Sunday 13 July 2008

Craft TV

A lot of people seem to have taken my last post to mean I don't like the Craft Shows on the shopping channels: far from it, I love them, even if it is sometimes like “car crash TV” . There are however two things which are really beginning to get to me.

  1. Paper Crafts
A lot of my friends are paper crafters and I can appreciate the skill (sometimes) involved but why does it have to be nothing but paper crafts... honestly I realise that these channels have to make a profit but as the moment they are all competing in a very small section of the market. Yes, paper crafts are VERY popular at the moment but its a chicken and egg situation, I think it would well be within these channels power to encourage a resurgence of knitting, glass painting, cross stitch or any other craft they chose to push. Lets have some different crafts with good demonstrations and I bet they would sell or do these channel want to keep on flogging a horse which must die sooner or later!!! PLEASE LET US HAVE SOME DIFFERENT CRAFTS....(even the big craft shows like the NEC are full of endless stalls with the same stuff on them:-( )

  1. “Lowest Common denominator crafting”
“Well folks just stick this on your blank card and you've made it!!!!!” What has that got to do with crafts.... where's the creativity... we all know crafters who can produce stunning work out of almost nothing but the shopping channels want as many people as possible to buy their goods so they aim to keep it as simple as possible... it's a style of “crafting” which, along with a lot of other stuff, has come over from the USA... OK it may have its place for crafters who are just starting out but lets not pretend buying a card which is 50% finished and then adding a single topper is really a craft. Crafts need to be learnt, developed, shared and must involved a creative element other wise its like claiming a painting is your own when it was a paint by numbers set (which yes I use because I can't paint for toffees, but then again neither do I claim to ).

Have fun with your crafting and maybe try something different this week :-)