Happy new year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely lovely night. We spent the evening chillin out on the beach with friends, drinking champagne, playing with sparklers, having quick dips and watching revellers go by. Brilliantly lovely fun.
So now the new year is upon me, I have a bit of tidying up to do from last year and some serious work to do this year. The mission is to try and create a small but sustainable income for myself so I don’t have to go back to work and can stay at home with Tara. Like many crafty mum’s out there, we depend on the conscious consumers out there who understand the social and environmental implications of buying handmade goods. It might cost a few dollars more for that new shirt/necklace/recipe book but you’re bound to get a better quality product which will always bring you more joy to use.
For those of you into New Years Resolutions, maybe consider to resolve to buy handmade where you can. Don’t forget it’s so easy to buy online with sites like Mintd, Etsy and Lov.li or check out your local handmade markets. There’s tons in big places like Melbourne, but even small towns will have some kind of market where you can buy handmade scarves, locally grown plants and scrummy things like jams. Home made jamis SO much better than store bought jam and usually the same price.
I think another important thing to remember when buying home made stuff is to think about the price when you buy it. Think about how much effort it would take to make, including time spent learning the skills involved and preparing/growing/sourcing materials before you decide if it’s good value or not. We do need to change our purchasing mentality when buying hand made. So many makers out there do underprice themselves just so they can make some sales and this is purely a result of a market that doesn’t have an understanding of the true cost of production.
I have no problem with giving someone more money for an item when I think they’ve 
underpriced themselves. I bought this hand knitted oven mitt recently and the woman tried to charge me $2.50 for it. She was a very skilled knitter so she probably made it very quickly but it was still at least 30 minutes work. Which meant she was valuing her time at about $1.25 an hour. I insisted on paying $5 which is still too little but at least closer to a true value.
I also see people selling their work online for peanuts. When I see a finished cross stitch piece for sale for $8 when it’s at least 3 or 4 hours work, probably more, I get really upset. Upset because here is a maker of fine things who is not only massively undervaluing their own work but also contributing to the pressure for others to undervalue their work. And I get upset that consumers are so conditioned to mass produced prices that they expect to pay the same prices for handmade products as they would for factory produced products.
If you don’t understand this I highly recommend you check out the Story of Stuff. Here’s a part of it but check out the rest on the website.
In this post Inconvenient Truth world we all need to spend time evaluating what impact we make on the earth. There’s a ton of resources out there to help you figure it out and help you see where you can make differences in your own life. But many of these resources pay attention to the big ticket items like transport, energy and water use and downplay the impact our consumption has on our environmental impact. I don’t doubt that a family that chooses to buy second hand and locally produced goods will be making a far smaller impact than the family that spends the bulk of their non housing and utility budget in big box retail stores.
So this year you can expect to see more planet saving crafts from me. And also prepare yourself to hear more about why I’m making the things I do. If you listen to any of the scientists at the head of the climate disruption conversation you will understand that we don’t have time to think about saving our wonderful earth anymore, we have to just do it. And I will add that for planet saving to be a truly sustainable process it must be a beautiful one.
So get busy.
xox
