A Portuguese Knitter's Must Haves Number 7 - Blind Crow Creations Stitch Markers!

We're famous! Stylish Portuguese blogger Ana Leal has included our bird knitting stitch markers in her lovely collection of Knitter's Must Haves. Thank you Ana!

Malha a Malha | Handmade Life: knitter must have

We love the knitting bag - very naughty!

I'm Craft Britannia Shop of the Week #75!

Wow, I had a blog-neglect wake-up call today... I forgot the link to my own blog!! I'm utterly embarrassed and chastened. I promise I'll post more in 2014.

Things I have neglected to post about include a lovely working trip to see my fiance in Tunisia, turning my living room into a sweatshop for most of December to produce homemade presents for friends and family for Christmas, and my shop being Craft Britannia's Shop of the Week #75!

Check out my Craft Britannia Shop of the Week interview here.

And here's some eye candy too, 'cos you're lovely ;)

Be careful what you wish for...

Only last week I was complaining that I was so busy with editing work that I had been forced to neglect my crafts. Well, here's a lesson in being careful what you wish for, because two of my clients have turned out to be flakes, and I have had to accept that they're simply not going to come through with the goods.

So I spent yesterday at my very lovely client's ceramics studio in Bermondsey pummelling clay into submission and generally having a wonderful time. There's something exceedingly therapeutic about thwacking a pound and a half of wet clay onto the wheelhead and wrestling with it until it runs smoothly through my hands. She has new bats too - the wooden kind for clay, not the furry kind, although with the squeaky flash going off in the next studio it did sound like there were delinquent bats in the belfry! Anyway, these new bats are smooooooooooooooth and most importantly, level. I threw my biggest and best bowl yet. And now I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but I don't, so here's a shot of the rest of my day's output instead.

I'm so excited for that red in the top photo - it's a velvet underglaze - doesn't that just sound gorgeous?

And while we're on the subject of gorgeous things - and of the fickle nature of freelance workloads - here with unprecedented frequency is the next Craft Britannia Shop Of The Week!

May I present to you the wonderfully named, and incredibly talented Feather and Sixpence. Their quirky watercolours are cool, warm and fuzzy all at the same time. They're like listening to The Lumineers on Bonfire Night with your hands wrapped around a hod toddy and your sweetheart's hands wrapped around you. Check them out, I urge you.

Shop Of The Week - Fabrilushus

Well I didn't quite manage to keep up with my - frankly rather ambitious - idea to blog about the Craft Britannia shop of the week every week. Life sort of got in the way, and between running my own Etsy shop and building a freelance editing business, there wasn't a lot of time left for promotion!

I intend to remedy that as best I can, by promoting the current SOTW - a lovely, generous and friendly lady called Jilly's shop - FABRILUSHUS.

You can read an interview with Jilly over on the Craft Britannia Blog. This gorgeous lavender sachet is one of my favourite items in her shop - isn't it lovely?

Fame for my Face Cabochons!

Last week I got an email from a lovely Swedish lady called Halinka who had seen this post on my blog and wanted to order some of my cabochons to use in her own designs. I agreed and sent her three cabs, and she wrote back a couple of days later saying that she LOVES them and has written a blog post about them. Well, how about that? :)

Please visit her blog (IE works better than Firefox for some reason) and give it some love. My cabs are discussed towards the bottom of the post. Check out her amazing beadwork while you're there!
http://mybeadworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/button-bracelet.html

Craft Britannia!

Hi All,

Just a quickie - I'm supposed to be working on my new blog A Very British Editor preparing for its launch and instead I am on Etsy, chatting to virtual friends :P

I am a member of a very active and friendly team on Etsy called Craft Britannia. They're a group of lovely women and men all from the UK who work hard to promote each other and help each other out. They have a great blog, which is also in my blog roll over on the right of this post. Every week they have a Shop of the Week, where they interview one teamie and promote their shop. This week it is a lady called Alice and her shop The Sequinned Sheep.

I'm going to try to post here once a week to tell you who the shop of the week is, and to give them a little love. As crafty enthusiasts yourselves, I hope you will enjoy the opportunity to read about how another crafter uses their skills, and also see some awesome handmade stuff.

So without further ado, I give you The Sequinned Sheep *wild applause*

Interview with Alice on the Craft Britannia Blog

And some knitted eye candy from Alice, just cos I love ya.

The accidental craft-preneur

This is just a quickie. I've neglected this blog a bit over the last month - I took my "allow yourself time off" message a little too much to heart! ;) But I haven't been idle I can assure you. Quite the contrary in fact.

So I want to take a few moments here to plug some of the areas where I am particularly active, because it is all great content and if you're interested in polymer clay, running a craft business in the UK, or any of the other stuff I occasionally write about on here, you'll love what I'm about to show you.

First off is RebelMouse. If you are at all active on social media I urge you (nay, implore you) to get your own RebelMouse page. It's absolutely great. It takes all the masses of interesting stuff  you pin, tweet, post on Facebook etc, and it collates it all in one place and makes it look aesthetically pleasing while it's at it. You can even get it to post tweets from groups for you. And it is a quick win - it takes minimal time to upkeep (did I just verb a noun there? Bad me) and with a little tweaking you can highlight your best content and even delete or edit the stuff you'd rather keep to yourself.

Here's my RebelMouse.



You can also find it waaaay down somewhere on my right-hand nav, although that's getting a bit out of hand these days. I need to shrink it down a bit.

Secondly I want to plug Pinterest. Six months in and I am still addicted - to the point of being mildly obsessed. OK, forget "mildly" - since I got a smartphone with a bigger screen I have used countless battery hours scrolling through and repinning all the polymer goodness on there. It's like crack. I just can't seem to get enough, and now, as if to taunt me, I have a following! Me, with people who want to see what I pin! Over 680 of them and growing by the dozen every day!



So think about it, craft entrepreneurs, by spending time doing something I enjoy, I am reaching out to a whole community of people. Add a link in your profile to your shop, Facebook or Twitter page and that's hundreds if not thousands (one day) of potential customers finding your stuff. Not to mention that you're building a following of like-minded individuals - people with similar taste, background, or hoarding tendencies (kidding) to you. Instant filtered customer base!

So there you go, my quickie update blog post has turned into a lesson in how to get your name out there and get yourself known for the things you do best and what you love the most.