Blogging Your Passion & Sharing Your Space

Guest post from Tara Gentile, editor of Scoutie Girl blog and presenter of the Guild’s March 20th ‘Blogging Your Passion for Craft‘ seminar.

When I wrote my ebook, 52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion, I made sure to concentrate on two areas that I don’t think craft bloggers focus on nearly enough:

• Asking questions.
• Sharing your studio space.

Asking questions is for another day at another blog… but now, I’d like to talk about “sharing your studio space.” Do you regularly share pictures of the space you work in? How you (dis)organize your work and supplies? Do you blog about your work in progress?

Sure, it can be tricky… bad lighting, odd angles, piles of stuff you don’t know what to do with. But that is also comforting to readers and fellow craftspeople alike. The next time you go into your studio or office or craft table in the corner, try to look at it with new eyes. See the beauty in the patterns that a row of tools makes or the color that spilled glaze forms on the work station. Then, get out your camera and document it.

Do you have work waiting to go out to boutiques or shows? Consider that your readers are used to seeing the detail of a single piece – not the flow of 10 finished works grouped together.

Do you use any odd tools? Be sure to document those too. A toothbrush, an oddly shaped piece of plastic, a chunk of wood you’ve made “just so” to aid a particular job. These random bits of banality set you apart from other craftspeople and give your readers another way to identify with you.

All of the photos in this post are by Sara Selepouchin, from girlscantell. Sara is a printmaker whose whole craft is based around seeing the ordinary with an eye for the beautiful. She does so expertly in sharing images from her studio life. You can see more in her Flickr pool. Sara’s also teaching for the Guild during March 27th Etsy classes.

If you’d like to learn even more about blogging your passion for craft, you should register for my Guild workshop on March 20th! Participants will receive a free copy of my ebook. If you can’t make it, you can purchase my ebook here.