designer Carina Gardner. Get critical feedback on your current portfolio of work from someone who taught at a university and who has been working in the craft industry.
Turn in your work (specifications below) the first week of the session and receive a voice memo citing your work’s pros and where you can make improvements. You will receive details on building your focal point, developing patterns, and improvements that make sense for YOUR designwork.
Two submissions | 3 Sessions offered in 2012
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ALBUM CLASSES
The ABC Inspiration Class is for beginner to advanced digital scrapbookers. Join Carina Gardner as she helps you create a beautiful album using the alphabet as inspiration! You’ll enjoy a lesson everyday for 28 days (4 weeks) that will inspire you to create a beautiful album that captures your family’s life at this time of year.
Carina inspires you with tutorials on using the four book templates and digital products that come with the class. Video lessons, helpful tips, and lots of examples are given with your class assignments.
Four week course | Offered once a year
Hi! I'm Carina Gardner. I'm the Owner of Carina Gardner, Inc. and Creative Director of Carta Bella Paper Company. Find my designs on this site or in my shop!
