Ask CRAFT: Crafty Communities and Adhesives

Welcome to the second installment of Ask CRAFT! I’ll be alternating between video and text with the intention of providing the most useful method of communication for the questions at hand. Here are this week’s questions! If you have suggestions for these askers, leave them in the comments!

How do I “break” into the community?

I have recently been feeding my love of crafting and would love to know how these people are sharing their crafts and how you find them. I have just joined ravelry which is a great site. I want to share some of the things I am doing because I’m so inspired by this wonderful blog! If you have any suggestions that would be great. Thank you so much for contributing to my new favorite website!

Sarah Fennell

I’m sure anybody just getting into the online crafting communities has this question. The answer is simple: put yourself out there! The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to start a blog or website. You can get a free account on Blogger or WordPress without much computer-savvy and start posting your projects away. You can post your projects on Craftster, Ravelry, Instructables, or any of the myriad other community crafting sites, and even link back to the project on your blog if you have one. Once it’s up online, spread the word! Here are some additional pointers:

• Make sure your pictures and words are clear and descriptive
• Share your photos by adding them to Flickr groups
• Send a link to your project using suggest-a-site forms on your favorite blogs (including here at CRAFT! It’s not a faux pas to suggest your own work). Make sure to send project-specific links, not just a link to your main blog page, which changes over time.
• Consider making a tutorial for your project, folks love to learn new techniques!
• Leverage the viral media power of your friends by sharing your project on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Glue questions

I do a wide variety of crafts and seem to always have problems finding the right glue. For instance, when instructions call for PVA glue, does that mean plain ‘ole Elmers? And epoxies! Yikes, do I really need to be a mad chemist to get the kind of bond advertised? Help me with my attachment issues, please!

Mary T. from OKC

What kind of glue can you use to attach metal to metal?

Jenny

By far the best online resource for these questions is the adhesive advice site thistothat.com. Simply input the things you wish to glue, and it will recommend substances. It’ll give you info about where to get the items they suggest, in what ways they may be toxic, and how long they take to adhere. We even consulted with them for the Common Bonds reference in the back of the Maker’s Notebook, a table illustrating which glues to use when. I refer to it often when working on projects away from my computer. And yes, Mary, PVA is plain Elmer’s white glue.

Send me your crafty conundrums at becky@craftzine.com! I’ll take them via email, video, carrier pigeon, or skywriting. Until next time!