{looking for copyright information? You can find it further down this page.}
Thank you for reading handmade2.0!
I have been online since 1996, and it started with getting a simple email address at my university's IT department. It the went the usual way: spending hours at the tech lab, surfing the web and getting into HTML and web stuffs; first web pages, storing content and looking into the geekier sides of the web, combining web and graphic design. In short, these were the beginnings, and I was one of many, many witnesses, I guess.
I started blogging in March 2003 (hence the dating of this post!), when blogging was more the business of geeks, nerds and techies, rather than of marketeers, journalists and artists. In fact, these were the years when blogging was excitingly grassrootish and looked down upon by the mainstream media. Remember? As of late 2008, more than five years have passed, I have tested blogging platforms and softwares, wrote a personal blog as well as contributed to group blogs, I have seen trends come and disappear, but I am still blogging.
In the end of 2003 there was a truly noticeable increase in blogs run by indie designers who shared their creative world and who often incorporated something like a mini shop into their sites where they sold their own, handmade creations -- in the USA, mind you, not here in Germany and Europe. I started sensing a trend back then and started to follow, watch, and write about my own handmade things here and then.
The first creative bloggers I followed even before I started a serious blog myself were Notmartha (I used some of her tutorials for my own DIY wedding), Loobylu (to me, she is one of the first plushies designers of the early hours), Superhero Designs (Andrea first ran her jewelry site that I followed for a long time, and then started blogging about the same time as me), Keri Smith (whose ideas I am still a fan of), and Hovey Lee (whom I met through a joint blogging project and who is now concentrating fully on her jewellery business).
Towards the beginning of 2004 I started following Japanese weblogs and sites that were dedicated to all things handmade - a trend in Japan that the anglophone West generally denotes as "Zakka" and "Japanese Crafting", but which actually is much more than that. Later that year I got my hands on the first Japanese handmade books (tezukuri zakka), which I ordered directly in Japan and which got to me on adventurous ways.
In summer 2005 came Etsy, the first marketplace truly dedicated to selling and buying all things strictly handmade by the sellers themselves, and provided storefronts to all those who couldn't run their own indie websites and manage an online shop on their own. I watched how things developed for a few months until I finally signed up for an Etsy account at the end of that year.
A year later, in 2006, DaWanda opened its doors for European creatives (mainly Germany, UK and France), and around the same time there was a noticeable increase in German craft blogs.
As of November 2008, there are 30+ similar marketplaces as Etsy and DaWanda operating on the internet, and it looks like this trend isn't going to fade real soon - despite the current CPSIA worries.
It's more than five years since I started all this, and when I am not pondering on an academic career, build websites and counsel small businesses in marketing and pr, I still cover the wonderful world of handmade2.0.
Consequently, handmade2.0 in its current form is about tech, design and business, with a focus on creative consumerism and popular culture. I stop often for interludes of the funnier kind, share finds and laud the world of handmade2.0.
Cheers,
mlle a.
p.b. It's always nice to hear from my readers. The comments are always open; alternatively, you can send me messages via the contact form.
{Copyrights}
All content here, except for quotes and content otherwise clearly marked, is "all rights reserved" by me. This means that you can't use any of the contents on this blog for more than a proper reference or excerpting. Goes without saying that proper crediting should be a given.
Images and graphics that are posted on this blog are either my property or clearly marked when they belong to others. In either way, please do not take images and graphics from handmade2.0 without obtaining the owner's permission.
If you plan to use any of the content on handmade2.0 for your own publication in a magazine, newspaper article and similar, please credit your source (i.e. handmade2.0).
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You don't want to lose a friend by not being respectful, do you. See? That's why I'm saying it.
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{Disclosure Policy}
+ This policy is valid from 21 November 2008
+ This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me, mlle a. For questions about this blog, please contact mlle a.
+ This blog does not accept any form of paid insertions. We write for our own purposes. However, we may be influenced by our background, occupation, religion, political affiliation or experience.
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