Link love digest: week 5

A day late, for which I apologise, but I was occupied on site at Grace and Favours all day yesterday (more of that anon).

So let's take a look at my link love shares from last week. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

On a side note, a few weeks ago, one of my link love shares caught the eye of a friend, and that crafter is a now a supplier to the friend's shop. You never know where the ripples may spread to...

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Papercrane Studios

Papercrane Studios

I don't actually know the name of this crafter, but I love the steampunk pieces s/he creates.

Papercrane Studios is the product of a Theatre Design degree and a whole lot of travelling. We try to combine a traditional jewelry aesthetic, with industrial sensibilities- nature and machine; old and new; salvaged goodies & found treasures from the world over. The pieces we make are unique, and will never be reproduced. They’ve already lived a past life, and now come to you ready to live a new adventure!

Roz Legge
Orchard Felts

Believing I was totally without artistic or creative talent all my life I followed a scientific career until a few years ago when I stumbled into crafting quite by accident and became hooked. Initially all and any craft would do but then I discovered felting and became addicted.

Roz Legge

I love working with wool fibres. Being able to create such a vast range of items from the humble fibre fascinates me and I am always on the look out for new ideas and techniques.

I use lots of felting techniques in my work, needle felting, wet felting, nuno felting and resist felting, to make a wide range of items. My main focus has always been my nuno felted scarves which I adore due to their super soft and lightweight nature, but I love to experiment and other items are always popping into my head and therefore my shop.

Gorgeously soft merino wool is used for my scarves, which in the case of nuno felt is felted onto a silk or cotton base, with other fibres, both natural and synthetic, being used for decorative effect. Other breeds of wool are sometimes used for other items.

I have recently given up my full time job allowing me to dedicate more time to my felting.

Jacqueline Jean
Hip and Clavicle

Jacqueline Jean

Hip and Clavicle is an expression of my adoration for nature, the heady perfume of whimsy, magic and romance that surrounds any investigation into the awe-inspiring parade of forms that millions and billions of years have worked... what better source of inspiration could an artist draw from?

A tomboy at heart, I find artmaking akin to exploring underneath rocks in the garden. There are common themes but each discovery is unique. I take the greatest pleasure in exploring new materials and revising designs. When I'm not busy designing and paper-sculpting my favorite creatures, I can be found outdoors with a camera in my hands.

A couple of themes I repeatedly find myself returning to:

•Bringing the outdoors in and the indoors out.

•Exploring the way ordinary objects and processes come together with human sense and memory in moments that transcend their everyday existence. I am drawn to capture and recreate those moments that spontaneously fill me with wide-eyed reflection and contemplation.

I find inspiration in dark woods, moss-covered bark and wild fields. I daydream constantly and long to live in a treehouse. If I were a piece of music, the instrumentation would include a piano and a harpsichord, and at least a peppering of something broken or long out of tune. ;)

Corinne Thorne
iamjewellery4u

I am a single mum to a toddler I love him and jewellery! I design and create every piece you see in my shop from scratch. Each piece is handmade in my home from silver, copper and glass. I also create Memorial jewellery.

Corinne Thorne

I make handmade one of a kind pieces of jewellery using silver, glass and sometimes copper. Created from design to the finished piece. I also fuse the glass myself so everything is unique.
I bought a piece of glass from America and loved it so much I wanted to know how it was made. I had a read, bought a small kiln, supplies and had a go. I've been making fused glass jewellery for a while now and the glass is amazing. Find me on Instagram corrinet1974 for some small videos. 

I started encasing ashes in glass for people a few years later and this has evolved. I wanted to learn silver jewellery making to enable me to make the memorial jewellery extra special. I did a 12 week course and after week 2 is bought basic tools and again had a go. Now I create one of a kind pieces of handmade jewellery at home. My blog Greyhairedmummy.co.uk (memorial jewellery) gives more of an insight into why I do this.

I love knowing that no one else in the world is wearing the same piece of jewellery. It's as individual as you.

Andrei Voronin
Woodworks

I've not been able to learn anything about Andrei, other than that he lives in Belarus. His website is in Cyrillic, and there doesn't seem to be an 'about' section. So let's let his work speak for him, shall we?

Andrei Voronin

Sue Trevor
Sue Trevor

All my items are handmade and ready to post to you via 1st class royal mail, often arriving through your letterbox the very next day, with the exception of my overseas customers where the items take a little longer to arrive....

All come neatly packaged in tissue paper or with an organza bag. Each and every piece of my work is individually handmade then photographed before I list it for sale in my Folksy shop. Some items will be similar, but no two are the same.

Sue Trevor

I trained at Loughborough College of Art and design. My current body of work started about 12 years ago when I mastered the art of free machine embroidery. Today a lot of my work is based on the botanical world. I layer up my fabrics which are usually hand dyed Egyptian cottons and I often incorporate silk too, as it gives a wonderful sheen. Then I free machine embroider over all the layers to create quite a stiff fabric before I cut, sew, fold and manipulate the fabric into shape, often 3 dimensional, resulting in little treasure like containers.

I have had a love of badges since a very young age and I'm pleased to be able to incorporate these in my current work.

I also love making my own glass beads, known as glass lampworking, this too can be seen occasionally in my work.

Anne Honeyman
Chocolate Frog

Anne Honeyman

I’m Anne Honeyman, a full time textile artist living and working on the beautiful Isle of Skye (UK).

I revel in the visual and tactile effects unique to my medium – from sumptuous textures to delicate lacy structures. With a background in environmental science (PhD in palaeo-ecology), the natural environment is an endless source of inspiration for my work.

I specialise in machine embroidery, but also enjoy hand stitch, dyeing, crochet, and using an embellisher. My designs tend to combine precision and repetition with an element of serendipity!

Since completing City and Guilds Creative Embroidery in 2000 I’ve exhibited throughout the UK in art shows and contemporary craft galleries. I’ve also had over 40 projects published in “Classic Stitches” magazine and have work featured in “Fiberarts Design Book 7”.

Oh, and my two other favourite things are frogs and chocolate! (I didn't even know about the Harry Potter thing when I chose this name!) 

 
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The emporium

Over the past few years, I have had first hand experience of the online 'emporium' in the form of both Etsy and Folksy. Drawing traffic to an online stall within these virtual shopping precincts isn't easy. Etsy does at least have an app, making it easier for potential shoppers to find you and buy from you. Folksy has yet to be persuaded that this is a good idea, in spite of repeated calls for this option from users. But more of these virtual marketplaces another day.

Woven bead cuff

If your items are small, like jewellery or baby clothes, you're probably okay storing them within your home. If your items are larger, like sculptures or furniture, having a virtual shop front doesn't solve the physical problem of warehousing. So you are likely to need a physical space to store your products. And if you're going to pay for that space, it might as well be a space from which you can sell, too.

Emporiums (emporia?) are becoming increasingly commonplace. There are several that I know of within a 10 mile radius of my home, and probably many more that I don't know of. The way it works is this: someone buys or leases a space - the quirkier, the better. They then rent out areas within that space to individual traders. X amount will get you a display cabinet, Y amount some wall mounted shelving and Z amount will secure you an area of floor and wall space to call your own.

Upcycled coffee table

Some of these require stall holders to put in time on the shop floor on a rotational basis. The larger your stall, the more time you're expected to put in.

Modern point of sale systems allow sales from each individual stall to be tracked. There may or may not be an additional per item commission to be paid.

Of course, it is on the emporium leaseholder's best interests to keep the stalls as varied and wide ranging as possible. Three makers/sellers of crocheted doilies under one roof is probably not the best way to go. So potential stall holders have to apply for a space. It is seldom 'first come, first served'. If an applicant offers a product that is different and exciting, it will attract a wider range of customers to the emporium per se, which the leaseholder will take into account.

These spaces are in hot demand, and there are usually several potential takers for any space that comes open. This tips the scales quite heavily in favour of the emporium owner, and allows them to pick and choose from among applicants to ensure that they get a wide range, minimal duplications and a harmonious blend. They may also choose not to stock a certain type of item based on a historical lack of customer interest in that type of product.

The rent paid for these spaces cover the overheads of the space itself and are used for promotion and advertising. It is, of course, also up to each stallholder to do their own advertising. The upside of keeping your pieces at home is that there are no additional overheads. Once you start renting a space to put them in, you need to make sure you're going to sell enough to earn that money back. You also need to factor in the time you're going to have to spend minding the store instead of making new products.

Because many of the items I produce are fairly sizable, I have been on the lookout for a physical space in which to store and sell my wares. I have approached a few of these emporiums, but have yet to be successful in securing a space. On one occasion, I was under the impression that we had agreed that I could have a space, only to discover that the emporium owner was under no such impression. On another occasion, the person I spoke to was so rude that I left feeling utterly crestfallen. Mostly, people are very kind and polite, but it doesn't change the fact that there are more applicants than spaces.

As the upcycling/re-use market grows, there will be more and more people like me, making stuff in their home workshops or studios. And presumably, there will be more and more emporiums being opened up to house them all.

So this is me, giving a shout out for your local emporium, populated by individuals who are making, remaking, upcycling or recycling pieces. They aren't likely to get rich off it, but their ethos is probably a lot better for the planet and the local economy than the behemoth mass production outlet in the posher premises. Can I challenge you to do more of your shopping there, and less from the mega-chains?