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News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere: April 9, 2009

2009-04-09T15:15:00-05:00

“Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.” – Dorothy Parker

This week's edition of News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere has mysterious color clouds, more log cabin fantasies (Finnish this time!), vintage fashion of the floral variety, antique trading cards, and the first Native American dance on film. (Quite amazing!)

Read on!

My log cabin fantasies are still alive and well, and textile artist Ritva Puotila's picturesque Finnish lake home makes my heart all aflutter. Decorated with lots of vintage and handmade Finnish furniture, this cottage is full of character. [Via Pia Jane Bijkerk]

I'm loving vintage trendspotting site Vintage Is the New Black. She recently did a feature on florals, and all of the prime vintage clothing examples came straight from Etsy! We do have some great vintage treasures, if I do say so myself.

These are boxer trading cards that were distributed with packs of cigarettes circa 1903-1917. What handsome devils! I love the artwork. Find more in the NYPL Digital Collection. [Via Routine Investigations]

I'm loving the dreamy smoke clouds from Helmo. I wonder if they're real... [Via Cursive Design]

Wow! The Library of Congress now has a YouTube presence, and there's a growing collection of incredible footage. This particular video comes from the Edison Film Catalog: "Beginning in the late 1880s, Thomas Edison's labs not only built the equipment for filming and projecting films, but produced popular content for the new medium." This particular video is entitled Sioux Ghost Dance. It shows Native American dancers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in war paint and costumes. This is the American Indian's first appearance before a motion picture camera. Wow!

Wanna give me some more artsy, style or design blogs to peruse? Leave them in the comments! And check out past installments of News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere!

Craft Congress: Round-up from San Francisco

2008-04-10T15:56:00-05:00

I had a great time at the Craft Congress, except for the sudden and intense migraine (but that’s a story for another time. A big thanks to Callie from Church of Craft, Marie the Bee from the Sampler, Zak (an Etsy engineer), and a few other helpful crafters who nursed me back to health!).

Wow- there was so much to take in at the Craft Congress! Rachel Hospodar from MediumReality did a great job running the show. This year's Craft Congress was held in the beautiful Brava Theater in San Francisco:

I attended a talk on real-life networking, moderated by Lorraine Sanders of SF Inide Fashion blog. Sherry Huss from O'Reilly (CRAFT and MAKE Magazine) recommends sending a short, direct follow-up email after you meet a person you want to network with. Betsy Greer of Craftivism.com urges crafters to just keep it real and be nice when approaching people whether it's face-to-face or online, and refuses to buy into the idea that there’s a hierarchy in the craft world.

Faythe Levine showed a clip from her doc Handmade Nation (see a post about the doc here, and see her Featured Buyer piece here).

I also sat in on a talk with two theater producers — Ben Peoples and Sara Huddleston — who led a workshop about how to stay organized with your workflow whether your a one-man band or managing a team of others.

To-do lists: take the time to do them first thing. Have priorities and long-term goals. Keep those goals visible in your studio. Use BasecampHQ, GoogleDocs for online colloboration and try somehting creative like a restaurant order rail with your tasks as bills.
Good Communication: Be very clear about the expectations with each project you work on, especially when dealing with outside parties. If you're going to miss a deadline, let the person know as soon as possible: apologize, let them know it won't happen again and give a realistic estimate of when you will deliver. No sob stories! If you're setting the deadlines, pad them with a few extra days. Remember: it never hurts to follow-up phone conversations with emails detailing the important decisions you make.
Production: Even if you're a one-person team and you're making one-of-a-kind items, you can still divide your tasks into stations and save time by concentrating on one station for a designated amount of time. Rachel Hodopar from MediumReality recommended identifying how many different hats you wear as a one person business and divide these tasks up so you can better organize your time.
Motivation: Don't have TV or other distractions in your workspace! When you're feeling low, look at books or websites of your favorite things, work by artists who inspire you or go for a walk in a place you've never been before.

Debra Roby of BlogHer brainstormed with folks about online social networking tools. I learned a lot in this workshop! Her mantra: "Social Media is marketing." She walked us through making a social media map of our own — take a piece of paper and divide your paper into 4 quarters. One box is for your outgoing messages, second is for your incoming items like RSS feeds, third one for your marketing, and then the last one is community building. Here are but a few of the tools you should check out, perhaps news ones to add to your maps:

www.sk-rt.com might be better suited Etsians trying to spread the word about posts than D igg, which has a reputation for having techies as its user base.
Debra swooned when someone mentioned Twitter. The Storque (follow us!) is twittering too. You can read more about Twitter in this post.
Everyone is using flickr.com to share their photos. While flickr isn't meant for pushing — ahem — selling your items, it's a great way to show your process and also share a bit about your handmade lifestyle. Watch this space for a how-to about the dos and don'ts of flickr.
ning.com, which allows you to create your own social networking applications.
StumbleUpon and del.icio.us are other socially-networked ways of bookmarking and sharing your finds on the internet.
Blogs. Everybody's got a blog. There are some Etsians who join forces in things like blog rings (see Etsy Team Tips: Etsy Teams Blog Ring!).
Etsy mini is a widget that allows your shop or favorites to be posted on your blog or website. Check out this how-to for the Etsy mini: TimothyAdamDesigns' Etsy Mini How-to Video.
Use an email listserve or newsletter to keep your customers updated.
Stylehive, a networked shopping site for trendy items.
Google Docs are a way to collaborate on documents. You can upload Word docs or spreadsheets and share them rather than using attachements or just create them right there in Google Docs, publish them to the web, or use them for your internal purposes. You just need a free Google account. It's also great if you don't have compatable software, like Excel or Word.
utterz.com allows you to upload text, photos, video or voice from your phone to your blog.
seesmic.com lets you use audio and video online really easily, read more here.
This one could be really useful: shareaholic.com: "makes it easy for you to submit the web page you're on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, magnolia, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr and twitter. You also have the option to e-mail the web page directly to a friend."
socialmarker.com is another one of these sites that aggregates your aggregators.

I was so excited when everyone decided that Etsy was at the center of their social-networking maps!

The Art Craft vs Craft Craft talk was really interesting as everyone pushed the idea that craft is whatever you want it to be. Claire Joyce who makes glitter paintings talked about how she first started using glitter to annoy grad school snooties. Mike Homes from the Velvet da Vinci Gallery noted that we just have to wait and see how people perceive art and craft in 10, 20 years. Garth from Extreme Craft said, "If you want to be seen in galleries, go for that! If you want to go for the boutiques or craft shows, go for that!" Brent White from Impeti warned of the dangers of being pigeonholed with a DIY aesthetic, when handmade can be very refined and craft-oriented as well.
It’s a time when the boundaries seem to be falling away, but at the same time panelists brought up the need for more exploration into the histories of the indie craft movement. This segued into a challenging discussion of country craft; oft-poo-pooed by tastemakers and indie crafters as cheesey. And yet, many crafters took to the mics to proclaim their respect and admit their soft-spot for country craft; acknowledging that without it, there wouldn't be an indie craft movement. Most of us learned how to crochet or stencil or glue from our mothers or grandmothers while helping them make the time-honored wooden coat-hangers painted with ducks in bonnets.

I also had a chance to meet Etsy sellers Girlontherocks and KatyKristin who professed thier love for the new batch shipping options and the ability to download your shop’s sales figures. Here they are pictured with Caitlin Phillips of www.rebound-designs.com:

A new Etsy seller, ShanaAstrachan, who specializes in high-end art jewelry told me that Etsy seems to be catching on in her art jewelry circles, where artists have traditionally sold their work through galleries and specialized shows. She’s optimistic about Etsy as a new venue for art jewelry, where pieces easily run into the thousands of dollars. We spoke a bit about how useful an extended profile page would be, with space for a portfolio of work not for sale, clippings from press pieces, gallery shows and more info about the artist. She told me she currently uses Etsy as her e-commerce function on her own website, an option appealing to many already established artists.

Sadly, I didn't get to all of the panels and there were so many people I'd wanted to meet. Next time!

Finally, as a lead in to our soon-to-be-launching eco-friendly series Earth Tones, I want to give a shout-out to Autumn Wiggins’s presentation on the environmental impact of crafting. We've invited her to write a Storque article version of it. Autumn writes for craftingagreenworld.com and runs an Etsy shop at stringtheory, as well as spearheading the StrangeFolk festival. Her thought-provoking talk pushed crafters to reflect on where they buy their supplies. She’d done some research through a survey we’d linked to here on the Storque. I was happy to see that 46% of respondents cited Etsy as one of the places they buy supplies; this means that for the most part, they’re buying handmade supplies or de-stashed supplies which would otherwise be thrown away. Many Etsians make it a practice to use found materials and upcycle them into something new, rather than sending them to the landfill.

Autumn brainstormed about a website that would allow buyers to offer up unwanted goods to local sellers to be upcycled and transformed into remade goods. Wouldn’t that be an awesome feature to offer in a new supplies section on Etsy? (Hint hint to the engineers…Think Shop Local, meets a reverse Alchemy meets a new Supplies section!)

Autumn took this a step further, citing Cradle to Cradle, and reminding us that even if many crafters are remaking items from what would otherwise be trash, not all of crafters’ supplies are produced through environmentally friendly or socially-conscious methods. According to her survey, about 90% of respondents cite chain stores as their source for supplies. And so Autumn called for innovative organic and non-sweatshop produced crafts — supplies designed to be upcycled in ways that don’t produce unintended harmful effects such as pollution or wasted energy. Do these supplies exist? Where can we get them? Why isn’t there a store specializing in earth-friendly crafting supplies?

Considering the already huge market for craft supplies, it’s curious that larger stores like Michaels, or producers like Martha Stewart haven’t launched these products, which are in demand — at least judging by the thousands of sellers on Etsy. Maybe Etsians have to let these companies know! I’d like to start a petition calling for more eco-friendly options for craft supplies.

Comment below if you’d like to see such advancements in eco-friendliness! Also comment with any eco-friendly options for supplies that you know of — through your local craft store or online. If you make eco-friendly supplies, post below. We want to know all this for our upcoming Earth Tones series.

Who's going to the next Craft Congress???

Craft Congress: San Francisco, Here I Come

2008-04-05T12:39:00-05:00

UPDATE: I'm HERE!! And I'm live-blogging off and on today in the Storque room of the Virtual Labs!

[This was originally published on March 25]
I'm so excited! I'm going to San Francisco to unite with other people in the handmade movement! I will be representing Etsy at the April Craft Congress. Matt went to the last one in Pittsburgh and got a lot out of it.

About Craft Congress:

"Craft Con was born in 2007 as Craft Congress in Pittsburgh, PA . This launch event brought together more than fifty indie craft show organizers from across the US, Canada, as well as the UK, to share knowledge, skills and experiences. Topics ranged all the way from guerrilla marketing strategy to securing corporate sponsorship. Colleagues from across the world were able to meet face to face for the first time. Establishing a strong and supportive network for those who attended, the event also sparked crucial discussion about the future of the craft movement.
Read more about 2007:
New York Times
Washington City Paper
Craft Con 2008 heralds huge growth for the project. The event in San Francisco has been planned via the internet by crafters from all over the world. April’s conference will welcome participants from all areas of crafting, making a special effort to connect younger and upcoming crafters with the experience and savvy of their antecedents. Craft Con will facilitate much broader discussion and planning in key areas of concern for the movement, in particular the viability of sustainable business and enterprise and establishing the permanence of crafting in society."

Take the CraftCon's Survey:
Part of the mission of the Craft Congress is to conduct some research about crafters. Please help out the movement by taking this survey. It will help us get a more accurate picture of how we crafters get supplies.

How Etsy is Helping:
Etsy is donating money to sponsor three people who want to attend. We give the money; the Craft Con decides who gets a leg up.

How to Register:
Go here to register. Be forewarned: we have a sneaking suspicion that their form doesn't like Firefox. The organizers announced that they've had some problems with registration. So if you haven't gotten a confiramtion, you may need to register again!

"If you had filled out an application but did not receive a copy of it in your own inbox, then we didn’t get it either. However, we really want you to come to Craft Con, so you should definitely head over to the application page and give it another shot. There is little more annoying on the internet than losing info you typed to a glitch in the system, and we apologize for any frustration this may have caused. Please contact us at info@craftcon.org if you have any questions."

So let me know if you're going in the comments below. I hope to see you there! Below you'll find some picks from San Francisco shops that I found through Shop Local and some other choice items.

National Craft Month & The Craft Congress

2008-03-18T13:34:00-05:00

Did you know March is National Craft Month in the US?

But hey, for Storque readers, when is it not Craft Month, anyway? Not to poo-poo this celebration at all: we should take the time to reflect on our collective project here: the indie craft movement. It's an opportunity to spread awareness about consumerism, and to think about how entrepreneurship and hands-on learning can improve people's lives. CHA (the Craft and Hobby Association) is spearheading the "National Craft Month" promotion, and you can find out more about events they're sponsoring and ways to get involved here.

The Craft Congress will be holding its second event in April in San Francisco. Matt went to the first one in Pittsburgh and talked with the crafting community about Etsy's mission to help indie artists and crafters make a living making things. You can read more about the upcoming event and the Craft Con in general here:

"Craft Con was born in 2007 as Craft Congress in Pittsburgh, PA . This launch event brought together more than fifty indie craft show organizers from across the US, Canada, as well as the UK, to share knowledge, skills and experiences. Topics ranged all the way from guerrilla marketing strategy to securing corporate sponsorship. Colleagues from across the world were able to meet face to face for the first time. Establishing a strong and supportive network for those who attended, the event also sparked crucial discussion about the future of the craft movement.
Read more about 2007:
New York Times
Washington City Paper
Craft Con 2008 heralds huge growth for the project. The event in San Francisco has been planned via the internet by crafters from all over the world. April’s conference will welcome participants from all areas of crafting, making a special effort to connect younger and upcoming crafters with the experience and savvy of their antecedents. Craft Con will facilitate much broader discussion and planning in key areas of concern for the movement, in particular the viability of sustainable business and enterprise and establishing the permanence of crafting in society."

Crafters can also intentionally take this month as an opportunity to teach a friend or loved one how to make something. There's nothing more empowering than experiencing the process of learning something new with one's hands.

Comment below and let us know what skill you can share!