Scrap, Paper, Scissors

Do you have a favorite company???
You know the one, you watch with baited breath to see what they release at CHA, and you bang on the door of the scrapbooking shop when you know it has arrived!

I know that i do!! im there at Papermaze when the boxes arrive and often opening them before Vanessa does!
But as i said there are ones that i really look for and 3 Bugs in a Rugs is one of them. I dont think there has been one line of theirs that haven't bought and used.
I love that there stickers are on cardstock and are not flimsy and i love all the fantastic designs that they do.

But there is always a part of me that wants to know more, basically because im a really nosy person!!! LOL...
So i emailed 3 Bugs and put a few questions to them! Here are the answers.

How did you get started in the scrapbooking world? Kristine ( my wife) has been Scrapbooking with friends for several years and I wanted to start our own business. Kris came up with the idea of starting our own online scrapbook store. When we were about to launch our site, she decided she wanted to design her own products to sell. While I ran the store she started designing paper collections. After several months we we’re finally ready to release her products. We had some designers create some layouts and post them online and it began to snowball from there.

Why the name 3 bugs in a rug? We named the company after our 3 Boys.

Who designs your products for you and how did you select them for this job? Kristine designs all our products.

How do you think your products standout from other manufacturers? There are so many great companies out there. Kris tries to use unique color combinations like using pink in her Christmas lines to help distinguish us from other papers in the industry.

How do you pick your design team? We ran a design team contest to pick our current design team. We received so many great entries; it made it tough to pick them.

Where do you see your company in 5 years? We hope we are doing what we love, providing paper designs and embellishments that inspire scrap bookers to create amazing layouts for their photos and other craft ideas.

How long from the actual starting a design to the shipping to customers? Can you tell us about this process? Kris’s first designs took about 6 months. Now it’s about a 3 to 4 month process. The first couple of months Kris designs them on the computer. The last month is having proofs printed making design changes, creating the catalog, uploading images on the web-site and creating names and UPC item numbers. We have so many things to finish the last month because we are usually fairly close to trade show dates when we need to show our new products. It’s very stressful but also very satisfying after everything is done.

What is the best thing about working in the scrapbooking business? Seeing the amazing things people create using our products is very fulfilling.

Here are the gorgeous work that a few of our design team girls did using 3 Bugs products.

The first lot is done by the fantastic Deb, she used The Chalk Garden line. click here for 3 Bugs products.

Here is what Wendy did.

The design sketch for this card is down to Nancy Vandenberg. Her work with 3 bugs is amazing,but you will hear more about her soon!!! i promise!