Wednesday, May 29, 2013

I remember the good ole days

Hi everyone!

This post is in response to Gina's (Scrappinology) YouTube video posted today. I had way too much to say about this in the comments section, so I thought the best way to say it was to create a blog post and link it from the comments section under Gina's video.

Firstly, thanks to Gina for making me go back and re-live the good old days :)

So here goes...


I just want to add my two cents worth here. Let's break it down people. Remember 'the good old days' when people actually shared their knowledge and their love of crafts - before all the 'show & tell' videos started appearing. We'd participate in swaps so that we could have a piece of someone's art to admire and examine the techniques used so we could attempt to create something so very different to our own style. This is how our styles grew.



So how did these people get such a huge following? By people subscribing! Doing giveaways on behalf of their SUPPLIERS. So as a human being it is part of our nature to imitate others. So we then think that if we get a lot of subscribers maybe we could be selected to be on a design team? So we then do a giveaway to get MORE subscribers? Why not go and buy some things to giveaway (I won't eat this week), then I'll get more subscribers, and so on and so on.

I gave up on watching HAUL videos because I got so jealous of what a lot of crafters were able to get their hands on so readily and cheaply. Some haul videos are letting us know what company has a sale on, deals, bargains, etc, but as I do not live anywhere near these stores I just cannot bear to watch them LOL.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of deserving crafters on design teams and businesses market their products any way they can to keep their business running. I'm just saying that it's easy to get caught up in all this.

I personally have almost 400 videos here on YouTube. The only reason I started making YT videos was because I was a member of Marion Smith's Girls Gone Scrappy group of which Kathryn (the scrapbeach) was a member. Kathryn then started her Scrapbeach Ning site so that we could have a place to chat (Gina, you also were here at the beginning), upload pictures of our projects from swaps organised through the Ning site.

I gained enough courage to do non-talkie vids which developed into 'talkie' vids LOL. I have always tried to SHARE ideas, I never sell anything. I have done giveaways at certain 'milestones' and currently have a giveaway vid on YT. I have always said that I would never stop showing 'how to' videos, start to finish projects, etc. because when I first 'found' YouTube and all the great crafting tutorials, it was those tutorial videos that helped me create projects I never thought possible.

So to all the 'newbies' out there, there are still some of us oldies left who actually want to SHARE their love of crafts to this amazing online crafting community. Yes we 'copy' but I would like to think most of us acknowledge the person from who we learned the project or technique.

Now getting back to the point in question - giveaways, we are all individually responsible for clicking SUBSCRIBE buttons, we are all INDIVIDUALLY responsible for sending RAKs, we are all INDIVIDUALLY responsible for participating in challenges. It's our own decision. Some people just let 'popularity' go to their heads and they end up doing things they don't even understand to be 'wrong'. This online crafting community is a way to SHARE our love of crafting, heck I even craft in Google Hangouts (not so much lately) with others chatting away as if we're all on a crop together! 

On a negative side, we've had a few instances where people have come on with sob stories and lied their way into receiving 'RAKs', at the moment we've got others talking about libel and copyright infringements!!! Get real people - it's not about who does what the best - it's about SHARING this love of our craft that keeps us here!


But YES YES YES Gina, I long for the good old days, but I'm glad most of us have grown during the years :)  

Smiles
Jen