Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Spreading the Love

This week the featured artisan on the Handmade Artist's Forum is ME! So I have had a great week reading all these fabulous blog posts about me. But I am not going to do a blog post about myself.. I do enough of that! Instead I am going to blog about the Handmade Artists' Forum.
The Handmade Artists' Forum was begun over a year ago by Andrew and Kimberley Kitchen as a way to support handmade artists and the handmade community. Many forums are begun by folk everyday, but many do not succeed to any great amount. The Handmade Artists' Forum is not like that. It has grown at an astonishing rate! I have been involved with a few forums, and I have never seen one grow as rapidly and consistently as The Handmade Artists' Forum. This is due mainly to the drive of Andrew and Kimberley. Andrew, in particular, set out to Tweet HAF all over the internet. That's actually how I found HAF. He followed me on Twitter, so I followed him and heard about the very new (they had just started) forum. The thing that first grabbed my attention was that it was an SMF forum (forum software), and a couple of forums I was working on were SMF, so I figured I could offer to help them.
So I joined up, mentioned my experience with SMF, and suddenly found myself as a moderator.
Being on staff has given me an opportunity to really see how much stuff Andrew and Kimberly do - and frankly I have to wonder where they get the energy from. They have busy offline lives, yet they spend as much time as possible promoting and supporting handmade artists around the world.
One thing that they noticed was that many handmade artists who were trying to sell on various 'handmade' sites were being made to compete with commercial items, via supplies and vintage sections. This was part of the reasoning behind the Handmade Artists' Shop - a selling venue that is completely handmade, no commercial supplies, no vintage.
All in all, the Handmade Artists' Forum is a home for anyone who loves handmade and wants to support the handmade community. It is an absolute pleasure to be involved with, and I am very glad to have found them.

6 comments:

DreamBubbles said...

LOL I love the irony that we all wonder where yo uget your energy adn you say that about Andrew and Kim :D Great article :) Was a pleasure to read.

Larissa said...

Great post! The rapid growth and success of HAF are a testament to the character of Andrew & Kimberly.

Anonymous said...

You are so sweet! Your features are so well deserved and we are lucky to have you with us!

Handmade Artists' Forum and Shop said...

Thanks so much for the wonderful post. It is people like you that truly do make the forum great. Here's to many more years of growth to the forum and shop and all of us.
HAF

Unknown said...

This was so wonderful of you to write this terrific article! Kim and Andrew are a great couple and we all owe them a huge thank you for all they for us each day!

jewelry by NaLa said...

We all love Ma and Pa Kitchen and the HAF family, and we love you, too!! ;)