Craftsy

Have you heard about Craftsy yet? It's a crafting website that offers video-based classes, craft-along workshops, and patterns for sale. I recently signed up for some Craftsy classes, 'The Starlet Suit Jacket' (screenshot below), 'Sewing Studio', and 'Wire-Wrapped Stones, Crystals, and Clusters', and thought it was worth sharing my initial impressions of the site with you.

First of all, let me say that I got all of my classes on sale through a Craftsy new-member special and by watching for sale announcements in the Craftsy and BurdaStyle.com mailing lists. Do some research before you buy, which includes watching some of the 2-minute lesson snippets to get a good feel for the class. If things don't work out for you, Craftsy has a money-back guarantee and, speaking from personal experience, very nice people staffing their help desk.

The Craftsy class platform itself (above) is really great and consists of the class videos, a discussion section, personal notes, and course materials. The class videos are divided into individual lessons, which are further divided into sections. This makes it easy to replay a particular demo and helps focus class discussion, as questions are associate with the section in which they are asked. You can also take notes and Craftsy will record the exact time in the lesson at which you made the note. It's pretty cool, especially because access to the content never goes away once you sign up for a class.

I'm already making use of the techniques I've learned in the wire-wrapping class by throwing together this little beaded bracelet. It's not much to write home about, but it's definitely a start! I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the videos for this class (and the others) and taking my crafting to a new level.

Pinterest

I'm totally addicted to the internet and it doesn't help when I discover awesome websites like Pinterest. Pinterest lets users to create mood boards and share them with friends. It's not really a crafting website but between the customizable board themes and a lot of crafty friends, I've found Pinterest to be an endless source of artistic inspiration.


Pinterest boards can be populated with photos from blogs, Flickr, Ravelry, or wherever else you like to hang out on the internet. When you find a photo you like, you simply click on the Pinterest-provided button in your browser, choose the board you're pinning to, provide a short description, and the photo goes up. Couldn't be simpler.


Beyond organizing your ideas on a given theme, the real strength of Pinterest is in sharing your pins and seeing all of your contact's pins. It's amazing to see the types of photos that inspire each person, from the quotes they choose to pin to the clothing or hairstyle photos they add to their boards. Some of the most inspiring things I've seen on Pinterest come from my contacts' pins (below).


The other Pinterest feature that I really like is being able to search photo descriptions across all users, like in the search I did below for 'terrarium'. If I have an idea in my head, I always find it helpful to see similar things that others have done. And believe me, all of these great terrarium photos are really fueling my creative inklings.


Finally, I should put in the disclaimer that Pinterest is a relatively new site, so it has a waiting list. You can either sign up for the waiting list (my wait on the list was about a week and a half) or a friend with a Pinterest account can send you an invite. I hope this small barrier to getting onto Pinterest will not keep you from enjoying this wonderful resource.