New Feature on Facebook!

Morning!  Happy Sunday!

Just wanted to share with  you a new featured that we are going to be having every day - well most days on our facebook page.

Because we love Folksy too we are going to have a Folksy Featured Shop of the Day!

Today's shop is JoysofGlass

A wonderful shop and full of fabulous ideas to treat yourself to or to give as a gift!  I bought the most beautiful Glass Crucifix for the head teacher at my children's school and it hangs in pride of place in the office window!

If you sell on Folksy and want to be featured?  Well interact with us!  Follow our blog, like us on fb and let us know you are there!

Enjoy your Sunday!

Dottie x

First Week in!

So we have now competed our first full week since our official launch and it's been fabulous!  Lots of enthusiasm in our Etsy team and people working well as a team to promote each other.

We also introduced Folksy Shop of the Day to Facebook to increase overall awareness of the beautiful British Crafts that are out there!

I thought it might be nice for you to meets some of our team over the next few weeks.

Starting today with Alison from Blue Forest Jewellery

My name is Alison and I'm a jewellery addict! I've been making jewellery for as long as I can remember, mostly adapting pieces I'd bought up until a few years ago when it got more serious. I make things I would like to wear myself so it's often difficult to part with my creations. 
Stringing semi precious beads in stunning colour combinations to make statement pieces is my aim.

My grandmother was a very creative lady, and I think my love of making things came from her. I've tried my hand at all sorts of crafts - making clothes, lace, applique, tapestry, cards etc, but jewellery is my current favourite.

The shop name comes from the remains of the Forest of Arden here in the middle of England where we love to walk the dog. There are a variety of trees there, many very ancient, including silver birches and firs. In the right sunlight, they reflect the lovely blues of the sky and in the spring the deep purply blue of the bluebell carpet.

So that's me, someone who just loves jewellery, crafting, books, travel, home life with my wonderful husband and chocolate labrador and other mellow things!

http://www.facebook.com/BlueForestJewelry

@BlueForestJewel

Go and have a look around her shop, the photography is stunning as are the original pieces of jewellery!

Back in a few days to share another maker with you!

Have a great weekend!

Dottie x

Launch Day Twitter

Here's a snapshot of our twitter team account which was being manned by Dottie, Di and Sarah on the day of our launch.

The launch day was a fab turn out for us as we rustled up 500+ followers who are all interested in handmade and in crafting.

The giveaways throughout the day got an amazing response - and very happy winners! So thank you to all the team members who contributed to the giveaway prizes and for all the tweeting!

Towards the end of the evening, one of @BritishCrafting new followers tweeted us to say... 'you're trending on twitter'! 

Can you spot us in the list below?

See the #BritCraft, trending in the #2 spot? That's us lot - WOOHOO!

Think it's safe to say our launch was a success then - yay!

 Julie x

www.kipandfig.com

Official Launch Day Tomorrow!

It's our Official Launch Day tomorrow and on Facebook and Twitter we will have competitions running from Midday to Midnight!

Do pop in & join in the fun!

We have cake!!

Treasury competition winner!

Here's the winning team treasury for Feb 1st to 7th from Dottie Designs - well done Dottie!

We'll post again with next week's winning treasury...

Julie x
www.kipandfig.com

Photopin

Photo credit: Photopin

Do you use images in your blog posts? Blog posts with images get more views than ones without!

Do you find you're put off blogging because you need some images to liven up your post, but never seem to have the right one(s) to hand? 

Try Photopin !  It's a free image search tool for bloggers and creatives, that searches through Flickr using keywords - so if you need a pic of, say a giraffe, just put giraffe into the search box and off you go... easy!

Here's an interesting one I found, a couple of book-worm giraffes...

photo credit: h.koppdelaney via photopin cc

When Photopin returns the results, it is super easy to filter the images to find those with a Creative Commons License allowing commercial use - just select the 'commercial' check box (on the left). 

It's best to check the Creative Commons License for each image individually - if you open the image URL on Flickr and look to the right of it, you will find a link to the exact terms of use.

The Creative Commons license will specify any restrictions - for example for most images you aren't allowed to resell them or in some cases alter them in any way - but you can still make use of them on a blog, as long as you credit the owner of the photo with a link to their image on Flickr.

Photopin makes the credit link process very easy to do by providing both the URL to the image and cleverly some HTML code which you can insert in your blog post.  If you are not able to add HTML on your blog, you can copy the URL to the image on Flickr and put in a link as you would normally.  

On Blogger it is VERY easy to add HTML code.  Simply copy the code off Photopin and then in the post you are writing look on your toolbar (where you change the text size/make text bold etc)  and on the far left you will see 'Compose' and 'HTML'.  Click on 'HTML' and paste in the code - then click back onto 'Compose' to see what it looks like.  You can then move the credit around your post by copy/pasting it, make the text smaller, centre it etc all in the normal 'Compose' view.

If you know of other free image search tools, or images where the Creative Commons License allows commercial use, please share it with the team!

Julie x
www.kipandfig.com

Getting going now!

So we are nearly a week in now and our fabulous team on Etsy have well and truly kicked off their shoes and are getting stuck into promoting each other!

We have a new logo!  Do you like it?

We have had a giveaway and have another a the mo to win this gorgeous Valentine's card from Rachel at Kindness Cards!  If you want a shot at winning it you just need to like our FB page, leave a comment and share the giveaway post!

 If you want a shot at winning it you just need to like our FB page, leave a comment and share the giveaway post! Just click on the card and it will take you to our facebook page!

We are planning an official launch day on Friday with lots of offers and cake!  Put the date in your diary now!

In the Beginning...........

I (Dottie) had a vision, a perfect world where everyone worked as hard as Di and I have for our little Etsy team where sales were soaring and promotion a team reaction through effort and hard work!

Then on chatting to Di it seemed that she had the same vision..........

So began British Crafters.  It wasn't meant to be called that, but that's another story that we'll tell you another time!

The ultimate aim is to have a website selling all things British from anyone who sells anywhere and the domain www.britishcrafters.co.uk is ours!

To start with though we are for ming a perfectly proportioned Etsy team of like minded hard workers!  No shirkers in this team!

Strap in, ready for the journey cos this is just the beginning! Over the next couple of weeks we will introduce you to our team!

Click on the UJ to go to our team.  Applications still being accepted but please make sure you read and understand the charter before you sign up!