Begging For Votes - A New Venue For Selling

 

Update June 2, 2014-  On 8/26/2013 I blogged about a great new website market place for handcrafted arts and crafts items.  The site was called Craftinest.

Unfortunately Craftinest is now no longer online.  No one knows what happened.  Though Craftinest did post on their facebook page that a fire had destroyed much of their sites equipment and they held out a promise to us that they would repair the damage and get the site back up and running . . . that promise is yet to materialize.   As I update this post is has been about 9 months since anyone has heard from Craftinest. Craftinest has not bothered to update their facebook page nor notify any of their many shop owners as to what is going on. All our emails are returned as undeliverable. We have pretty much given up hope that Craftinest will repair the fire damage and reestablish their website. 

Personally I believe that they grew too quickly and the inundation of so many artists and crafters overwhelmed them and their sites capacity to handle such an influx of shops and traffic.  The loss of Craftinest is sad as it held forth so much potential . . .  but sometimes things are simply not meant to be. 

Below is my old blog post of 8/26/2013 -

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I recently ran across a new and upcoming website for artist and crafters called Craftinest .

Yes it is just a baby and has not been discovered and there is always a possibility that it may not make it into the big time the way Etsy or Artfire has.  But the fact that it is new intrigues me and so I took the plunge and filled out my application.

Application?  Why?  Well they say they want to have a website that will be solely for handcrafted items and they wanted it to be innovative, fresh and filled with marvelous artists and crafters . . . well aren't we all marvelous artists and crafters?  Craftinest claims that their site is juried and in order to have a shop there one has to be juried in.  It sounded like this might be a good way to discourage all those bogus handmade shops that are really just resellers in a thin veil of disguise . . . a very thin, almost transparent veil.

Unfortunately Craftinest's jurying process is not done by a devoted, unbiased team of artist and crafters but by the public and I need 100 votes in order just to be considered for their site.  I'm sure you can all see where this is going, right? 

 (Yes, I'm blatantly soliciting your vote - please click here and give me a vote or a heart:
AlmostPrecious - on the chopping block at Craftiness.com

Since Craftinest is so new it is not yet inundated with a barrage of visitors, so those applying for a shop will have to provide their own voters.  I even received an email from Craftinest encouraging me to go on facebook etc. and encourage all my friends and followers to vote for me.  They told me if I can get 200 votes and 4 hearts I'll be automatically juried in. 

That's not exactly how I've had to go about being juried into an art show  -  it was never a popularity contest but was done by a separate panel of unbiased judges that judged on the merit of the artist's art or the crafter's craft, taking into consideration their originality and the quality of their work.

Pictured are a couple of pieces that I entered for jurying, if you click on the photos it should take you to my voting page . . . hint, hint.   :)

 

 

Oh and if any of you decide you'd like to join me on Craftinest please let me know so that I can give you my vote .  :)