Crafty Tips

OK, so maybe this isn’t truly life-changing news for anyone other than me but this has been a great week for the sites in my little crafting world.

Blog About Crafts News

I received an email the other day from a subscriber of this blog. It was so nice to hear from her. It was such a happy surprise to realize that there is actually someone out there reading to my posts on a regular basis. If there are more of you out there, I would love to hear from you as well.

The Crafty Tipster News

Along with my blog, I have a website called The Crafty Tipster where I have a few original crochet patterns, some vintage crochet patterns and a handful of other free crafting projects. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

Today brought an unexpected email from a wonderful crafter and I truly thank Laura for taking the time to send it…

Reason #umpteen gazillion why I love crafters…Laura was trying to make my Crochet Santa Pattern and she realized that I had made a small typo that created a big mess of Santa’s hat. A dozen rows of double crochet is a whole lot bigger than a dozen rows of single crochet. Oops. She could have simply pulled out the rows and made her Santa correctly. But, no, she took the time to drop me a note that I had a problem with my pattern. She didn’t rant and rave, just kindly asked if it was a typo. I love kind and helpful folks like her.

Reason #umpteen gazillion plus one why people in general drive me crazy…That pattern was posted last Christmas and has been linked to by numerous other crafting websites and no one, up to now, took the time to let me know of my mistake. Bah humbug to all those folks who didn’t ask if I had made a mistake; I just hope there aren’t too many Santas with gigantic hats out there.

Crafty Tips News

Crafty Tips is my site where crafters can share their websites and crafting tips with each other. It is something of a labor of love with the goal of helping some of my fellow crafters advertise and promote their websites and online businesses. Participation is free; the more the merrier.

This is always a busy season for Crafty Tips but this year has been the year of new, exciting categories along with the increased visitors and submissions that Christmas always brings.

Not too long ago, I added a new Crafting Software category. Today it was Craft Vacations. A French company that provides jewelry making supplies and their own finished items also offers several great beading and jewelry making vacations each year. The workshops all looked so tempting (what craft lover wouldn’t love go on a vacation where they get to make things too?) that I thought that the visitors of Crafty Tips might find such a category useful. For now, the category only has the listing for the great workshops from France but hopefully more crafting vacations and tours providers will add their websites in time.

Reusable Art News

Christmas time has also brought an increase of traffic and interest in Reusable Art. Word is really starting to spread about the great copyright free vintage drawings and illustrations that I am sharing. After noticing a nice-sized spike in traffic, I discovered that Yahoo! has my site listed #1 out of 180,000,000 (yes that’s 180 million!!!) for free Christmas images. Google unfortunately doesn’t rank it as well but I have seen over 1,000 visitors from Yahoo! so far this month from that listing. #1 of 180 million sites? wooo-hoooo!

It’s always exciting for me when I create a new category on Crafty Tips. It usually means that a new type of craft will be included on my craft directory. But, in this case it is a category that is often overlooked by other crafting directories - sadly, mine was missing it as well.

The new category that I’m blabbering about is Craft Software. For now, it has only one site listed but I hope that will not be the case for long as the page gets spidered and indexed by Google and the other search engines.

From time to time, I add great crafting websites that I find without waiting for the site owner to submit it on their own. However, it has always been my personal belief that commercial sites should have to find me on their own - seems unfair to do otherwise. Since most people who make Craft Software sell their programs, it has been a hole in the directory.

I am excited to showcase Rexan’s Craft Organizer Software as the first software company to be represented in this category. Rexan appears to have created what amounts to an ERP (enterprise resource planning) product where crafters can track their expenses, inventory and sales all from one piece of software. I haven’t seen it in action but it looks quite cool with plenty of room for pictures of both raw materials and finished goods.

Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, the category will begin seeing more great software programs for crafters including the variety of picture to pattern programs for cross stitchers, needlepointers and others.

If you sell a Craft Software program, please consider adding your site - the only cost is the time it takes you to write a description of your product and provide a crafting tip; in other words, it’s absolutely free!

It’s now been over two years since I started. With a little knowledge and a great idea, I started Crafty Tips Arts & Crafts Directory. I had come to hate looking for anything about crafting on the search engines because there are just so many sites that offer very little in the way of helpful tips, complete patterns, or even finished items or patterns for sale. Many of the top results are simply sites with generic articles designed for the sole purpose of directing folks to click on their advertisements.

All crafters have their list of favorite crafting sites they keep in their bookmark files. I know some who keep handwritten lists and even notecards of their favorite crafting websites. Crafters also love to share ideas and tips about their crafts when they get together in person or in the many online forums. I suspected if I merged keeping a list of great crafting websites with a way to share ideas and tips, I could create a true resource for crafters. Crafty Tips was the result.

There are a few craft directories that are larger than Crafty Tips. But, Crafty Tips continues to be the only craft directory that adds the fun of including crafting tips from the owners of every listed website. It is also one of the only directory-style websites featuring product pictures and company logos with each listing. Many directories rely exclusively on simple screen shots or don’t even bother including pictures at all.

I haven’t talked about Crafty Tips in a while and thought it was time to share some of what’s been happening.

I continue to be honored by the numerous talented craftspeople and artisans who ask to be part of my site. We’ve finally broken through the 300 mark for listings and now have 200 categories.

Christmas will be here in only 93 days! Have you started yet? Yeah, I know it isn’t even October yet. But those of us who make our gifts or sell items at holiday fairs know we need to get our act together and get crafting.

While there are some categories that could be filled out a bit more, this year Crafty Tips already has almost twice as much to offer as it did last year! And we are continually adding new sites and crafty tips almost daily. We’re sad that several truly informative craft sites appear to have gone offline; but we are very excited about the many new ones.