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Interview with Valerie Janitch Valerie Janitch is one of the most widely published and popular craft authors and designers, contributing to magazines in both in the USA and Great Britain. Valerie, first of all, what exactly do you do? That's the classic, because I never know what to say. What am I? I started off as a journalist with "My Home and Family," which, of course, has been out of print for years. It was the sister magazine to "Woman and Home," one of the UK's most enduring women's magazines. That was your first job? Oh, no, I was in advertising and publishing before that, but this is how my career developed. About thirty years ago I became Home Editor of My Home and Family. Well, actually, the whole story is that I've designed and made things all my life and I love needlework. I just thought this Home Editor job was so boring; well, not actually the job itself, but what I was turning out. Tell me about some of your early assignments. My editor asked me to do a colour feature on spring-cleaning. I had to utilise as many cleaning items as I possibly could. The idea was to get advertising. The advertising department would contact the manufacturers of the items to see if they would buy advertising space. That must have involved a lot of research? It sounds really interesting. Well, no. Actually, it could easily have been a very boring feature. All I had was a collection of cleaning items and I needed to make it appealing to our readers. It was going to be a colour page and, at that time, there were only so many colour pages, you see. This was really where my career began to change. I asked my editor if I could design some little bunnies. They could climb up and down all these bits of equipment, the vacuum cleaners and things. Mother bunny was busy spring-cleaning. Father bunny sat around reading his newspaper. Baby bunnies climbed all over the cleaning equipment. The response was fantastic. Readers demanded to know where they could buy the bunnies or, better still - could they make them? So, you started off writing articles but became a designer almost by accident? Yes. My editor asked me to carry on designing toys, dolls, all sorts of things. Rag dolls were all the thing at that time. I designed a basic doll and dressed it six different ways. We featured them sitting in a schoolroom. The response to this was just fantastic. We gave away patterns. If you wrote in with a stamped addressed envelope, we sent you the pattern. So did you design the pattern yourself? Oh yes, yes! I designed them, made them, did everything, wrote the instructions, did the diagrams, and it was just such a winner! So I went on being Home Editor but handling each feature in this way, doing all kinds of things. Once, we featured Fogarty Pillows. They were terribly keen to give Fogarty Pillows a mention and I thought, "How on Earth am I going to do this?" So I featured a baby in a playpen; you know - the old-fashioned wooden playpen with bars and I made covers for the pillows in very bright colours and tied them to the bars. So those were probably the original baby bumpers. Well, yes, I suppose they were. Valerie, coming to your work currently, what are you doing now? I've moved on. I still write, but I do much more designing now, because that's what is popular. I have always enjoyed designing things for people to do, you know - attractive things. For example, you could buy an inexpensive basket cradle and line it with broderie anglaise and all that sort of thing. Those were the sort of things I couldn't afford when my children were babies. That was the whole point. I wanted to show people how to make inexpensive items from inexpensive bits and pieces. I wanted people to be able to make things that would otherwise cost a lot of money - to show that you don't need to buy lots of expensive equipment. Throughout my career, I wanted to introduce people to things that they could make cheaply. I know you've also written some books. Tell me about those. Three different publishers asked me to write books. One, Victorian Christmas, (Brockhampton Press, 1995, ISBN 1-85470-069-3) explains the origins of Christmas traditions together with inexpensive ideas for Christmas decorations and simple instructions to make them. What about your other books? Well, some of these are compilations of the features that I have written over the years. My editor gave me permission to use these. Have you any more books up your sleeve? I've given up writing books because there is so much work in them. You don't really make any money. The book is dead after such a short period. Why is that? When I first started writing books, I was always assured that the backlist would last at least twenty years. But it's not like that. They print a certain number of copies. When they're sold, if you're lucky, it goes into paperback and, again, they'll print a certain number of copies. When they're sold, that's it, no more! Victorian Christmas was one of my most popular books. I get letters every week asking if the book is still available. You can't get it unless the library can come up with a copy. The only thing about writing books is that you then establish yourself as a name. You can get work anywhere, particularly the magazines. What advice would you give to people trying to break into the magazine market? Study the magazine you are interested in working for. Contact editors, ask what their forthcoming themes are, what are they interested in, what are they focusing on? What do their readers want? Most editors have a jolly good idea of the sort of thing they are looking for. Let them know you've studied the magazine. Don't give the impression that you've never looked at it! Do you find editors are helpful? Sometimes. For example, the editor of one particular magazine, Popular Crafts, always writes to me, saying for instance, that in January 2002, they are planning a feature on so-and-so, February will be Valentine's Day, and so on. You'll get ideas from that. But now, I don't do nearly so much feature writing because I know my designs are popular, they're what people want. I'm holding a lovely furry glove puppet. Tell me about this. It's part of a kit. I'm working with a close friend making toy patterns for people who want to make things to sell as fund raisers: schools, PTA's, Guides and Brownies, churches. I do all the designing, draw the patterns, write the instructions, etc. My partner does all the office side of things, the mailings, bookkeeping, all the jobs I hate. I'm not really doing much else. I think it's about time I had some time to myself. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm sure readers will wish you every success with this latest venture. Note: Details of craft kits available from: Brenda Ross, Colne Promotions, PO Box 420 Colney Heath, St Albans, Herts AL4 0YA, United Kingdom. Frances Spiegel is a graduate of the Open University in History/Politics. She regularly contributes short stories and creative nonfiction articles to many UK women's magazines as well as travel articles to many e-zines. Her book, "Ride the Rocket - Toronto Enabled," a travelogue about Toronto, is available at www.authorsonline.co.uk.
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