Create & Craft

This week I went up to spend 2 days in Peterborough to immerse myself in the products sold by ‘Ideal World’ and in particular ‘Create and Craft’.

For the uninitiated Ideal World is a Shopping Channel and C&C grew out of it as the public’s demand for Paper Crafting, Knitting, Pottery, Jewellery making, Needlepoint and many other crafts grew in popularity. In America crafting is big news – Martha Steward was the trail blazer having a regular slot on breakfast television for years and over there the subject is treated very much in the same way as cooking is; have a chef on TV to make a cake and a crafter will whip up a box to put it in with a simple handmade card. In the UK we still have work to do although Kirsty Alsop has been doing a valiant job!

I have loved craft for years and I even have an ‘A’ Level in Pottery Craft and Design! Therefore Blue Peter, as you can imagine, was like a dream come true and making Tracy Island was just the cherry on the cake.

I could never do the selling that I see the professionals do on shopping channels… they are on a level all of their own and it would scare the pants off me, but flying the flag for crafts, talking about them in magazines and demonstrating on TV shows – that’s my passion and my comfort zone.

So we have to ‘Get Britain Crafting’ and as I learn I’ll be passing things on to you via this website.