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The #handmade Daily

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging where you can easily feel a little overwhelmed once you're following more than a few hundred followers. With the whole world talking at once, within a 140 character limit, one of the best ways to follow a topic or event on Twitter is via the hashtag. Follow a conversation between a like-minded group of people and therefore find people who share your interests and join in. A hashtag can be saved as a search term so you can just click on it to see what's currently being tweeted. The hashtag #handmade is used to create the live Twitter stream blue panel that can be found in the sidebar of this blog. You have to scroll down a bit to find it.

Another way to read the tweets using a hashtag is to read an online newspaper created using a website called paper.li. The #handmade Daily is a clickable image of a folded newspaper in my sidebar which will take you to the current newspaper.

paper.li

Its updates are promoted via my Twitter stream and feature a few authors by their Twitter name. e.g. The #handmade Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fnPNhq ▸ Top stories today by @BoutiqueKarma @PVSpacePrincess @ArtMatters2me @wirewrapping

Articles generally feature handmade products just listed in online shops, websites of interest with videos and photos all tweeted using the #handmade hashtag. Paper.li has a Twitter stream under the name of @SmallRivers and a blog.

Click on the image in the blog sidebar or the shortened link on Twitter and you will be taken to the Headlines page of the newspaper. This is a mere selection of articles available. You can view all articles or choose from subsections which include:

• Stories
• Art & Entertainment
• Health
• Technology
• #Etsy
• #Jewelry

Categories and which tweets are featured where, are in control of paper.li. It is not a perfect system but so far it is well received if the number of regular retweets are a sign of a positive reaction. If more artisans use #handmade along with #Folksy and so on it would make it an even better publication. If you wish to receive alerts on updates you can also subscribe.

Each article title is a link which takes you to the original page being tweeted. In the bottom left of each article is the Twitter name of the author which will lead to a pop up of the original tweet if you place your cursor here. If you are signed into Twitter you can interact with the pop up by replying, retweeting, following, or unfollowing or mark the tweet as a favourite.

Past issues

On the front page of each paper is a section called Archives which displays a calendar of the current month with arrows to explore previous months. Check out The #handmade Daily featured in the sidebar to see tweets about handmade products, activities and people who love handmade.
 

UK Handmade magazine

Autumn 2010

One of my favourite discoveries of 2010 is UK Handmade. Well I didn't actually discover it. I was invited to join the community on Ning, an event I wrote about in a previous post titled Handmade in the UK.

One of the best features of UK Handmade is not just that you meet and discover many talented creative people through the community website but through an online magazine which is a great resource. It is published at the beginning of each season, filled with great articles and photos with links which take you to the source both of the author and the subject of the content. Regular subsections include:

Summer 2010

• MEET: where an individual is interviewed about their craft, their products and their experiences.
• DIARY: reflections on a selected artists experience and thoughts and inspirations of the current season.
• MAKE: this covers  step-by-step instructions of a craft project.
• BUSINESS: provides some tips or advice for crafts people running or setting up a business.
• LIFESTYLE: tasty recipes to make a seasonal treat for people who love cooking

Spring 2010

The common factors shared by all the articles is the links that glow momentarily on the page as you turn them. Those at the start of an article feature the author and links at the end feature the subject. Click on them to discover more about the individuals and their handmade products. The quality of work featured is very high so you know you are reading about highly talented people with a wealth of experience when reading the UK Handmade magazine.

With over a hundred pages of inspiring content there is more than enough to keep you content over each season. If you want to know about the very best of crafting and artistry in the world of UK handmade, the UK Handmade magazine is highly recommended.

Past issues

Winter 2009

UK Handmade magazine was first published in 2008. You can see past issues of the magazine via this page.

Happy reading :)