Most Innovative Piece: Zip Earrings by JollyGood.

Appeal / Playfulness: The Sew It Yourself Giraffe by Loglike.

Quality of Craft Work: The Denby Chair + Pixar Lamp by Blackalbino

I love the detail that has gone into renovating this old chair and lamp. You can see from the standard of craftsmanship of the collage that this must have taken a great deal of time and precision. I particularly love the use of the old post cards and stamps I LOVE vintage images and it makes this very unique

]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/12/07/upcycle-christmas-winners/feed 31 http://blog.folksy.com/2009/12/06/upcycle-christmas-update http://blog.folksy.com/2009/12/06/upcycle-christmas-update#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:48:00 +0000 jamesb http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/upcycle-christmas-update We’ve had 132 146 entries to the Upcycle competition and we’ve been overwhelmed by the effort and the thought that has gone into so many of the pieces. Thank you so much all of you who took part. You can see them all here.

This is one of our favourites in the office:

The judges have spent today going through the entries and choosing their winners. Each judge was responsible for the following category:

• 1. Most innovative piece: Wayne Hemingway MBE
• 2. Quality of craft work / ‘craftsmanship’: Louise Roe
• 3. Best use of materials: Antoni and Alison
• 4. ‘Appeal’ which kinda means playfulness / fun: India Knight

And lastly,

• 5. The people’s choice – as chosen by number of favourites the item receives on Folksy!

We’ll put up the judges decisions tomorrow (Monday). But now it’s over to you to favourite the items you like and to choose the Folksy users’ winner. You have until Thurs 10th at 8pm to nominate your favourite. Each of the 5 winners will get to showcase their portfolio in the Sue Ryder Care Camden store in the New Year (February), in a specially constructed Folksy set. [Update: voting has now closed, and the winners have been announced]

Of course the auction starts tomorrow and will run for one week. We’ll be blogging and tweeting about that. It’s going to be held on eBay. We were going to use our own auction software but in the end we thought that the sheer size of eBay and it’s customer base would generate better prices for Sue Ryder Care. Because it’s for charity all proceeds will be exempt from eBay charges.

That’s it. More tomorrow. :)

]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/12/06/upcycle-christmas-update/feed 17 http://blog.folksy.com/2009/11/08/featured-items-seeing-red http://blog.folksy.com/2009/11/08/featured-items-seeing-red#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:47:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/featured-items-seeing-red

Folksy is seeing red this week. We’ve got lots of poppies for November, plus some Christmas robins and lots more in between.

Visit our red selection.

Some of our sellers are donating money to charity from their poppy sales so check out:

• Emme Lou’s Poppy Fluff Puffs – 50% of profits go to the Poppy Appeal
• Wychbury’s Poppy Corsage –
  ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/11/08/featured-items-seeing-red/feed 3 http://blog.folksy.com/2009/10/14/upcycle-christmas-competition http://blog.folksy.com/2009/10/14/upcycle-christmas-competition#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:14:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/upcycle-christmas-competition
  
  

  Hello.

  Christmas is so predictable isn’t it? It’s the same day every year, relatives you haven’t seen for 12 mths appear and we shop in that time-honoured mad panic where good intentions give way to indifference as to whether Uncle Alan will really appreciate that travel coffee mug when he never ventures beyond the local bingo hall.

  So we’re running a competition that will put a stop to all that. Sort of.

  Upcycle Christmas is a competition for people to take second hand / charity stuff and make it into something ‘new’ and desirable to be sold at an online auction starting on the 7th December. All proceeds from the auction will go to Sue Ryder Care, the healthcare charity, our partners on the project.

  The first 200 entrants can claim five items from participating Sue Ryder Care stores. Claim your charity stuff if you haven’t already by getting a ticket and taking it to a participating store (you have to have a Folksy account and include your username when you take your ticket).

  UPDATE: Just to be absolutely clear you do not need to use Sue Ryder Care stock to make things with. A lot of people seems to have assumed that you did. And we’re sorry if you don’t live near one of the 14 participating stores but feel free to ask on the forums if someone else will go to a local store for you and post the stuff on

  Entries will be judged on the following criteria and a winner will be awarded in the following ‘categories’:

  • 1. most innovative piece
  • 2. quality of craft work / ‘craftsmanship’
  • 3. best use of materials
  • 4. ‘appeal’ which kinda means playfulness / fun
  • 5. people’s choice – your favourite items as chosen by number of favourites the item receives on Folksy!

  There will be a winner chosen from each of the categories. Winners get to showcase their portfolio in the Sue Ryder Care Camden store for one month from the middle of Jan to the middle of Feb in a specially constructed Folksy set. This store is being refurbished over Christmas and will come back in the New Year as a wonderful space to exhibit your work.

  We have two three four judges who will be picking winners:

  • The first is Wayne Hemingway MBE, who’s been at the forefront of British design for yonks, initially with Red or Dead and now moving into architecture and built environment (inc. sheds!). He was also instrumental in educating all of us daily with his slot on The Big Breakfast (you can see him on the penultimate show on this youtube clip).
  • The second Louise Roe, the fashion journalist and ex BBC Clothes Show presenter who now guests on programmes like Britain’s Next Top Model. She’s like Mrs F.A.S.H.I.O.N. Follow Louise on twitter @louiseroe
  • The third is India Knight (wikipedia), the columnist, champion of craft and making, and author of amongst other things The Thrift Book: How to Live Well and Spend Less (Foyles :: Amazon), one of the bibles here at Folksy Towers and core to the idea of Upcycling Christmas. Follow India on twitter @Indiaknight
  • Lastly, we have Antoni and Alison the very fashionable fashion designers who ran away with rave reviews from this year’s London Fashion Week.
    ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/10/14/upcycle-christmas-competition/feed 89 http://blog.folksy.com/2009/03/18/crafetroo-comic-giving http://blog.folksy.com/2009/03/18/crafetroo-comic-giving#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:22:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/crafetroo-comic-giving

    Hello. Pennydog from the Crafteroo! forum shared the ‘results’ of the shop with us yesterday so I thought I’d pass this on as we’re *so* pleased with it.

    From 7th February to 14th March, we had 97 sales amounting to

    ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/03/18/crafetroo-comic-giving/feed 7 http://blog.folksy.com/2009/02/08/charideee http://blog.folksy.com/2009/02/08/charideee#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:07:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/charideee Pennydog and Crafteroo (the fabulous craft forum) have created a shop in support of Comic Relief. The items have all been created by people on the Crafteroo forum. Hello, if you haven’t been here before, I hope you like it :)

    We’re obviously not charging for listings so all the money from the items goes straight to good things. You’ve got ’til the 13th March, when the festivities start and the giving spectacle kicks off in earnest, but the shop will probably be around for a bit after that…

    

    Great idea guys, hope it all goes really well… hopefully well enough to push Lenny Henry off of his perennial gig and showcase some real talent ;)

    ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2009/02/08/charideee/feed 10 http://blog.folksy.com/2008/09/22/tache http://blog.folksy.com/2008/09/22/tache#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:42:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/tache The folks at dopplr, a place to record and share your trips, are growing a ‘tache (a moustache) for charity (testicular cancer). We saw Matt’s ‘tache was looking a bit patchy and so we thought Lupin’s awesome felt ‘tache would be the perfect facial ‘foil’ for his public speaking events. Here it is gracing their office nabaztag:

    

    image: moleitau.

    Anyhow, it’s all for a good cause so we’re sponsoring the ‘tache growing by donating all the listing fees from this week (21st – 28th Sept) to the cause. You too can sponsor his ‘tache yourself, or just list more things this week to help Matt and encourage his Tom Selleck-esque facial heroics:

    

    image of Matt Jones: Richard Moross

    ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2008/09/22/tache/feed 1 http://blog.folksy.com/2008/07/08/t-posh-frocks-on http://blog.folksy.com/2008/07/08/t-posh-frocks-on#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:09:00 +0000 admin http://folksyblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/t-posh-frocks-on We’re in Islington again tomorrow at the New Designers gig, chatting to graduates and talking about Folksy and of course wrapping truants on the knuckles with The Rulers. Posh frocks all round as it’s the opening day of the second week. If you’re there and you want to say ‘Hi’ then twitter us.

    It’s interesting how we’ve mainly picked up the UK Etsy crowd [woo, you brazen craftmafia sisters you!] and not many of the graduates we’ve spoken to. This may be because you Etsy people “geddit” already and you’re familiar with online retailing and using Paypal. Graduates perhaps aren’t. So we think we’re going to have to try harder to tell them what to do and what the benefits are of doing it. You may know what those benefits are more than we do. What are they?

    What else are we doing? Er, well we’re fixing your requests on the site as quickly as we can. You’ll soon be able to ‘edit’ or ‘re-edit’ a listing and also be able to add multiple quantities of things which are two of the major requests. The forum also goes live in the next few days [please do ask Andy to pull his finger out and we may get it done quicker]. And we’re also frantically organising stuff for the Lovebox workshop on the 19th and 20th July [and if any of you lovely ladies and gentlemen fancy helping out at the workshop in exchange for a free ticket and food and er, that's it, then please let us know via get [at] folksy [dot] com]. You’ve no idea how hard it is to get tables and chairs or haystacks to rent and be delivered in London on a weekend. Truly. Don’t even think about holding a workshop in a music festival with 20 000 people in a park in summer. We’ll post more information about the Lovebox stuff nearer the time, once recieved our ransom demands and had our heads read.

    Also wondering if we could somehow plan to do a distributed Mexican wave to celebrate our first week of testing and the wonderful job you’ve done in feeding back your comments. Would it work? Perhaps we need new app for skype / IM / Facebook, a mexican wave app where it tells you exactly when to stand synced perfectly to the next user… How good would that be! If you were office bound you could pretend you were doing speed yoga or charity standy-uppies.

    ]]> http://blog.folksy.com/2008/07/08/t-posh-frocks-on/feed 6