I just started a three-post series over on the Vianza blog. It’s about getting more purposeful about your online activity if you’re online to market a small craft business. These posts are getting at the core of some big things I hope to say about blogging and social media this year, in the form of that third ebook I’ve been promising since, oh, 2008.

I’m also the featured Crafty Superstar this week on Cut Out + Keep. All week long, they’ll be sharing some “greatest hits” tutorials, and there’s an interview with me over there, too.

Lastly… Boy, am I wanting to start up a Handmade Cats website, where we can all share our awesome handmade kitty pictures. (None of us really needs this distraction, of course, but then again, ca-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ats!!)

But I shouldn’t be taking on big projects like this solo right now. Anyone interested in forming a team play on this? I need a group of people who have time on a regular basis to help with posting submissions to the site, moderating comments, etc. Email me if you’re interested!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Just wanted to share a piece of awesome mail I got recently.

Whimseybox is a new thing – a monthly subscription program that gets you a lovely box of craft supply samples!

It’s the brainchild of Alicia DeRago, who blogs at Dismount Creative. She had a vision of helping people break out of their creative habits by introducing them to materials they might not normally try.

…So this Whimseybox included a nice piece of cotton sateen from Spoonflower, some glitter paints from DecoArt, some Lion Brand glitter eyelash yarn, and a polka dot stencil from Americana Stencil.

What fun! I can make dang good use of all of these.

The box nerd in me feels compelled to point out that this is also a very nice box, with a magnetic closure and a label holder in back. All in all, the packaging and presentation are stellar.

…And on the Whimseybox blog, you can see project ideas to make with your new stuff, submitted by Alicia and other Whimseyboxers.

I’m excited to see where Alicia goes with this project! If you want to get in on a subscription, there’s info right over here.

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Spoonflower is doing a giveaway today only of my book. Kanzashi In Bloom, plus a collection of six fat quarters I curated. Wanna enter? Pop over to their blog and say howdy – today only, remember!

Next up, I wanted to share this video from CCE, which happened over the summer in San Francisco. CCE’s videographer Kirthi recorded this interview with me about why it’s important to stay connected to your creativity, even as you’re working hard to keep a business going. I think she did a bang-up job of editing here. Hope you enjoy!

In case you missed this on Friday, Flattr has given me a limited number of 5-Euro coupon codes to hand out to y’all. If you don’t have a Flattr account yet, email me with the subject line “Flattr” and I’ll hook you up with free money you can use to micropay your favorite bloggers.

(This is an offer for new Flattr accounts only. Hurry and claim one!)

Just an FYI for those with a Kindle: I’ve got this here blog listed in the Kindle store now, in case you want to subscribe to it on your device.

…And lastly, in case you want to mark your calendar, I’ve just listed my early-2012 online class offerings in my online store. I’d love to see you in a class!

Have a good Monday, then!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Here’s another big debate brewing in the community, and this time, it’s about Pinterest. I caught wind of it when Rachel sent me a link to an interesting discussion on Salt City Spice. The premise of that discussion is:

“Here’s the thing that’s been bothering me though – after a few months of pinning and in speaking with a variety of Etsy sellers, the same issue continues to come up: Artists, designers, & crafters are continually finding their original works tagged or categorized as “DIY” – is this wrong?”

The comment discussion is really interesting, and I can agree with elements of all sides. So I shared the link over on Google +, and even more interesting comments emerged there. (I do believe you’ll need a G+ account, and to be logged in, and be in one of my circles, to see that discussion.) Then Kim blogged about how creatives need to get over trying to control what happens to their creations. And then Katrina (the original author of the Salt City Spice post) had a second post on Oh, My Handmade.

All of these discussions bring up many of our community’s most recurring themes: original ideas, copying and protection. There are no universal answers (as usual), but the conversation brought up a few thoughts about Pinterest for me, and I thought I’d share them here.

Image by MichaelMKenny, via Flickr

Private Inspiration vs. Public Inspiration

Pinterest is an interesting (and sometimes messy) hybrid of public and private. By that I mean, it’s a tool we use to publicly do something we’ve been accustomed to doing privately.

We crafters have always saved examples of interesting projects and pictures – whether they were torn from magazines, earmarked in books, or bookmarked on the web. These archives are like bank accounts for creatives: stuff we plan to make, stuff that sparked an idea for making something different, stuff that just makes us happy to look at. When this archive is private, it can take any form that’s useful to us – a shoebox of paper clippings, a bulletin board, a series of bookmark folders. And in a purely-private archive, it’s less important to note who created what, because it’s all a kind of personal creative soup we draw from.

But when our inspiration archives are made public, as on Pinterest, we have a bigger responsibility: we need to make an effort to maintain a clean, well-attributed archive that respects original creators. (That’s a big idea; keep it in the back of your head for a moment.)

A Dangerous Sort of Boiling-Down

I should say at this point, I adore Pinterest. But the thing that I love most about it is also the thing I find troubling about it. Pinterest, as we know, boils a website page down to a single picture. When you “pin” a great blog post or tutorial or roundup or anything, you choose one image from the page to represent it. These pictures, then, can be “repinned” by other Pinterest users. And thus, the pictures change hands and change hands. If the original pinner hasn’t properly credited the original creator, then the pins have a way of becoming just pretty pictures – their original context is lost.

Throughout the summer, I would often find interesting images on Pinterest and want to share the accompanying posts on CRAFT (like the one above). But unfortunately, so many times (like, one in about five), I would follow an image through one repin after another, only to finally land on the original pin and discover that someone had pinned only the image itself without its accompanying post, or they’d pinned the homepage of the site where the image appeared on a single day six months ago. In other words, bad attribution practices on Pinterest rendered it impossible for me to find and share the original creator’s work with a larger audience.

This loss of context also contributes to what Salt City Spice pointed out: Etsy sellers are regularly seeing their products-for-sale pinned, not as reminders to buy the product but as reminders to make a DIY version. The images come to represent ideas rather than products. (For the record, I also see this happening constantly with mainstream manufactured products, but I don’t see as many people up in arms over that.)

Pinterest has recently added a Pin Etiquette page to address bad attribution. And for a really thorough step-by-step take on how to attribute, read Rachel’s post.

Image by artjunkgirl, via Flickr

The Nature of the Crafty Beast

All of that said, I still agree with Kim’s point: once we post something on the internet, we cannot control its destiny, even if everyone in the community is using stellar attribution practices (or practicing ethical pinning).

The thing is, we creatives have grown accustomed to having access to thousands of pretty images 24-7. We now expect to look at unlimited crafty goodness, and then draw on those visual ideas as we make our own things. Some of us want to then sell what we make. And some of those who sell what they make seem to want to wall off those specific images, making them off-limits in a sea of visual inspiration.

Obviously, copying is bad. Stealing is bad. But every single one of us draws on other peoples’ work for inspiration. It’s our nature, and frankly, our privilege to have access to this rich and constantly-renewing treasure trove. Once you put an original design out there, you simply have to be prepared for others to draw upon it. I think Jessica said it best in her excellent comment on the Google Plus discussion:

“At the end of the day there’s always going to be the people who make and the ones that buy.”

This brings me to…

“Online” is Not Always “Marketing”

Crafters have been asking me whether Pinterest is a good marketing tool for their businesses almost since its first day. I see plenty of Pinterest accounts with Etsy shop names, where the users pin only pictures of their stuff for sale. If you ask me, that practice is more or less like sending engraved invitations to the people who make instead of buy.

One important way craft businesses can minimize the copying of their work is to get a lot smarter about their online marketing. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself whether any website is a place where your actual customers are hanging out (not your online buddies, and yes, there is a difference). In an environment like Pinterest, where everyone’s throwing pictures around like they’re candy, how does throwing your own pictures into the melee communicate the ways your product is unique and special?

(Interestingly, Pinterest’s Pin Etiquette page addresses self-promotion, too.)

Image by blackbiscuits, via Flickr

Of course, people other than sellers pin images from Etsy, and equally sadly, no Etsy seller can control where images from his or her shop will end up. But I do see an awful lot of Etsy sellers voluntarily putting their images in front of other crafters in the name of “marketing.” I’ve said this before, but I don’t think other crafters are necessarily the best customers for many handmade products. We’re good re-interpreters and reverse engineers. And Pinterest is an environment where we like to feed those skills.

What are your thoughts on Pinterest? What steps do you take when you pin (or repin) things to make sure the original maker is credited? Do you pin as a reminder to buy, or a reminder to make?

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

So, my friends – I posed this question to Twitter earlier this week and got some interesting responses. I thought I’d ask you, too.

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m not really a fan of Facebook. But, my gig with CRAFT has required my getting involved with it again. I spend a fair amount of time on CRAFT’s page there, and have noticed some interesting stuff.

Facebook, it seems, has become an alternate form of RSS reader. It’s clear to me that social media has greatly changed the way many of us keep up with blogs – I think we’re following specific blogs less often, and instead, following interesting links when they drift into our social media attention spans.

…So that leads to my question for you. I’m thinking about biting the bullet and setting up a CraftyPod Facebook page. I’d really just feed this blog over there, and get involved in conversations when I can. I won’t pester you to “like” me or anything – I’d see the page as a service for those of you who do most of your internetting on Facebook.

Facebook users: would a page like this be useful to you? Would it make it easier for you to keep up with this blog?

Please feel free to comment and let me know! I always love hearing from your excellent brains.

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

I’ve been looking around for ways to build a nice online archive of the many great tutorials I find in my daily surfing – not so I can find them again (that’s what my Google Reader is for), but so I can share them with you.

I think I’ve found a good solution – Pinterest. It’s a really simple, beautiful tool that collects images and links for you in “boards.” You decide what theme your boards have, and you can set up as many boards as you like. Set up an account, put a Pinterest button on your web browser toolbar, and then with a few mouse clicks, you can add new material to any board in seconds.

You have to be logged in to use Pinterest right now, and since they’re still in beta, you need an invitation to get an account. I have five invitations at my disposal, so the first five people to ask in the comments can have them.

You can also put in your request for an invitation.

My Awesome Tutorials board has been steadily growing! There are some gorgeous examples of the tutorial form there, and everything links out to its original source.

I also have boards going for other subjects, but they aren’t as regularly updated.

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Well… boy, did I have big blogging plans for this week! Except then I came down with another whopping flu. So all that crafty goodness will have to wait for next week. But I thought you might like a little preview…

First, you’ll want to be here on Monday, for quite possibly the most epic giveaway I’ve ever done on this here blog. Just an FYI. And that’s all I’m saying.

I’ve also got a sweet new craft book to review…

And I’m working on (believe it or not) a new tutorial for you. The top photo in this post offers a little preview of that.)

I also have some cool new crafty zines to share.

And hopefully, there will be a podcast over the weekend. That is, if all these gallons of echinacea tea have anything to say about it….

Also, while I’m here – mark your calendars for the return of CraftSocial, next Tuesday! We’ll be chatting away from 2-4pm EST, and our subject will be Crafty Trends. (Owls, moustaches, and sparrows – good things or bad?)

Get more deets here and here. And have a good weekend!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

A Snapshot from the Craft Social from Diane Gilleland on Vimeo.

So, just in case you missed the Craft Social event on Twitter today (or you aren’t on Twitter), I thought I’d share this little video shapshot of what it was like. (There’s a larger frame version here.

Quite. A. Ride. Kind of like a huge crafty slumber party. (And I should mention: when I took this video, we’d had over 1500 tweets posted to the event. By the time we wrapped up, we were closer to 2000.)

Barbara and I can’t wait for next month’s Craft Social! Watch the website (and our Twitter feeds) for more details soon.

And, many many thanks to all the crafters who made this such a great time. If you were there, and have any suggestions as to what you’d like to see in this event next time, please chime in in the comments!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

In case you’re on Twitter and have somehow missed my incessant mentions of this, Barbara and I are hosting a Craft Social there tomorrow. The event happens from 1-3pm Eastern time (that’s 10-noon Pacific). Hope you can join us!

You can get some background at the project’s website that Barbara was kind enough to set up, but the idea is to take the conversation that’s already happening on Twitter and give it a little crafty focus. For tomorrow’s event, we’re inviting folks to bring whatever project they’re working on to the computer, and enjoy a little communal crafting-and-chat-time in the Twitter space.

We’ll share what we’re working on, and discuss some interesting crafty subjects. We’ll even have a couple of prize drawings. There’s also a Flickr group!

If you’re unsure of how to participate in a Twitter event, here’s how:

First, have a Twitter account. If you aren’t on Twitter, you can get signed up here.

Then, use the event hashtag. When you participate in the conversation, be sure to add this hashtag to every tweet: #craftsocial. If your tweets contain the hashtag, then people will be able to see them as part of the discussion.

And lastly, find a place to follow the discussion!

You can go to your Twitter homepage and do a search for #craftsocial, as pictured above. Or, you can go to Twitter Search, and do the same search there, as pictured below:

Just keep refreshing either search, so you can see all the new tweets coming in.

Or, if you use TweetDeck or HootSuite to follow Twitter, then you can just set up a new column that searches for the #craftsocial hashtag. I should point out, though, that these Twitter engines don’t always show new tweets in the discussion as efficiently as the Twitter homepage or Twitter Search do.

Anyway. I hope to see you at the Craft Social!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Here’s another chapter in the “New projects I haven’t had time to blog about” saga.

A while back, Paul Overton (of Dudecraft fame) and I got to emailing. Paul had a great idea for a blog that would explore the meaningful aspects of making things – whether that be craft, fine arts, cooking, carpentry, model-building, you name it.

I loved this idea, so we joined forces and built a group blog: Make & Meaning!

We invited a lot of people whose writing and thought processes we admire to join us, and to our delight, they all said yes:

• Kim Werker
• Betsy Greer
• Pip Lincolne
• Alice Merlino

I hope you’ll pop over there and take a look! There’s already a ton of thoughtful posting going on, and lots of interesting discussion in the comments. I’m so excited to be part of it!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

You may be aware that our beloved CRAFT just re-launched as an online magazine. And although there is a company behind it, I still think it’s a great indie publishing story.

As a print magazine, CRAFT was the bomb-diggety. It always featured a wider variety of making than I’ve seen in any other printed craft magazine, and it showcased new and unique crafters. And each issue was packed with great projects.

When CRAFT ceased publication back in January, it was a sad day. But at least its excellent blog continued.

Now, the newly-revamped website is something of a hybrid between blog and online magazine, and I’m very excited about this format. It allows CRAFT to continue showcasing the wide variety it does so well, and it provides an organized home for all kinds of media: downloadable PDF patterns, videos, interviews, an event calendar, and an online store.

I do miss CRAFT on paper, but this new online version can stay so much more current and offer vastly more content. In an era where it’s harder and harder to sustain a print magazine, I think this is a fresh new direction.

Not only that, with an online outlet, CRAFT can feature past pieces from the print magazine – like the article above I did for Issue 10, about making your own bitters. It’s really cool to see that shared with an online audience!

And, perhaps most importantly, CRAFT has always been extremely community-minded, seeking to promote independent crafters and share lots of useful information for free. (All the content on this new website, by the way, is offered for free.)

There’s lots of festivity this week to celebrate the launch. If you haven’t already, pop over and give CRAFT some well-deserved love!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

If you’re a CraftyPod subscriber, you can get this show and over 100 others, plus two new episodes each month. Click here to learn more!

You can also enjoy the current archive of free podcasts over here.

In this show:

- With so many blogs, so many projects, and so much crafty Goodness on the web every day, how can we hope to keep up? Rachel Klein, of One Pretty Thing, gives us some tips.

- Learn how Rachel manages to read over 4000 blogs and websites each week, rounding up the best links for her amazing website.

- Apply Rachel’s strong organizational skills to your craft projects, too.

Links:

- If you haven’t already, do visit One Pretty Thing. It’s a fantastic resource, week in and week out.

- Also, Rachel mentioned this Design*Sponge article about running an advertising program on your blog.

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Happy New Week, everyone! I wanted to let you know about a giveaway in progress over at The Sister Project.

The wonderful women there are giving away a copy of my weaving ebook, just in time for Fall crafting. To enter, here’s what they ask you to do:

“Weave a tale for us about what crafty undertaking of any kind you’re working on this fall:

• something that’s on the needles, the sewing machine, or being glue-gunned or otherwise brought to life in your world;
• it doesn’t need to be complete; great expectations with clever explanations are very welcome;
• so are photos that include the raw materials of the project or your workspace; have fun with your entry.

Remember, none of our fall projects is too far along yet, either.”

So – you have until noon on Friday, September 25th to send in your entry. Good Luck!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

Here’s a cool new crafty resource for all of us – Craftig, a crafty social bookmarking website.

What is social bookmarking? Well it works like this…

Let’s say you find a craft tutorial you really like. You want to be able to find it on the web again, and you want to let others know about it. If you post the link, and your comments about it, on Craftig, then it’s all neatly indexed for you.

Even better, now anyone stopping by the site can search for interesting tutorials and find your link.

Crafting is amassing a great collection of links to tutorials across a wide range of categories. (These are but a few of them.)

Craftig is the brainchild of Kristen Magee, who also blogs at Domestifluff and Paper Crave. She’s created a great, simple user interface that has the potential to be a powerful archive of all this online crafty.

So, go take a look! And remember, a social bookmarking website is most useful when everyone who looks around is also contributing a link or two. Don’t be shy.

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!

I have something a little techy for you today – but if you’re a crafter who shares links to interesting websites on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or others, you might find this useful.

I’ve been playing around with a new service called Smub lately. It’s a nifty little tool that makes saving and sharing web links much easier. Here’s what I like about it:

First, when I’m on my iPod Touch, I can easily bookmark or share any website just by typing smub.it/ in front of the URL. The same would be true for and iPhone, a Blackberry, or any mobile that accesses the internet.

I can also save web links to my Smub page from my web browser. You can install a simple toolbar for most browsers that lets you jump into Smub with one click.

I especially like this because I find cool things on the web all day long, but I may not want to send all these links out on Twitter as I find them. Bingo – now I just keep them listed on Smub.

When I’m ready to send out a link, I just select it from my list, and choose the place I want to send it from the buttons at the bottom there.

I can add my own comments to the link before it goes out, too.

…And look at the URL for the link! When I bookmark it in Smub, I get to customize it. Which is way cooler than most other URL-shortening services, which generate a random series of numbers and letters.

Lastly, Smub keeps stats on the links I’ve sent out on Twitter – or any other social media system. This helps give me some idea of what kinds of links my Twitter-buddies like best, so I can share more of those. Like, apparently, things related to plarn.

So – I like. I hope you dig it, too!

CraftyPod is a blog about making crafts and making media. If you're seeing this post on another website, I'd love to know. Thank you!