What a beautiful day

It's the weekend, the sun is shining and I'm in the mood for crafting. There's something about a sunny day that makes you feel happy, well it does me!

I recently got a delivery of gorgeous gemstones and I can't wait to get playing with them, the design ideas are all in my head, now I need to get making them into jewellery.

Apologies for being so quiet this year, although I'm not the best blogger in the world by far I had hoped to blog a little more often. Unfortunately the year did not get off to a great start and I was unwell. The good news is that I am 99% back to normal health now (well normal for me...lol) and am gradually catching up with all the things I had planned to do this year.

Here at Downland Crafts both Tom and I are totally craft mad and are involved in lots of projects for the craft community not just our own website. We also know that many of our customers who purchase craft supplies from us have their own small businesses so recently we set up a new website for craft based sites. After noticing that most of the Top 100 & Top 50 type craft directories out there were based in the UK we felt there should be one for Irish Craft, so as we couldn't find one we set up our own.

You can add your website, Etsy shop, Facebook page or blog for free by visiting http://top100irishcraft.gotop100.com/ and clicking add your site under the logo. All we ask for your site to be approved is that you are based in Ireland (North or South), you sell handcrafted items, craft supplies, write a craft blog or organise craft events. We've also set up a corresponding Facebook page and Twitter account, once you become a member you are welcome to post on the Top 100 Irish Craft Sites page to showcase your products and special offers. You can also tweet using the #top100irishcraftsites hashtag and we will retweet for you.

We didn't stop there...oh no! I then decided there was a need for a new Facebook group again after noticing that, although there are business groups on Facebook already and I am a member of many of them on behalf of Downland Crafts, there wasn't a group especially dedicated to Craft Businesses so you guessed it I set one up!

Crafters often come into business through their hobby and can operate slightly differently from other businesses and have different needs. We hope by having this group the information available to our members will be more applicable to them.

This group is for people who take their craft seriously as a business and have a business presence online such as a Facebook business page, shop and/or website. The purpose of the group is to offer support and advice to craft businesses, this is not a selling group.

Again we have set up a corresponding Twitter account and will be using the #IrishCraftBiz hashtag.

Similar to our new Top 100 Irish Craft Sites, to become a member of the Irish Craft Business Network you must be based in Ireland (North or South), sell handcrafted items, craft supplies or organise craft events . When you ask to join you may be asked to provide information on your business such as links to your pages and sites so we can verify you.

Well that's enough waffling for now, I hope you find these new projects useful....I'm off to do some crafting.

Have a great weekend
Trish x