Make, Do and Mend.

Crafts. That's a thing I do now. And like all the loveliest things, it happened totally by accident. 
Toward the end of last October, I decided it would be fun and nice to hand-make my friends' Christmas presents. I decided on jewellery as it's pretty and shiny and unique and easily tailored to someone's style, taste and personality. Also, my general approach to arts and crafts is more Blue Peter than Women's Institute and at least with jewellery there's less opportunities to sling a load of glitter on something and call it art. I'm not saying you can't, but it's harder to when making jewellery. It has a kind of glamour to it that repels PVA and toilet roll tubes. 

Anyhow... So, I ordered some bits, the plan being to make earrings, necklaces and charm bracelets. I posted a pithy Facebook status about it and cracked on with making it. A few days later, I uploaded some photos, feeling very proud of myself.

My friend Laura commented, saying 'You should have a stall at the Wizarding Winter Fair. You could sell things there.'

'Ok!' said I, ordering more things to make Harry Potter themed items to sell at the fair. I made some of these up and posted photos.

Then another friend asked if they were available to buy.

'Sure!' said I, promptly going to Etsy, setting up a shop and adding my sole ten items to it. 

Do you see how it snowballed? 

I've always been kind of artsy, happy with the making and doing, sitting around making charm bracelets, rosewater perfume in jam jars etc.. When I was at junior school, I was a budding animal rights activist. I spent lunchtimes memorising the Latin names of British wildlife. One of my life-goals was to get arrested for breaking into the Proctor and Gamble animal testing labs and liberating all the animals. I had visions of me in camo, armed with bolt-cutters, brandishing them in the air as I bellowed 'Animals are people too' before being led away, triumphantly in handcuffs.

I digress.

Anyway, I used to make cakes and sell them at break time and then put the money in my Halifax account so my mum could get me a cheque to send to the WWF. Not the World Wrestling Federation, as it was then, but the World Wildlife Fund. I rapidly realised though, that all those ten pences (twenty for fancy ones with icing AND jelly diamonds on) were not going to save the whales any time soon. I needed to do more.

I'd recently learnt to knit, so I decided to employ these new-found skills in my one-girl mission of saving the planet. I spent a weekend knitting squares, to which I then stitched faces and ears and made into keyrings of various animals. These were taken around the local old people's home, where I somehow managed to convince a bunch of blind, slightly senile, octogenarians to part with their pensions for them (fifty pence a pop. I was raking it in. Cha-ching!).

The game was on. Arts and crafts as a way to make money was go. It was heavily aided and abetted by my Nana, who is solely responsible for my love of making stuff. When I was little and used to stay over with her, we'd to spend hours cutting up bits of net curtain and sewing ribbon to it before stuffing it with lavender from her garden. She taught me how to make dolls house furniture from conkers and dolls from clothes-pegs. She taught me how to make clay out of flour and water and salt. She bought me ribbons and glue and paints and pencils and encouraged me to sit and make things. And she loved everything I made.


She broke her arm once and I knitted her this (with hindsight, utterly repulsive) cover for her cast. It was a slime-green frog, with a massive pink tongue and boggly-eyes made from my old gym knickers. Best of all, I lovingly made a fly to sit on its tongue. And she actually liked it. She really, really did. She wore it over the cast and when that came off, it spent the rest of its life sitting on the back of her chair. When she died, I insisted she was buried with it. 

I used to make cards, more than anything else. She always encouraged me to sell them, telling me to take them to shops and see if they'd sell them on. I never thought they were good enough though, so I used to say I preferred to do it for the people I loved. I was right, they weren't very good, not compared to what I do now. But I think she'd be pretty proud of me for finally doing something with all the arty stuff.

Where was I? Right, Etsy shop. So I set one up, added stock, people bought it.

What is this fuckery?

I made more things, got a bit creative. Then people started adding my items to their 'favourites', including them in Treasury Lists. I made a Facebook page to keep people updated on what I was doing. I found a local craft fair to go to. And after that, people started emailing me to ask me if I'd be interested in selling at their fairs.

As of right now, I have four craft fairs coming up in the next four months. My Etsy shop, after having stock in it for almost 5 months, has had 92 sales. It doesn't sound like a lot, and I'm certainly not about to start looking for property in Highgate, but it's a big deal to me. That I make these things and people like them, people want them, is so incredibly brilliant.

I used to sit and read my Ebay feedback if I was feeling a bit low, you know, the stuff like 'A-Star, Excellent Ebayer!' Or 'Perfect, 10 out of 10, come back again soon!'

Now I look at all the things I've made that other people have seen value in too, and I make more of them. It's a lot healthier, I think.

This post came about because last night, I decided to join Tumblr. Not because I desperately want to spend 4 hours a day sharing GIFS with the world, but because it's dawned on me that marketing is kind of essential to keeping this flow of awesome steady. And a lot of the stuff I make, though not all, is inspired by books and films and television. And if there is anything Tumblr knows about, it's what the fandoms are up to. So it seemed like a natural progression. I'll add photos and links to my Etsy shop, tag it appropriately and hopefully drive traffic, from people who might be interested in my stuff, to the shop. It's part marketing tool and part showcase of my hobbies.

And I won't lie, I will reblog pictures of foxes, teacups and narwhals if I see them.

At the moment, I'm in a very complicated relationship with my sewing machine. There are lots of things I want to start making, lace collars and cuffs, detachable Peter Pan collars, bow-ties and garters, that all necessitate, for sanity's sake, being able to use the machine. Except it scares the shit out of me. I may have to employ my usual tactic of getting drunk and having a go on it to break the ice.

It's exciting though, making things. I get so much pleasure from having bits and bobs and putting them together and making new things. I don't know how big it will get, or how big I want it to get. I'm worried all the joy might be sucked out of it if I end up spending all my time trying to keep up with orders, or relying on it as my main income. But for now, it's one of the loveliest parts of my life.