Hi everyone. Bekki @bekokodesigns suggested we ask you all for your content ideas to tie in with our featured maker slot every month. We think that’s a great suggestion, so here’s what’s happening in April.
Our featured maker will be Ruth Markwell who makes make textile art which feature her illustrations, embellished with hand stitching. So we’ll be looking for content around embroidery, fabric art and hand-embellishing.
Please let us know if you would like to do a tutorial, a reel for our Instagram or write an article for us about a particular technique related to these crafts for our Exploring Techniques series… or if you have any other ideas!
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Would the monthly maker event be an opportunity to get the Folksy Local groups involved to maybe pull together local directories of some sort highlighting:
Makers in their regions who work in the same general discipline as the featured maker;
Places where people can attend workshops to learn those skills if they’d like to;
Folksy shops in their region who sell supplies / kits to create things in that discipline.
I realise that the number of Folksy shops under each of those headings would vary according to which craft you’re focusing on each month, but that’s not necessarily a reason not to try it…
The Folksy Local groups are such a great idea and it’d be great to leverage them more for something that’d spread the monthly maker love a bit wider amongst Folksy shops, as well as creating a great Folksy branded resource for those millions of home crafters out there who want to learn and who we want to attract to Folksy as customers! 
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Hi Camilla. I have lots of embroidery content for a reel if you would like any.
@thecrimsonrabbit that’s a great idea to tie in Folksy Local groups.
Helen x
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I posted a couple of questions to you on the “Featured Seller” thread. I’m reiterating one of my concerns here because it’s specifically about your proposal to start doing reels / exploring techniques articles / tutorials etc.
The business model for this site is makers selling their finished articles, so why on earth would you want to give potential customers detailed instructions on how to make our items for themselves (and give those instructions to them for free)?
Using a restaurant analogy, it’d be the same as you bringing people into your kitchen to watch you put meals together, and then letting them go across the road to the supermarket to buy the ingredients and make the meal at home, instead of eating in your restaurant.
If you want to make YouTube-style tutorials then do that separately. Don’t connect it to Folksy. If you start publishing reels, articles, and tutorials etc with instructions on how to make the items that we sell, you’re the magician’s assistant giving away our secrets.
I’m not in the business of showing people how to make my items, and I’d really rather you didn’t do that either.
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@findmeinthehedgerow uses a similar idea of printing her own designs and embellishing them with embroidery but her work is totally different to Ruth’s work. It would be interesting to highlight how artists can take a craft or concept and make widely different products. Maybe highlighting the value of each and of folksy as being a place where all of those artists and styles can be found, adding too that creating a community of artists online helps to nurture those crafts and buyers can be a part of that by their support and purchases
Ruth’s work is beautiful and full of detail but I’ve personally always struggled with how to display small pieces of art at home. I’d love to see some ideas of how to style these kinds of small pieces, some lifestyle shots or even better, a reel or tutorial on how to style these pieces into a room design. As there are lots of folksy makers who work on a similar scale you could showcase a few
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I love this idea of Bekki’s.
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I agree wholeheartedly. There are many crafters out there who can’t work things out themselves so would jump on the chance to ‘steal’ someone else’s designs/work.
I think this idea is going to diminish our originality and craftsmanship.
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I 100% agree. A lot of artists are unable to make a living just selling their art / craft so have to do tuition as well to make up their income … They charge for that service.
Folksy is supposed to be a Shopping site, that is why we are all here, to sell our work not to teach others so they can copy our work and sell it too…
When I shop I go to shopping sites. When I learn I go to ‘educational, training’ places.
I pay for both.
The two should not and cannot be mixed, they are entirely different business models or they should be.
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Fully agree.
Am I missing something here? Thought Folksy was a selling site not an extension of You Tube to show people how stuff is made.
Sorry not going to get a tutorial from me, I want to sell not teach.
I do hold a C & G in teaching adults but my rates are £150 per hour, are Folksy going to pay us for doing this and sharing years of expertise through, education and experience?
Concentrate on the selling and advertising for us to get more sales, do not branch into tutorials and spend money on something that only benefits others to copy and then flood the market with poor quality reproductions,
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I strongly agree with the sentiments of Joy @JOYSofGLASS, @MollyRoseDesigns and @PoppyKayDesigns. While I often sit at craft fairs working (as much to amuse myself during slack moments as to encourage people to buy) that is very different from giving potential plagiarists detailed instructions on how to do it! We pay to sell, not to give tutorials.
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I think thats a very good idea.
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I think knowing in advance who the featured seller is and trying to link other makers using similar skills is a positive thing. Ive looked at this ladies work and itvis quite unique, i hope she isnt going to give too much away. I would class them as minature works of art so perhaps that could be a related theme that month. The Folksy seller that springs to mind for embroidery is @SueTrevor
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I got paid £250 three times to do tutorials for a (sadly short lived, pandemic closed down) craft magazine a few years back.
Folksy, you are taking the mickey.
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Hi everyone. In terms of tutorials, we definitely don’t want or expect anyone to give away their secrets or techniques.
The kind of tutorials we had in mind were things like this Origami Star by Jess from @thewhimsicalmarbler Folded Paper Star Tutorial | Folksy Blog which uses her marbled paper to create a decoration. Or perhaps if the focus for the month is hand-embroidery then a video showing how to do one particular stitch. Or as another example, if the focus for another month was on knitwear, then someone who sells hand-dyed yarn may want to share a tutorial on how to use their yarn to knit socks - and on that tutorial we would have a link both to the hand-dyed yarns category on Folksy and to hand-knitted socks by our own makers.
It doesn’t even need to be a full tutorial, even just a glimpse of one aspect of your making process as a super short (15 second) video to share on social media can be fascinating for people.
Both these formats can be a great way to highlight your skills to people, especially those who might not have ever tried your craft and don’t understand the work or knowledge that goes into it. That then helps customers understand what goes into the price and why buying handmade is better.
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Camilla I believe that those of us who do Not like the idea of any of this would far prefer Folksy to be putting All their efforts into pushing our beautiful handmade products into the faces of potential buyers… and not diversifying with projects like this.
I don’t think I have seen any such initiatives on any of Folksy’s competitors, I don’t need to name them but many are going from strength to strength on the basis of selling alone. 
I don’t believe I have seen anything like this in the Suggested Features list which is built up by the actual sellers on here.
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No, just no. You don’t seem to see the flaws in your reasoning. With your hand-knitted socks example, I’d be stunned if the makers on Folksy selling their hand-knitted socks would be happy for you to publish a tutorial showing potential customers how to knit their own.
Folksy is fundamentally dedicated to the sale of finished products. Tutorials just don’t belong here.
And I’m baffled by what kind of value a 15-second video could possibly provide anyone…
Folksy seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis. Your back story indicates that you set up the site as a vehicle for showcasing British makers and enabling them to sell their craft. At some point you decided to add the selling of supplies to your business model, and now you want to provide free educational videos and tutorials showing customers how to make their own items.
I would suggest you split your interests into two separate sites. One site exclusively for makers to sell their finished products (this site), and a separate site for the selling of craft supplies and the publishing of tutorials showing crafters how to use those supplies.
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There is no place on a selling site to have tutorials and this needs to be stopped.
It seems every time something ‘new’ turns up we object we are ignored and Folksy do it any way. Please tell us if this is the way this site is going a lot of us could move on.
Folksy identity is selling handmade not tutorials. There are enough of those on You Tube where the tutors can earn money. Yet you are expecting us to do for nothing and a bad idea anyway.
Is this what our 50% fee increase is going towards?
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I think it’s a brilliant idea. Unfortunately I don’t have any content to share but there are lots of Folksy sellers who have short idea/how to clips available on social media. I’m sure they would love to share some of these. Maybe you need to shout out a bit louder as they ones I have seen don’t tend to use this forum of take part in the Folksy shop group.
By the way I think it’s very positive that Folksy are looking at new ways of reaching potential buyers and sellers.
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I wonder if a new hashtag could be used, to link to the sellers who already have wee short videos etc?
These artists exist, so why not use whats already there? Those who want to can make videos, and folksy can use the hashtag wherever they wish. Probably instagram?
@JOYSofGLASS @PoppyKayDesigns @Caroleecrafts I’m not sure I’ve explained it properly, so apologies. We don’t intend to diversify or focus on tutorials. Creating engaging content that highlights the skills of our makers has always been part of our marketing strategy. This hasn’t changed, the thing that has changed is that we wanted to try focusing on one craft, niche or topic a month.
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