The most frequently asked question I get at our club nights is “how do I get my Etsy store noticed?”

One of April’s main points during her presentation was that while her website and book draw attention to people’s creations in a critical way, the response from people who embrace what is featured on her site often brings more attention to these artists and crafters than they might receive on their own. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with counterculture and its ability to blur the line between low and high art.

April is no stranger to outsider culture herself. She hosted a radio show for several years, sharing unconventional music to her listeners that may never have been heard on a large scale. She genuinely appreciates what she points out as weird or terrible and in fact, her presentation included a slideshow of over 20 items featured on her site that now sit comfortably in her home.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of her book, we have several autographed ones for sale in the store! We even made April a gift in true Regretsy form. Just before we got to take a staff photo with her, April let me know that our gift to her had been “mysteriously stolen” during her book signing! While I wish we could have gotten a group photo with her wearing it, luckily, we snapped several photos of her right when I presented the very special gift, one of which you can see below.

Thanks again to April and everyone who made it out last night! We hope to see you at upcoming Club Etsy meetings on the second Wednesday of every month from 6-8pm.

Last night we held our FIRST EVER sock monkey class at the Urban Craft Center! Each participant brought with them a pair of socks that were transformed into these kitschy little creatures. The studio space was full of creative energy and conversation as we worked into the evening. Everyone in the class went home with a new friend and the know-how to create their own sock monkey in the future! Be sure to join in on our next sock monkey making madness on August 25th from 5-9 pm!

Hi! I'm Rachel

I am the first intern here at the Urban Craft Center. I am currently a senior studying textile design and art history at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA. I grew up in Idaho and while I love living on the east coast, felt like I needed to return to some open space. I decided that the perfect place for me to spend a summer would be in sunny California. Luckily I stumbled across the U.C.C and what can I say, it was love at first sight! I feel so very lucky to be chosen as the intern and was ecstatic when I got the call. I love the wonderful ladies who work here, the beautiful and inspiring space and the feeling of community that the combination of these two elements create. Look forward to a weekly update of projects I am working on for the U.C.C.

Along with interning at the U.C.C this summer, I also had the opportunity to travel to Nepal. While there I worked with a woman’s empowerment group called the Chetana Women’s Skill Development Project. This project in Pokhara, Nepal provides underprivileged women with an opportunity to learn design, weaving and sewing skills. With these skills the women are able to find work and therefore provide their children with better education and health care. I spent a month working on the project with the founder Tara Tilminshina. I worked to help them develop their product designs, improve the working conditions for the women and develop a marketing strategy. I will be launching a website for the project in August. It hasn’t even been a week yet since I have been back in the US. While my body is here, my mind still seems to be with the women and children of the CWSDP.

If you are interested in reading more about this project and my travels to Nepal and Africa to empower women through textiles, check out my blog: http://loveoneanothertoday.blogspot.com/

Zines are small, low budget, self-published and self-distributed publications, written by authors outside the mainstream who are motivated to share thoughts or skills with a community rather than to make money or get famous. In a word, zines are awesome. We’ll be working on our own zines are well as collaborative projects, have zine swaps and lots of examples to peruse through.

One thing I’ve learned about having an Etsy store is that quality photos of your products are just as important as the quality of what you sell. While it might be tempting to throw a towel on a bed and take a quick picture to get the process over with, you’ll be much happier and have better customer response if you take a little time to learn how to take a crisp, clear product photo.

Fortunately, Etsy offers a variety of valuable resources and tutorials for every aspect of your Etsy store. You can find articles, forums, videos and more by visiting The Storque, in the blog section of their website.

Here are a couple of photos taken at our club night yesterday. Don’t they look great?!

(above: http://www.etsy.com/shop/eroweboat)

If you didn’t make it out last night, you can still join our online Club Etsy group HERE. Add photos of your products, ask questions in our discussion forum and find out what special topic will be offered in next month’s meeting. We hope to see you at our next Club Etsy, Wednesday April 14th from 6-8pm!

A lot of the crafters I’ve met first learned the importance of handmade skills when they were kids. Cheryl grew up in the Nebraska Sandhills, where she was taught by her family to crochet and sew at the ripe old age of four. She comes from a long line of crafters who seem to create magical environments within the sand dunes and prairie landscape. In the 1950s, Cheryl’s uncle took apart television sets and made dioramas out of them to put all around the house.

That imagination has certainly been passed along. After teaching workshops at Machine Project in Echo Park (including the talking amigurumi yeti in the photo), she was invited to take part in their show at LACMA. Cheryl crocheted 101 little birds at the LACMA entrance, and one gigantic crochet bird, nearly 5 feet tall, to sit beside his hanging friends. The event included an ongoing crochet workshop where Cheryl taught nearly a hundred people how they too could use their hands to create a magical creature for their world.

Cheryl came to The Urban Craft Center to add a few new skills to her repertoire. She’s picked up quilting, spinning and screen printing over the past couple of months. I am quite fond of her Yeti cards from our Yudu class. Adorable little beast, no? This design is a continuation of an image Cheryl created and had made into fabric. She’s started an Etsy shop, you can see it here, with more great items coming soon. For more information about Cheryl Cambras and her work, visit her website.