Free Craft Blog

Some of you may or may not know we run a Craft forum

I have just spent the last hour reading and deleting posts off it which in my mind are nothing to do with craft!!! Like Craft Fairs, it is being invaded by the “I import CRaft goods from China”… “hello we’re a Craft manufacturer in Hong Kong”……”I sell Yankee Candles….”… OK they’re all valid things to sell but they are NOT Craft and people who exclusively sell this type of thing are NOT craft workers….. feel free to disagree but they just don’t fall within my definition of crafts….I blame a lot of so called Craft Shops which sell cheap imported, massed produced items which they pass off as Crafts……
And now this trickle of bought in goods at Craft Shows seems to have turned into a flood….. I know many Organisers are struggling to fill stands but some of the rubbish they
bring in to do it sometimes beggars belief……I DO like having craft materials at craft shows… I think a lot of people visiting the shows might well think about taking up a craft themselves and I don’t know many card makers who could survive at shows without selling some card making materials… and anyway the ones I know who do this ARE crafters who can demonstrate their craft as well as sell the items for people to do it themselves.

What HAS to stop is the passing off of mass produced goods as craft, it is unfair on the visiting public and its unfair on the real crafters.

Going to finish this by listing a few sites which belong to friends who I promised a link to…. please feel free to ignore it if you want

Craft Links	Hugh searchable UK crafts database. Free links for all crafters.
Ideal Envelopes	Envelopes and more for crafters
Ali-Craft	Card making and papercraft Materials
Craftville	UK Craft portal

Well gearing up for the new season. Actually not starting till the end of March this year, much later than normal. To be honest we made a loss at all the early shows last year, no-one seemed to be interested in buying anything before Easter, maybe they were still paying off their credit cards from Christmas!!!!

Year on year both attendance and taking at Craft Shows seems to have done down and down: There are some very obvious reasons for this:

1. There is now much more happening at the weekends, especially on Sundays. When I started there were no car boot sales and very little Sunday trading.

2. Some now seem to think that Craft Fairs are old fashioned or that they only sell pots of Jams and doilies

3. People object to paying an entrence fee…”why should we pay to shop”

I’m not sure what the answer is: for me a shall be doing more “other” types of shows this year, festivals, garden show with craft marquees etc.

Whatever it will be another hard year on the craft circuit I think.

Well no show this weekend which is good because we have a run of 6 shows after this. Bit of a scarey though that my next weekend at home will be on 16th December!!! Looks like I will be doing my Christmas shopping at the fairs again
Have just been over to the Alan and Barry website (http://www.alanandbarryscrafts.com). Now I admit I don’t always find them funny, in fact I find them funnier in real life than I ever have on any of their shows or videos… however I have have just watched their latest intro video and found myself rolling around laughing… not at Alan but at Barry who managed to keep a serious look on his face even when “dancing”… think I’ll have to keep that video for future use

Interesting quote for card makers from the forum on Craftville.com

Search results (websites) for keywords: Handmade Cards

Google: 6.6 million
Yahoo: 7.72 million

Searches performed worldwide in Sep 2006: Handmade Cards

search.com: 705
Overture—: 4113

There are obviously far too many people trying to sell handmade hards and not a lot of people trying to buy them   I feel really sorry for card makers who have paid to have websites built because they though they could sell cards this way… obviously building your own site and selling a few cards for fun is possible but I think you would have to have some very unique cards in order to make a living out of it. Goes to show that selling locally is prob the best way to go!

Only my second post and I’m going to moan already… wondered how long it would take!

Firstly I’m getting nothing done… the kids are on holiday from school but thats hardly an excuse. I’ve promised some friends that I’d try card making… think I’ll have to work on next years Christmas Cards rather than this the way its going….. and there some glass painting which I’ve been promising to do for a year and still haven’t managed to get round to

Went all the way down to Windsor for a Craft Fair only to find out that another large Fair Organiser had booked one in just 5 miles down the road! I mean, what an idiot (for those who are interested it was Live Crafts / H&D or whatever they are calling themselves this week). Don’t these Organisers realise how difficult it is for crafters to make a living now-a -days without playing stupid games like this. It obviously affected the show I was at (and some of the stall holders there book with him sometimes) and the stall holders at his own show. Luckily the show we were at wasn’t too badly hit but every little helps!!!! If organisers are going to play daft games like this they are just going to put stall holders out of business and then they wont have anyone left to book with them!!!!

Well end of moan… I have a bit of computer work to do so I’d better get on with it before the kids get back from Grandmas

Nearly there !

I`ve been looking at this site and the code for so long that my brain is leaking from my left ear. It`s almost ready now

Well this is little more than a try out to see how it works but I supose I ought to put something relevant . Can’t see a spell checker, thats going to be an issue