New Online Shop - Crafters Market UK Review

I’d been looking for an online selling platform for a while when I came across Crafter’s Market UK. I’ve got an Etsy shop (well, two actually – one for Helena Handcart and one for everything else) and while Etsy’s customer base and reach is huge, the fees are a bit eye-watering and you can sometimes feel lost amongst the crowd. A tiny voice in a huge (if vibrant) throng. So I was after something different to sit alongside my other shops - something smaller and friendlier and with less of the eye-watering element!

There are a few alternatives out there but when I looked into fees and read reviews, I kept finding things that put me off. And then I found Crafters Market which claims to be:

“Created out of the frustrations of using some of the alternative marketplaces out there, with the aim of establishing a supportive community of likeminded crafters to help one another grow and succeed.”

So far so good…

CMUK is a relatively new platform, having launched earlier this year, but when but when I contacted one of the co-founders, Holly, she was really enthusiastic about what they’d achieved so far:

We launched the website on March 1st and in the 5 short months we've been live our community has gained over 700 vendors and over 4000 products. Our site visits are also improving month on month, with July seeing over 10 thousand unique visitors!

Crafter's Market UK has been an exciting adventure and we are very proud of the accomplishments we've made so far. Like optimising the site for Google Shopping and enabling vendors to connect their CMUK stores with Facebook & Instagram shopping. We can't wait to see how things unfold from here!

Holly was also keen to highlight that, through an agreement with Ecologi UK, for every order placed on the Crafters Market site, a tree is planted. Pretty awesome, right?

Their fee structure is also really simple and very good value, in fact you can set up a shop entirely for free (no listings or set up fees) and the only costs you will pay are 5% on sales and the payment processing fee (which is charged by the payment provider). Brilliantly, they also have a ‘fee calculator’ on their website that you can enter your selling price into and it tells you exactly how much profit you will be left with on each sale. As anyone who’s sat chewing a pen and scratching their head in frustration trying to work out all the different Etsy fees will attest to, this a total breath of fresh air!

The free account looks good but does have limits - number of products being one so I went for the ‘Plus’ account which is £5 a month to list as many items as you want and with no percentage taken on sales. Yes, none at all. Of course the upfront fee does take away the ‘free to set up’ aspect but alongside the community elements, it seemed like a good offer to me, so I went ahead and set up a shop.

My shop front

And… so far so good! It’s been great to have somewhere where I can have all my products (cards, jewellery, mugs, magnets, notebooks and prints) in one place and to be able to list my full range without having to pay individual listing (and re-listing) fees regardless of how fast an item sells. The whole experience feels organised, transparent and straightforward which is always good!

And the community element is lovely too. The site has a Facebook group where people are friendly and chat about many aspects of crafting, designing and running small businesses, and the two co-founders are always on the end of messages to answer any questions. Holly, in particular, has been brilliantly supportive.

It’s also felt good to join a smaller site with a more engaged community and founders who take the time to promote everyone’s shops. They've already featured my products on their Instagram feed several times and highlighted me under ‘editors picks’ on their home page.

I’m also impressed by the quality of the work on the site - from a customer perspective you could spend many hours browsing and come away inspired and with virtual shopping bags bulging (and your wallet a little lighter!) I’ve been sharing some fellow crafters’ work in my instagram stories so keep an eye out if you want to see more inspiring examples.

Of course it will be a while yet before I have any sense of how my shop might go long term but I’m pleased to find a somewhere I feel linked to a community of craftspeople and creatives. If you’re looking for somewhere to sell your own creations, I definitely recommend checking Crafter’s Market UK out and if you’re on the look out for special hand crafted/designed gifts I’d urge you to pay the site a visit.

Oh, and if you’re a fellow shop owner, give me a shout on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter and we can link up - after all, helping each other grow and succeed is part of what Crafter’s Market UK is all about :)

P.S I've just (since writing this) signed up to become a Crafter's Market affiliate so if you’re thinking of setting up an account having read this post then please follow this link. It means I get a commission (at no extra cost to you) - thanks so much!

A little glimpse inside my shop

Linocutting

Over the last few years, linocutting has become one of my favourite creative outlets. I only really discovered it less than four years ago but since then I’ve spent many hours/weeks/months of my life getting shoulder ache and eye strain carving little bits of rubber out of bigger bits of rubber… and loving every minute. I’ve recently reached a point where although in one way I feel pretty experienced at it, I’m simultaneously aware that I’m only really near the start of my journey. There’s so much more to learn and explore. So now feels like a good time to pause and look back at the story so far.

So, let’s go back to November 2017 when I wanted to design some Christmas cards for my new greetings card business, Helena Handcart. I was having an arty day in a friends studio and that’s probably what encouraged me to try something different to my usual pens and watercolours – other people’s art studios are always fun places to experiment! So out came the lino cutting tools and inks and a few hours later I’d produced a festive stag print.

If you’re interested in the process, linocutting involves transferring a design onto a slab of lino (drawing or tracing it - whatever works for you) and then carving out parts of the design to create a relief image in the lino block. While creating your design you have to bear in mind negative space (not just the shapes you’re making but the spaces between them) as any bit of the image you carve out will not appear on the final print. You also need to think in reverse because the whole image will also print out back to front. It can put your head in a spin and it’s very easy to make mistakes (and extremely hard to rectify them)!

Once the design is carved, you then use a roller to cover the lino with a layer of ink - making sure not to roll it on too thick and accidentally fill any of the smaller grooves. Placing paper on top of the inked lino and applying pressure (whether with a proper press, special baren or old fashioned back of a spoon) then allows the ink to transfer to the paper and, once lino and paper are peeled apart, there’s your final image. There’s always something a little magical about that moment.

I personally find linocutting really satisfying. I’m a bit of a perfectionist in general and with any other artistic medium can spend hours altering and adding colours and lines - often (I suspect) unnecessarily. Linocutting helps me avoid that because once a groove is cut, it’s cut - you can’t go back and fill it in. I also love working with one or two colours - the simplicity of it can create really striking effects.

Over the past three years I’ve created many more designs for Helena Handcart and also for various gifts and homewares available on Redbubble, Society 6 and in my Etsy store. As I’ve practiced I’ve been able to create more complex and intricate designs, some with really tiny details that have taken me days to complete - My ‘Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ print (above, bottom right) is one such example.

This year I diversified my linocut range further in to jewellery. This involved making miniature linocuts and printing them on to a type of plastic. I’ve always liked doing miniature drawings so trying tiny linocuts made sense to me. I chose some of my best selling designs (fish, pylons and Mary Poppins - three patterns that have sold well as cards, magnets, notebooks and more besides) and did smaller versions of them while also trying some new ideas too. After working on bigger pieces it was also nice to do something smaller and slightly quicker! Earrings and pendants are now available on Etsy and I’ll be adding to the range over the coming months.

Speaking of Mary Poppins - I did a linocut of her flying over Big Ben that went on to become an official Etsy best seller, which made me really happy. It’s gone on to sell in loads of different formats, from mugs to magnets and cushions to clocks. On society 6 you can even get it on coffee tables!

In the photo below you can see the first few Mary Poppins prints I ever did hanging up to dry. The one with the gold Mary Poppins has always been the most popular but I’m always glad to sell one with the quote because it was so hard to carve with the words backwards. Also “There’s the whole world at your feet” is a nice optimistic quote, and bursts of optimism have been particularly welcome recently!

Even years later though and through the various ups and down of life, that original stag linocut maintains a special place in my heart. And despite its simplicity – or perhaps because of it – it remains a best seller to this day, winning new customers every festive season and even at other times of year. Sometimes it’s good to not over think things and to just follow your instincts.

So if you fancy trying your hand at linocutting, give it a go. You never know where it might take you.

Creativity and coronavirus - setting up Birch Moon Press

Wow - 2020. It’s been a bit intense hasn’t it? Coronavirus came roaring into our lives and many things that once seemed certain suddenly got turned on their heads. There’s been stress and confusion and separation from loved ones, and for many of us, sadly, illness and death have reared their heads too.

Amidst it all, we’ve come up with ways of coping – humans are resilient and I’ve been amazed by what people have achieved during these strange times. For me, creativity has played an important role in keeping me going. I drew and wrote my way through the early months of lockdown like my life depended on it. And I connected with others as much as I could too: people - friends and family - were a great source of solace and support to me, even from afar.

And when friendship collided with creativity there were some unexpected outcomes! The main one being setting up Birch Moon Press, a not-for-profit independent publisher along with five of my writing friends - Chrissie, Alice, Sophie Reneé and Nicola.

Although we had the idea for our press only a few short months ago, the roots of our story go back to 2014 when we were all bloggers juggling small kids, jobs, families and a shared dream to become published authors. We met through our blogs and soon formed our own online creative writing group to help us achieve our goals. Our community quickly grew to over fifty members so there was always someone on hand to offer advice, support and motivation.

In the years since then, many of us have met up multiple times in real life, books, poetry and stories of all kinds have burst from amongst us and great friendships have developed and flourished.

As a supportive group, naturally, when the pandemic hit and spirits were low, we arranged a zoom call. And so, early in lockdown, some of us found ourselves chatting about what we could do to make those times a little brighter. We came up with an idea to produce and publish a book of short stories and poetry together – something creative and cathartic to give us a positive focus during the pandemic. We weren’t sure how we were going to achieve it but we have a whole range of publishing, writing and illustrating experience between us so anything seemed possible.

As we wrote and planned and chatted over the subsequent weeks our little project developed to include more writers, potential further publications, a plan to donate profits to charity and then, well, we needed a whole new press to achieve this through! 

As for the name – the Birch Moon is the first month in the Celtic calendar running from December 24th to January 20th. It is a time of new beginnings, of re-birth and regeneration, of planning for the future and embracing new potentials and opportunities.  As we worked on our project we began to see our publications – present and future – as something good that could arise from the pain and grief of the pandemic. Our press was that new beginning, that possibility, that opportunity that the birch moon traditionally represents. And so Birch Moon Press it became.

The collection of short stories that started the whole adventure has become our inaugural publication – an anthology called Heartache and Hope: Voices of a Pandemic which was released on 3rd July. All profits from the book are going to Rosa, a grantmaking charity that funds grassroots women’s organisations to help make the UK a fairer, safer place for women.

In keeping with the times, we had an online launch party which was my first ever experience of Facebook live. It was a bit nerve-wracking but I ended up really enjoying it. You can watch the whole thing here if you’re interested in finding out more about us and our story. Naturally, as six mothers with seventeen kids between us there are cameos from children!

I poured my creative energy into the whole project, designing our logo (six birch trees to represent the six of us) along with the cover of Heartache and Hope and also illustrating each of the twenty pieces of poetry and prose that make up the collection. Those of you who know my style will recognise that the cover is a linocut. It’s all about taking broken hearts and making them into something hopeful. The illustrations inside are all only 3x4cm – miniature drawings have been a theme I’ve been exploring for years and it was nice to use that passion in this project.

I also wrote two pieces for the anthology – a poem and a very personal piece of prose that gives an insight into why I have found this year particularly difficult. All in all, publishing the anthology felt like putting my heart on the line. But it’s been that sort of year. A raw sort of year. The sort where you realise what’s important. And I know I’m far from alone in feeling that way.

This project, in many ways, has brought support, and a feeling of togetherness and purpose that I have found immensely valuable. My hope is that our anthology and the future projects of Birch Moon Press can provide something of that for other people too.

To find out more about the press please visit our website.

Introducing Helena Handcart

I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine - Helena Handcart.

Ok, she’s not strictly speaking a friend, she’s a business – an idea I dreamt up with one of my oldest friends back in 2016. But she was a while in the planning and by the time we’d made her a reality last year, we’d spent so much time discussing her that she almost felt real.

You see, Helena is a positive and determined sort of a character. Feisty and no-nonsense but warm and loving. She’s focussed too, she knows what’s important to her and she wants to use art to make a difference.

I’m still talking about her like she’s a person, aren’t I?  Ok, let’s rewind a few years…

2016 was a difficult year for many people. The EU referendum bulldozed its way across the political landscape, dividing Britain and appearing to legitimise a new wave of racism, there were horrendous terrorist attacks, Trump was elected US president after a campaign that highlighted how deeply embedded misogyny and abuse still are in society, the political and social situations in countries around the globe were in turmoil, even the celebrity death toll seemed extreme. It started to feel like we were all going to, well, hell in a handcart…

All this was the focus of many discussions with one of my oldest friends, Sus, on our monthly dinner dates in the Scottish borders. We live over a hundred miles apart (in Scotland and Northumberland) and there’s a little pub we go to – half way between our homes – that has, for the last eight years, been our retreat from all the other demands on our time. There we go to eat, drink, and put the world to rights. And, being illustrators, we often draw too – we find that, whatever is going on in our lives, drawing makes us feel better about things.

Sus (right) and me outside the Bucchleugh Arms in the Scottish borders.

Anyway, on one of those occasions while drawing and having a good old rant, we decided we were sick of feeling helpless amidst everything that was going on. We wanted to do something – even if it was only a very small thing – to make a positive difference. And we decided art could help us achieve that… and so the idea for Helena was born.

So, to get back to introductions:  Helena Handcart is a greetings card business that’s committed to doing some good. Sus and I design the cards and for every card we sell we make a donation to grassroots charities devoted to causes close to our hearts.

We have two partner charities at the moment who are the fabulous Starcatchers who focus on improving the lives of the under fives through creative experiences, and Crisis Classroom who believe in empowerment through education of all refugees. Because they’re grassroots organisations, even tiny donations can make a difference to people’s lives and we’re thrilled that every time anyone buys one of our cards, we’re able to do just that.

I’d love you to visit our Etsy shop and take a look at all our cards. We’ve got all sorts of different designs (including some of my miniatures) and we’ve just brought out a new range of cards for Christmas!

Right, I think that’s the introductions over! You can find Helena Handcart on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – do pop over and say hi if you can. Or, as Helena would say:

“Buy a card. Send love. Make good things happen.”

Miniatures

Anyone following me for any length of time will notice I have a thing for miniatures. Be they watercolours, pencil sketches or pen and ink illustrations, I just love making tiny pieces of art! But how did it begin? Have I always drawn things small? Well…

My little obsession first began back in April 2017 when I decided to join with The 100 Day Project. This is a global art project that starts in April every year and anyone who wants to take part has to pick a theme (from thin air!) and then create something on that theme every day for (you guessed it) one hundred days, posting the results on social media. I decided that whatever my theme was, if I was going to do it every day it needed to not be too ‘big’ a thing… and so the idea of drawing miniatures came to me.

I named my project #100DaysOfDrawingBigThingsSmall with the original idea being to play with scale and only draw the largest of things. I did indeed draw some huge things – the planet Jupiter probably being the biggest of all – but over time the project evolved to include many average sized things too.

Jupiter and Saturn - can’t get much bigger than these gas giants!

A lot of my drawings were pencil sketches (I used the same pencil throughout the challenge and wore it down to a stub with the constant sharpening that the details required!) and some were in pen, some were greyscale and some full colour. I also drew a whole range of subject matter – buildings, people, vehicles, animals… some as single items and others in little scenes. Each little illustration ranged between 1.5cm and 4.5cm (roughly) square and took between fifteen minutes and two hours to draw.

The project as a whole felt like a real labour of love. Some days I really felt I didn’t have time to draw and other days I just didn’t feel like it but I wouldn’t let myself off the hook. Once, I came back late from a night out, realised I’d yet to do a tiny picture and ended up drawing a badger that looked even more wonky than I felt!

But despite that and the eye-strain and neck ache from all the close work, I made it through the whole thing and by the end of July I had a hundred tiny drawings! Inevitably they varied in quality – some I was proud of and others… less so (although my drunken badger will always have a special place in my heart) but, as per the project rules, they all went on Instagram so do check out the hashtag above if you’re interested.

I continued to draw tiny pictures after the project finished, adding to my #maddysminiatures collection from time to time. Then last month a friend drew my attention to a competition being run by The House of Illustration. It was based on the work of John Vernon Lord, an artist who created an inch square illustration every day throughout 2016, with the competition involving doing the same throughout September 2018. Another daily miniature project – I couldn’t resist!

Having to stick to the prescribed measurements this time was an additional challenge – an inch square really is small especially if you’re trying to create a little scene with buildings and figures etc! But thirty days was much less daunting than one hundred and after an initial scramble to catch up (I didn’t hear about the competition until September 5th) I soon settled into a rhythm. My style was, if anything, more eclectic than before as I’ve developed a love of watercolours since The 100 Day Project so they played a role alongside the pencil and pen of old. I also included some pattern design and abstract art in alongside my usual representational style. Here are my final thirty:

Despite the differences in style, I tried to keep the collection coherent via the use of colour, fading from the strongest and deepest colours in the bottom left to the monochrome top right of the compilation. The one third from the left on the top row was featured by The House of Illustration as one of their favourites while my most popular (in terms of instagram likes) was the dandelion pair. Personally, I rather liked the Tyne Bridge (and it’s currently on sale at The Creative Artists Studios Gallery in Northumberland). Overall, there were well over four hundred entries to to the competition and I can recommend taking a look at The House of Illustration’s online gallery of them all - it’s amazing what people have done with the teeny tiny spaces!

I’ve decided I’m going to continue drawing miniatures on a regular basis – they’re great practice because they force you to look really closely at what you’re doing and realise what an enormous difference a tiny mark can make to the feel of a piece. As someone with an impatient streak, I also find miniatures satisfying because you can complete a whole piece of work in a comparatively short time!

Overall, I’m just a fan of small!

If you’re interested, there are more of my little drawings in the portfolio section of this site. The miniatures below are available as mounted prints here.

Sweethearts

One of my recent projects involved drawing a lot of different hearts. I had fun experimenting with styles and patterns but my favourite were a set made up of biscuits, flowers and sweets. The hearts themselves were only around 8cm wide but there was a fair bit of work that went into each one and I thought it might be nice to share a bit about my artistic process with you.

I knew I wanted each heart to be colourful and imagined the 'sweetheart' (geddit?) to be crammed with old fashioned favourites. Naturally (and purely for the sake of research... ) I made a beeline for our local sweetshop, scanned the shelves and bought a plentiful supply. Then, back home, I drew a heart outline in pencil and filled both it and my stomach with pick 'n' mix.

The next stage was to start going over all the pencil with black pen – I used one with waterproof ink and a very fine tip.

Then it was time to add the colour. This might seem like the easy bit but it actually required a lot of time and patience because I was working on a really small scale and each individual sweet needed to be shaded and highlighted. I didn't want to just add blocks of colour and have the final image look flat. It took me several hours (actually I think I split it over two days because my eyes were going a bit funny!) but it was very satisfying. Almost as satisfying as eating all those sweets!

Once I had a finished piece, I decided it would be nice to have a matching set and so the flowers heart and biscuit heart were born. The process for all three was very similar but with the biscuits I reproduced a lot of actual types of biscuit (you might be able to recognise some) where as the flowers were mostly freestyle!

Mounted prints of all three pieces are available in my shop.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to the blog for Maddy Bennett Creative!

I'm in the process of setting up this site at the moment so please be patient while I dust down some of my old artworks, polish up some of my newer creations and find a suitable space for them all to hang.

This site isn't the first corner of the internet I've made my own but it's the first to be focussed purely on my creative output. I say that – my last (and still live) website was a blog that for years focussed on my kids, and they're definitely creative output of a sort... but you know what I mean. This place isn't about parenting or homemaking or any other aspect of my life, it's just for my art.

If you browse the site you'll see it's bustling with drawings and illustrations: art work big and small (well, mostly small – I have a thing for miniatures but that's a subject probably worthy of its own post). However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice the word 'writer' up in the title bar. Yep, I'm that too – it doesn't leap from the screen so much, but it's there bubbling below the surface of a lot of what I do. A fair bit of my writing is over on that other blog I mentioned and there are also some examples in the 'Children’s Illustrations and Cartoons' section of this site. I'll be adding more smaller pieces here in the future, while the longer pieces (including picture books) will require a different type of publication... but that's all to come.

For now I will leave you with this quote from writer, poet and critic Dorothy Parker:

"Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye."

I hope to cultivate both.

Maddy