Have you met Zara?

So as promised, I’m talking about Zara today after talking about Laura yesterday. Zara works as a textile printing instructor at Loughborough University- she has a real life proper crafty job which is something I envy her for! Naturally, her area of interest is screenprinting, and Zara Emily creates some beautiful designs for babies but I know for a fact she will make grown up t-shirts too 😉 I bought an amazing tote bag from her at a fair once so she doesn’t mind custom orders- just putting it out there…

Here’s some fab stuff selected for you, dear reader…

Zara Emily products can be found on Folksy.

And Facebook.

Book Review: Quilt a Gift for Christmas by Barri Sue Gaudet

This review is brought to you by Gina who is kindly guest blogging today. Since we’re in the last 12 weeks of the year it’s time for the C word!

This book covers a wide range of projects for the festive season, though a lot of them could be used for other celebrations with a little bit of interpretation. It has a combination of quilting, embroidery and applique, suitable for all abilities.

 

Here’s a couple of my favourite projects from the book. The Tinsel Tree Scrapbook projects covers a wide range of skills; patchwork, quilting, stitchery and making felt flowers…

 

The finger puppet and gift tag projects are great to do with children and can be made in a few hours…

 

The instructions are clear and concise with great illustrations and wonderful clear photographs. I particularly like the fact that each project has been given a time estimate and where required there are templates. The book gives useful advice about materials, techniques and fabrics, with a list of suppliers should you have problems requiring materials.

 

Great projects for those long dark nights.

 

Quilt a Gift for Christmas is available for £11.99 from RUCraft.

 

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In other news, I’ve started to conquer my Everest… 25% of the patchwork bit of the other curtain is done…

The Folksy uprising

There’s been a lot of anger in the online handmade community over the last 24 hours stemming from an update to Folksy‘s rules (which you can find here). I think the main problem is there are a lot of vague areas between their interpretation of handmade vs hand assembled, of which I asked to give my opinion and was granted the opportunity. I have pasted below what I wrote and hopefully I should get a reply soon. It’s not the most eloquent piece of writing but I think it gets the point across how you must absolutely word things spot on otherwise any ambiguity can seriously damage your reputation and upset a lot of people.

Because of this, several people on Facebook and Twitter have closed their Folksy shops. My personal opinion is this is a premature action as a lot of those shops were operating within what I suspect the rules were trying to say, and some people will just not have read everything properly before jumping on the bandwagon with their fire and pitchforks, as is the case in any conflict humans tend to find themselves in!

Anyway, here’s my e-mail, please let me know your thoughts in a comment if you’d like to and you can always contact Folksy with your opinions on their support@folksy.com e-mail address.

***

Hello,

 

Apologies for this being from my work e-mail, I wanted to make sure it arrived and if you had any responses that I would get them as I am having some computer issues at home and will be running a reformat later.

 

As promised on Twitter due to a bit of an uproar that has arisen due to the new rules on what is deemed as “handcrafted” rather than “assembled”, hopefully this will be useful, but if it’s rubbish I don’t mind, I just hate to see so many friends and acquaintances get so upset, especially since Folksy is a great selling venue and certainly the leading UK site. I have been with Folksy since I believe the very first week and have extensive experience within the craft marketplace, whether as a seller, a magazine editor, a workshop leader, a writer, or as an administrator of a forum (I also hope to write my PhD thesis on this little community!), so I hope I can give a bit of perspective as to why this has become such an issue and so quickly.

 

I must tell you that I do agree on your stance as putting together a gift basket or putting a charm on a chain is not craft as it doesn’t require any particular craftsman skill, knowledge or practice that a normal person does not possess and I do see the need for this to be in the rules, along with the stance that copyright violation will not be tolerated (however I have seen someone on your site ripping off another designer and told the original craftsperson this weekend and I am sure she has been in touch with you over it!).

 

With mainstream craft, most areas will use something that has been manufactured, whether it is resin for resin jewellery, thread for embroidery, beads for jewellery making or wool in a knitted jumper. It could even go as far as glue and paper for making notebooks or cards. For some of these areas it is easy to identify that a lot of creative input into using these supplies has been put into play.

 

However, there are some areas where this new rule is not so clear cut and therefore unfortuantely the rules are still too vague, my first thoughts are:

– Melt and pour base soaps

– Teacup candles

– Jewellery with bezels and licensed artwork (or scrabble tile pendants, etc)

– Simple strung beaded necklaces/ childrens bracelets, etc

– recycled glass bottles slumped as spoon rests

– Rubber stamped notecards/bookmarks

 

It is very clear that the current craft trends are leaning towards jewellery and card making, and unfortunately for Folksy, these are the vaguest areas when taking into account the rule clarification.

 

I would suggest that to differentiate between earrings that are a pair of studs stuck to a pair of buttons for example (literal assemblage) and a pair of earrings that have been made from buttons wired together (original design) you could ask that more than one process has gone into the creation of an item, or a slightly easier option would be that the piece has taken longer than five minutes to create, for example. A simple strung necklace due to knotting, attaching clasps, etc will easily take longer than this, however simply putting a brass charm on a chain doesn’t which I think shows the difference between the areas you are trying to put across. Also picture examples of “dos and don’ts” might help too! By putting in examples I think people will feel a bit less alienated.

 

This is how I would have worded this section in the rules- I wouldn’t even have the two sections as I think it makes it unneccessarily complicated:

“In order to sell your item on Folksy, your item must be made to your own design, or by the use of a pattern or clip art licensed for commercial use. You cannot sell a design that has been copied from someone else without their explicit permission to do so in accordance with UK copyright law. Your item must be “handmade”, and NOT simply “hand assembled”. At Folksy, “hand assembled” applies to any item that is made by attaching two mass produced components together, for example stringing a charm onto a chain, or gluing a button to a ring blank or notecard and selling as a finished piece of work. A “handmade” item would take a minimum of five minutes to make and contain elements of design, personality or skill from the crafter, for example a rubber stamped greetings card would show understanding of layout or a beaded necklace would show colour co-ordination.”

Even then, I’d get people on the forum or as blog comments to see whether I am on the mark here or not, I may be missing something massively obvious but I really don’t think it needs to be complicated!

Also I think it is quite difficult to enforce the use of licensed clipart, patterns released for reproduction, etc and that some leeway should be made from Folksy to allow these sorts of works that are not violating any copyright laws or plagarising anyone else’s designs. I think you might have hinted that this is OK but it is not clear enough when you mention “this item may not be made by you” in the current rules but I think it could be read differently by different people so I have altered that bit too. 

Anyway thanks for letting me stick my oar in, I hope it has been at least a little useful!

***
James at Folksy has just replied so I have put his response below- I would have hoped for something a bit more detailed since I wrote at length (I am usually so concise!) but never mind…

 

From: james

Subject: Wording of new rule – as discussed on Twitter!

Thank you for your reply and for taking time to think about this.

We do understand that the terms are not as definite as people would like, however, craft and ‘handmade’ are not easy to define. We’ve taken on board your points about being more specific and including examples and will look to review our terms again in the coming hours and days to try and improve them.

Best wishes,

James @ Folksy

Ch- ch- changes!

I am drastically cutting down the pieces of jewellery I am now selling. I’ve started by giving the Etsy and Folksy shops a good weeding and this will follow onto the main PennyDog site.

Why?

Well it is silly me offering more and more made to order items that I don’t have time to replenish. I really don’t want everything to be made to order. So I have been taking stuff off, even popular items. Then I will list them as I make them…. if I do choose to make them again! It makes life a lot easier, but this doesn’t mean I won’t list new things as I have a few things slowly being made.

The resin supplies section is totally unaffected, and in fact it is growing, along with my Folksy supplies shop! I am also quite happy to do wholesale and custom orders like the doggy necklace above!

The reason I now don’t have very much time is because I am trufflepigletting away in the kitchen as the launch of the site seemed pretty successful! So this is where my energies are focused at the minute and it feels good to be doing something totally different, I’d like to be more relaxed with the resin side of things rather than running around in a manic panic as I have been recently.

Ohh and if you are chocolatey minded, please come and visit my sister blog for the trufflepiglet venture, it’s nothing at the minute but I have plans to make it more interesting, so if you have a blog reader, I’d recommend adding me 😉

Have I ever mentioned my supplies shop?

You’ll be glad to hear I have another resin tutorial coming up this week, I’m really getting my act together now. However this weekend I have been rather poorly, which has given me an opportunity to get some more stuff listed in my Folksy supplies shop that has been waiting around forever. I set it up several months back now selling button, ribbons and unusual jewellery findings and any stuff I thought people might find cute and unusual to use in their own craft work. This is quite fun as I can buy all those things when I go to the wholesaler that I don’t actually need, or pick up some extra vintage bargains at the market!

Anyway, here’s a few bits I have in stock to show the range of stuff I have, apologies for the massive advert in this update 😉

Please visit my friend!

My friend Gina has set up her Folksy shop this week and is doing well putting her items on! Please go and have a look at her shop, it would be great to get her hits up!

Thank you 🙂

A few good (wo)men

After my last negative(ish) post about resin crafters that copy, I’ve decided to show some of my favourite designers here who are making marvellous work in the world of resin! I even own a pendant from Serena Kuhl, a ring from Fake ID from the Resin Swap and I’m excitedly waiting for a cuff from Buy My Crap– proving there’s no reason why you shouldn’t buy something you like even if it is in a medium you  are very confident in yourself- in fact it makes you appreciate the skill even more!

 

 

 

Hearts are really big at the minute it seems! Please click on the items to go to the sellers’ shops.

Folksy Top Picks

Both of my Folksy shops have a feature in their Top Picks this week (on the theme of crafting supplies and tools)- yey!

My new hobby

Because I clearly don’t have enough to do with all of the resin casting and cross stitching I do, I’ve decided to take up another craft 😉

This is my first attempt at a Decopatch bangle which I got as a kit from The Decopatch Place. I got so addicted to glue and paper that I then went on to make these bedroom name blocks for week old baby Maisie and almost due baby Alfie from some old MDF table legs…

And now I’m going to start selling decorative embroidery hoops for framing finished fabric and embroidery works. Lots of people are using embroidery hoops to finish off their pieces now, rather than just keep tension, so I thought these could go down quite well on Etsy! Once I have made a few I will revamp my abandoned shop and send out a few press releases and see how we go! You know, because I haven’t got enough online shops already either, what with my new supplies shop on Folksy which I am slowly duplicating over on Etsy…

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In resin news, I have placed an order for quick setting resin to stock! It sets and can be demoulded in 4-5 hours normally, but with the aid of heat boxes which will be stocked a little later in the year, pieces can be demoulded in just an hour- wow. This means I will soon be adding workshops to my shop for August/September time. The only reason why I haven’t at this stage is because I don’t know if I will have moved by then as we are buying a house! The estate agent’s estimate is that we will be moving at the end of July, however we haven’t had the mortgage finalised yet so it could take a bit longer, hence the uncertainty.

Special offer, new bracelet, oh and a new shop!

I have a few little bits to tell you- firstly and most importantly, I have 25% off EVERYTHING at www.pennydog.com until 13th July, so go have a look and maybe treat yourself 😉 The discount code for checkout is sherbet

Here’s my new favourite item at the minute- they take quite a while, but is made up of realistic but resin gummy teddies- loads of people thought they were the real thing this weekend!

Also I can now confirm that my supply shop is officially open on Folksy and stocked with ribbons! make sure you bookmark http://pennydogsupplies.folksy.com !

Here are some of the pretties you will find there right now: