folksy – The Indecisive Beader

Selling on Folksy

Did you know that I actually sell some of my finished beadwork and embroideries?

I have a little shop on the UK site Folksy with earrings, a couple of necklaces and some of my embroidered mini hoops – you can view it here. The range is deliberately small to keep it fresh and current, but I also run commissioned work through Folksy, so if you see something you like there or on my social media do feel free to contact me and request custom colours etc.

Folksy is a bit like Etsy but much smaller. They’re deliberately fussier about handmade only and it’s a sensible, easy to browse size as it is just for UK makers (although I can of course still ship worldwide from there). Best of all it has a small, caring, supportive and innovative management team and has a wonderful community of friendly makers which I love. That community take an active interest in promoting the site, spotting non-handmade shops and supporting other sellers with advice and help through the forums and Facebook group. The management team support makers with advice and help, and consult about improvements – Doug the IT guy is legend, and Camilla and her colleagues are experienced makers themselves who constantly feed us useful advice about selling and running our handmade businesses. They actively curate really lovely gift guides, themes of the day and highlight interesting pieces, and run a fascinating blog with ‘makers of the week’ (I was one back in 2014 – read the posts here – very out of date but fun to look back at where I came from).

I’ve been selling there for more years than I care to mention and it’s a lovely place to sell and shop for beautiful handmade items. I’ll probably always have my Etsy shop for supplies and tutorials but it’s very hard to be seen as a maker rather than a supplier there as it’s simply so huge and geographically diverse, so I find Folksy suits me really well for finished items.

Pop over and have a look at my works there using the link below, and do take time to browse some of the other lovely shops too. I’ve listed a few of my favourites below:

Susie West – stunning ‘travel posters’ – we have three of these already and are trying to collect one for everywhere we have lived (we have a little way to go!).

Claire Gent – amazing aluminium and silver jewellery. I’ve lusted after Claire’s work for years!

Holme & Moss – I’ve got one of their classic hairbands in my basket at the moment.

Eynonymous – I have a beautiful yellow silk hairband from Eddie which I wear a lot – she designs and prints beautiful textiles.

Clare Lloyd – modern polymer clay and silver jewellery.

Tanith Rouse – eye-catching contemporary coloured aluminium jewellery.

Jenny Newall – gorgeous stained glass birds and super cute egg earrings.

Sue Trevor – contemporary machine embroidery and fabric sculptures – I’ve bought lots of Sue’s work as gifts for the textile lovers in my family.

The Whimsical Marbler – lovely marbled papers, some in great bright colours for a more modern take.

Clare Buchanan – really eye-catching bright wovens.

In my Folksy Shop

A while back I decided to make life easier for myself by taking my faster moving items (tutorials and materials packs) out of my Folksy shop, basing them solely on Etsy. That way I didn’t have to fret about the materials packs being sold in two places at once, or manually e-mailing out the tutorials. This was particularly important because most of my customers are over in the States, and tend to buy things while I’m asleep!

But because my Etsy shop is busy, it’s kind of sucked up my attention, and I’ve rather neglected my Folksy shop. This is a shame, because it’s got some lovely pieces in, and they deserve a good home! And they could probably also do with some new friends from the legion of half finished or finished but undocumented works which are cluttering up my new storage (more on that another day). So I’m going to be working on refreshing the shop over the next few months, and thought I would start by reminding myself (and you) about some of the lovely pieces in there, starting with my Egyptian Collar.

A few years ago (OK a lot of years ago since it was pre children and the oldest boy is nearly 8) we went to Egypt. This was the result of a long obsession by both myself and Dr. Indecisive Beader with all things Egyptological, and it’s inspired quite a few pieces in the years following. This necklace was inspired by the amazing collars we saw both for real and in various paintings. And as a special offer it is currently reduced from £75 to £60.

The collar forms part of my ‘minerals’ series – pieces focussed around a central stone. The stone in the collar is a lovely matte Chrysocolla, and it’s captured with Miyuki delicas, then joined onto a herringbone band, which uses changes in bead size to form a flat, circular collar which sits really nicely round the neck.

Craft not chaos

The lovely people over at Folksy are running an alternative take on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday phenomenon called ‘Craft not Chaos’, with lots of gorgeous shops offering discounts today or over the weekend. So if you’re looking for gorgeous hand made gifts, toys, clothes, jewellery, furniture or just things that are generally lovely why not pop over and have a look here?

And I’m taking part by offering 10% off finished beadwork until Monday 30th, using the discount code BLACKFRIDAY. Because Folksy can only discount my whole shop, I’ve had to hide my tutorials and materials packs while the discount is in place, but beaders don’t panic, you can still buy them via my Etsy and PayHip shops, and they’ll be back on Folksy on Tuesday.

Kissing Piggies - Sarah Cryer Beadwork — Kissing Piggies – Sarah Cryer Beadwork

Folksy features

The nice people at Folksy have made me their featured shop this week. This means items on their front page (scattered about at the top, and then lots at the bottom), Facebook mentions and articles in the Folksy Blog. All rather lovely. Plus the Facebook mentions have stirred the interest of other beaders including my idol Jean Power, so I’ve even sold some tutorials. More lovely people – thank you all.