ASI 71 Spinning Creativity: A Journey through Craft Roulette with Stephen Gunn & Mary Gunn FUNN

Jeff: 0:07

Welcome back to Art Supply Insiders. My name is Jeff Morrow, and today we're talking with Stephen Gunn, and Stephen works with a YouTube program called Craft Roulette. Now, before we talk with Stephen, if you're enjoying these podcasts, you can sure help us out by going to wwwartsupplyinsiderscom and hitting the subscribe button. So let's get to Stephen. Stephen, how are you doing today?

Stephen: 0:38

Doing well. Jeff, Thanks for having me.

Jeff: 0:40

Well, gosh, we're really glad to have you, because this is just kind of a different podcast for us. So you're the producer of a show on YouTube called Craft Roulette, and I think you're more than a producer, right.

Stephen: 0:57

I did help create it. I came up with the idea with my mom, who I work with, who is also the host. But yes, i do more than just production. I do all the software development and website stuff and all the back end stuff that helps produce such a complicated show. There's a lot going on with it.

Jeff: 1:19

Tell us a little bit about what is Craft Roulette. How did you come up with the name? How did you and your mom come up with this idea?

Stephen: 1:28

So the show has evolved over the three years that we've done it, and it started extremely simple and we have added features, we've removed features, but the show has grown over the years. We're on episode 170 right now. Wow, wow, right, it's just a matter of showing up. Sometimes We started streaming to 10 people on Facebook and now we have thousands of viewers across major continents, and so the show is a bit about improvised crafting. We do not have a set project before the show starts. We also bring on special guests each week and we spin like roulette for project, color, elements and random, and with those four categories we then have to make a craft live on air, and a lot of conversation comes out of that, a lot of creativity comes out of that, and then we also invite all of our viewers to participate and submit along with the hosts.

Jeff: 2:44

So let me see if I understand this correctly, because my wife is a crafter and a card maker, but I'm more on the fine art side. So you have a guest person. Come on live on the air. You spin this roulette wheel.

Stephen: 3:02

So it's just a wheel from IKEA, but there are 24 possible options that it can land on, and, yeah, that's what we do. It really lets people see creative process when you have to, on the fly, come up with a project based on random print, and I think that's part of the power or fun of the show, is the viewers really see the creative process from the inception to the completion of a project in under an hour.

Jeff: 3:35

Wow, so this is an hour program You spin the show.

Stephen: 3:41

Excuse me, the show lasts about two hours with all the fanfare. Oh, the crash between the, the project selection and then the end of the project is about an hour hour 15 minutes.

Jeff: 3:55

So you spin the wheel and you have four different categories. Say what the categories are again.

Stephen: 4:00

So their project colors, element and random.

Jeff: 4:05

Let's just give our audience an idea. So pick something from each of the four categories, just pretending like I'm the guest. And so what would my four categories be?

Stephen: 4:19

So the show is primarily card making. We allow any type of paper crafts to submit, so people don't always make cards. So just picking some random parameters out of our lists that are currently on the show and you can see them on our website. We might have a birthday card, We might have colors that are summer vacation, We might have an element that is a plant, And then the random will be something kind of nebulous. That is really fun to see how people address it. But we might have heart, Which actually that one's, you know, and heart could mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

Jeff: 5:06

Now that you've given these parameters, i've got an hour or so. Now do I have all of these materials in front of me before I start this?

Stephen: 5:20

We like to say to our guests that it is almost impossible to prepare in like a pragmatic way, because the total possible combinations is 331,776 projects And so it's almost impossible to prepare. But we're very generous with the way that we consider a project to be complete, to have touched all the parameters, and we like to say it is an art project And so if you can justify it, you can use it. Your interpretation is the art and that is fine by us. And so we see our viewers also get to make projects and submit through our website And we have we range right now between 300 and 400 different art projects submitted each week, and just the range of ideas that we see are phenomenal. I mean, no project is alike. Everyone does a different thing. You would think that you know, having random parameters might lock people into an idea, and that's couldn't be further from the truth.

Jeff: 6:34

Wow. So you guys are literally teaching people how to be creative when just random things are thrown their way?

Stephen: 6:46

Kind of We like to say that we don't teach anybody anything on our show, which is kind of you know, it's a little bit of a separation thing from a lot of YouTube channels do a lot of educational stuff and we kind of concentrate more on just conversing. It's kind of like a podcast with the special guests, because we do side by side crafting, where my mom is on one side of the screen and the guest crafter, who's different each week, is on the other, and we get to see two people tackle the same project from two different perspectives. And then all of our viewers also have the entire week to submit a project and it it's a new project every week with the show, and so the iteration cycles really fast, which I think is a winning formula.

Jeff: 7:37

Yeah, you know what's really cool. So your mom and I, if I was on camera right now, we would each be doing our own craft and the viewers would be able to see what we're doing, but your mom, mary, and I would be talking back and forth and conversing about what we're doing.

Stephen: 7:56

Absolutely, and one of the. It was an idea that I came up with because we didn't want our guests to feel uncomfortable before they had to start the craft. We didn't want to throw them under the bus and have them make something bad, live on air in front of hundreds of people Right, right after the spins happen, we have a screen where we discuss the meaning of each parameter and how they could be applied in different ways, and we have the chat room going and people contribute their own ideas and there's just hundreds of ideas flying by And we spend about 10 or 15 minutes talking about the project before we start. And I think that's really important because we don't want our crafters to look bad And we don't want them to feel like you know they're. We don't want them to feel like they're spinning wheels or spinning gears without you know having something that they're comfortable with, and so, but yes, the side by side crafting is very nice. It's. It's fun to be able to see the creative process of two different individuals happen from start to finish.

Jeff: 9:13

Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about your mom, mary Gunn. Has she been a crafter and card maker for a while?

Stephen: 9:24

She has. She's been doing it for 25 years and I have been helping her with her website Since I started making websites. We launched her personal blog in 2003. You can still see it on the Wayback machine. So we've been working together for a long time and it's a way for me to always kind of push myself as a developer, as a website designer. It gives me projects that I kind of have full control over, whereas you know, if you're doing work for other people, you kind of lack control, lack creative. You know creative control.

Jeff: 10:00

Yeah, you have. you said you have a different guest crafter every week. We we've actually interviewed both Amanda Stevens and Laurel Beard and had just a great time with with both of them. How many guest crafters have you had on the show?

Stephen: 10:22

I think our roster is up to 72, which is pretty impressive, and we look for people that are already making videos, that already kind of have figured out the technology side of it first. You know, we're less concerned about audience size and more concerned about just trying trying to find people that are doing it so that we don't have to teach them how to do it to be on the show.

Jeff: 10:47

Yeah, that's when we talk to our audience. what they love the best is they love the stories as you are doing your crafts. They love to see stuff out of the box and how to do things differently, And it looks like that's exactly what you guys do, right?

Stephen: 11:10

We've kind of we kind of stumbled into it. But, yes, absolutely, and I think we have a system that really enables a lot of people to even find themselves as creative thinkers, where I think a lot of and I'm not, you know, i don't want to rag on anybody that's making videos at all, but I, a lot of people kind of do tutorial style videos. Yes, so people, people watch tutorial style videos and then try and recreate the craft and don't get much Creative juice out of it. And when we kind of give them a little bit of guidelines and And send them out on their own and then they can complete a project that it, they Look at that and say, wow, i, i thought of that, i did that myself and it's a really rewarding experience. I.

Jeff: 11:59

Can see how it would be, and when I saw your website, you also talked about people could win Prizes. How do the it's? how does somebody win a prize?

Stephen: 12:08

To be entered into our prize pool, you just have to submit a card, and so we make submitting cards as Easy as possible. It's just digital. You take a picture of it, you fill out a form, upload it. The form will your information. So next time you don't even have to fill out a lot of your information, it's already saved. And Then the next week we spin and we We had a lot of people, a guests, that were coming on our show and wanting to give stuff away, and we were like, you know, we should just go directly to the companies and not let our guests Give stuff away, because we don't want them to feel like they're having to pay to play on our show. And I know that there's a lot of companies out there that would love to give stuff away and have their names be broadcast, and so that's a. We usually work with three or four companies a month as Prize sponsors, so we give away a lot of stuff.

Jeff: 13:08

Boy, no kidding. And how does somebody actually win? the prize is having the best card. Is it random drawing? How does that happen?

Stephen: 13:18

So I'll be clear there is no such thing as best card on our show. Everyone, everyone that contributes has their own ideas, and That's what we love to see. Everyone has something. The prizes are completely random. I I wrote a program that spins a wheel on the screen and randomly selects a name. Oh, how cool. It's fun, and that's that's where I, steven Gunn, get the. You know, the joy of the show is building the little systems and stuff that I wouldn't otherwise Really get to build and be creative myself.

Jeff: 13:54

Yeah, because there's all sorts of ways to be creative. You don't have to pick up a brush or make a card to be called an artist or a crafter. You can do it in the digital world too, can't you?

Stephen: 14:06

Absolutely, and I'm a self-taught graphic designer and I see a lot of parallels in Stamping world to graphic design world. It's just that one's on paper and one's on screen.

Jeff: 14:19

I Could totally see that. So give us the your website, give us your own the, the website address.

Stephen: 14:29

The website is craft roulette dot live, not dot com, dot live, and if you type in craft roulette in Google, you will find it. I think it's the first thing that pops up, and our website has a lot of stuff on it. So you can see the wheel parameters, you can see all of the galleries from the past episodes. There's 17,000 Contributions that you can look at. Wow, it's great.

Jeff: 14:59

So that's craft roulette and that's C R A F T R O U L E T T? E dot live L I V E, is that right, correct?

Stephen: 15:11

Couldn't have done it better myself.

Jeff: 15:13

No, thank you very much, and you also. Obviously you have your YouTube site and they just type in craft roulette to get to that.

Stephen: 15:24

Correct, and if you go to our website, our YouTube is linked. But, yes, if you type craft roulette into YouTube, you will find us as well, and that's where the Show, the actual live broadcast, is done, completely through YouTube. Oh, and so it's every Friday night at 6 30 central time. So for the Pacific, your time, and if you go to our website, it will actually It will adjust for time zone, if you have that on your device, and it will tell you the times in your own time zone, because we have viewers all across the world and it's, let me tell you, time zones are all over the place And it was it's hard to.

Stephen: 16:04

It's hard to do Scheduled events for a worldwide audience because people just get confused, and so I tried to make it as accessible as possible.

Jeff: 16:17

Well, based on talking with Amanda and Laurel, you certainly have done it, and they both told me how incredibly fun and easy you made this for them when they went on your show.

Stephen: 16:32

I'm glad to hear that. So with a live broadcast, i always say that there's almost nothing or we almost never have a perfect broadcast. There's always something technically that is a little off and you just have to learn to live with that thing. with live TV or live broadcasts, and as the producer, my job is to figure out how to best mitigate or figure out those problems as fast as possible when they happen.

Jeff: 17:06

Boy do I understand that. But I have an advantage because when we get done I get to go out back and edit out all of my goof ups to make me sound a whole lot better than I really am. Imagine what would happen if I went on a live show.

Stephen: 17:22

I know exactly what would happen and it's just something you have to live with and I am a perfectionist And so, when you know, doing the show, it took me probably a year to really understand that it wouldn't be perfect and I couldn't make it perfect, but I could try and make it as good as possible.

Jeff: 17:42

So, looking in your crystal ball, where do you see this going? Do you see little offshoots and doing other sorts of stuff? Do you see that there's an unlimited amount of crafters and artists out there? Where do you see taking KraftRulet?

Stephen: 18:01

So the future of KraftRulet, i think, is just really getting the word out there and bringing people in both as guests and just public contributors to our show And so getting them in the groove of doing the project with us.

Stephen: 18:18

We have people that have contributed for 150 weeks in a row And so it blows us away that they spend the time every week doing the project along with us, and I really think the future of the show is just bringing more people in And I personally believe that when you do those decisions that are inside of creativity and you make projects on your own, i think that's a very rewarding and you know, good experience for people And so that's why we do it.

Stephen: 18:55

So the future for us is just really continuing on with what we do, trying to do stuff in small steps, try not to get too out in front of ourselves and fall And just bringing people on. Right now we have every week we have contributors from. You know we have Australia, new Zealand, asia, europe, africa, south America and United States all over, and you know that just makes us happy with what we're doing, that I don't see a lot of big changes coming down the pipeline, just more small changes to try and make it easier for the guests, easier for the sponsors, easier for everybody to look at galleries. Just trying to make things better one step at a time.

Jeff: 19:46

Yeah, have you had any guests back a second time, or do you just try to keep it fresh with somebody different each week?

Stephen: 19:58

We've definitely had guests back on. Some of our more recurring guests have been on nine times.

Jeff: 20:06

Oh my.

Stephen: 20:06

I think it's the ceiling right now. We're very proud of that, that they're brave enough to keep coming back. Yes, because there's always that chance that something goes wrong. It is like TV. Our guests are all very generous with their time and very gracious with everything. We couldn't be happier working with everybody in the craft community, because everybody is so nice.

Jeff: 20:32

Well, i can certainly second that. My business partner, dave and I have been in the art industry for oh my goodness, probably going on 20 years in various capacities. We keep coming back. All of you out there, artists and crafters, are the most fun people in the world, aren't they?

Stephen: 20:53

I think so. I mean, i've worked with a lot of artists from different areas. I was a musician, I toured, i managed bands. Wow, the craft community is very nice. I will say that The funny thing is we've only had a very few people tell us no, where we're not about asking people to be on the show, and almost everybody has said yes. Almost everybody has given us their time and been very gracious about it. We can't appreciate that more.

Jeff: 21:32

I can tell you that our audience is really glad you're there. Hopefully we reach a whole bunch of people that had not heard of Craft Roulette. So, stephen, i know you and your team have taken this a long ways. We have not.

Stephen: 21:53

The show started. We came up with the idea for the show and broadcast the first episode in about 48 hours The very first episode and you can watch it. We call it the pilot. It's on our YouTube channel. It's very rough. All the core ideas are there, but the heart and the soul of the show is very different.

Stephen: 22:16

In that first episode We invited our first guest on episode 21. It's kind of a way to both grow the show into other communities that we knew would like it, but also make the show more interesting and get more perspectives on creativity happening. When we first asked the first guest to come on the show, we kind of expected them to say no, and her name is Jame Amalmi. She said yes and she was very patient with us because we had to figure out all the tech of bringing a second crafter on to our show. That was a process. The tech setup took hours and hours and hours and we've dialed that down into about 20 minutes now and all of our growing periods with guests has relied on the guests being very patient with us.

Jeff: 23:13

Well, i've looked at two or three of the YouTube videos and I need to tell our audience this is someplace. If you are into crafting, if you are into card making, even if you are an artist and does oil colors or acrylics or something, this is a show that will stimulate your thought process and really help you start looking outside of the box for your craft making. Stephen, i can't tell you how happy we have been to have you guys on the show. As you grow and expand and get bigger, maybe you can come back from time to time and just talk to us about some updates.

Stephen: 24:00

I love that. Thank you for having me, Jeff.

Jeff: 24:02

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