Jan/Feb 14
If you want to take crafting to a new level and start up your very own craft business, this book should be an excellent tool. It is a highly visual book that contains step-by-step tutorials and inspiring profiles on some of the world's most successful crafters. Craft Show & Sell delivers all the advice and vision that today's crafters need to take their brand or business forward into a new realm.
* Craft Business *
March 2015
Want to take crafting to a new level and turn it into a business? Then let Craft Show & Sell be your guide. In this inspiring and beautifully photographed book, Torie Jayne uses the profiles of successful crafters to illustrate how to set up your own workspace, create your own brand and how to promote and sell your own products. Packed with some stylish projects advice about craft fairs, online selling and other business tools, it's a brilliant guide for anyone wanting to run their own successful craft business. Highly recommended!
* Love to Make *
Issue 40
Take crafting to a new entrepreneurial level with help from Torie Jayne. Craft Show & Sell uses step-by-step tutorials and helpful advice to guide your business forward into a new realm. Learn how to build a personality-driven brand, create and write a better blog or website, document your work through better photography and analyse your results to help take your business into the future. Plus, there are top tips on how to merchandise and sell items online, at craft fairs, at markets, in shops or at pop-up events and exhibitions.
* Simply Homemade *
Jan 14
This book is a fantastic guide to help you to build your craft business at home, online & in the marketplace. The book gives you a highly visual step by step tutorials to help you on your way. The book helps you with everything from the start. It details everything from choosing & organizing a crafting work-space. As you can see there are beautiful storage ideas. These include instructions on how to make them yourself. They also give you ideas on how to create creative boards. I'm re-reading this book at the moment. I love the fact that it has so many ideas about how to do things but it also shows you how you can do it yourself. It's such an accessible book with so much information from successful crafters from all around the world. The pictures are beautiful and you feel like it's within your grasp.
I am going to spend time with this book looking at the different ways it can help me. Even if your business has been around for a while there is something that can help you.
* Crochet Addict UK *
October 2014
This is a great little book... often business books start talking accounting and business plans, which is great, but daunting. Like most crafters I had an idea, a creative idea and I found that other business books seemed to squash that original excitement by getting to the all important meaty bit too soon. Sometimes an idea needs thinking on and planning before the meat and potatoes of business... before the 'financially' viable has to come the 'do I really want to made 10,000 of this? Do I really want to 'make for money'?' A little differently this book actually starts with your creative space... the setting up and organisation of. Having just gone through a stock room revamp myself to create a little more 'creative' space I was thrilled to read a chapter about the process of good organisation. Only after this we start thinking about the bigger things like, how that big idea should look, how much it costs, branding and so on. - See more at: http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/review-craft-show-and-sell-by-torie.html#sthash.8TbbVqEE.dpuf
* Crafts of Texture *
Jan 14
Enjoying making your own crafts is one thing - actually selling them on a wider market is another. It is not enough to simply have nice things to sell - you have to get them out into the marketplace. How do you this? What are the best marketplaces? How can you turn a hobby into a successful business? The pitfalls of over confidence, over stocking and unsuitable pricing are all too common. This book is a very useful little guide to avoiding those problems and making a success of crafting. It contains all the information you need to deal with issues like merchandising, selling, choosing a business name, online selling and photography as well as the all important customer service which can make or break a fledgling business. It is very well written by someone who has actually made a success from a very basic beginning.
* Monstersandcritics.com *
May/Jun 14
If you've really been bitten by the sewing bug and you'd like to try and earn some cash from your makes, [this book] is a handy guide to building your craft business. Whether you decide to sell your designs online through sites such as Etsy or take a stall at a craft fair, discover how to find customers, 'build your brand' and harness social media. With tips and advice from fellow crafters who have turned their skills into an earning opportunity, this is an inspiring and practical read.
* Pretty Patches *
June 14
Craft Show & Sell aims to deliver all the advice and vision you need to take your crafting hobby and turn it into a successful business. Starting with the best ways to organise your workspace to optimise your productivity, this guide has some really useful ideas including a fantastic ribbon spool holding box. Glimpsing into the world of crafters who have succeeded in the business world gives some inspiring tips and ideas and gives you a good idea of how other crafters have made their dream a reality. This book contains sections about the importance of branding, marketing, where and how to sell and some really useful information for photography and the use of social media. This complete guide is full of practical advice to create your own business model and enable you to make your passion your career.
* SEWING WORLD *
June 14
UK designer, blogger and crafter, Torie Jayne has just published her first book, the excellent Craft, Show and Sell. It's a much-needed volume offering excellent guidance on the business of building your brand, especially for crafters. With lots of valuable tips, insider information and interviews with some of the biggest names in crafting, Torie Jayne has put together an terrific resource for anyone involved in a creative business and wanting to take it to the next level.
* Cake Geek Magazine *
June 14
There are a range of craft business related books on the market at the moment, all offering different forms of advice on how to reach your potential when turning handmade items into a business. This book approaches the subject as an introduction of all the things you might consider when thinking about turning your hobby into a business. It considers a wide range of topics, taking you from organising your workspace and creating a brand for yourself, to using social media and selling your products. There are also little projects dotted throughout which offer a break from all the business thinking and allow you to procrastinate in a creative way. It is, however, a slightly fluffy approach to this subject. There is very little actual business advice. You are advised to draw up a business plan, use market research and market yourself, but there are no guidelines on how you would do this. It is more focused on creating a beautiful brand visually and ideas on how you might do that. Overall, I thought the book offered some advice useful to those wanting to take their work out into the marketplace. There is a guide to social media and ideas for creating a banner for a virtual shop or your website/blog, and designing an avatar so that your presence online is consistent through all forms of social media. The best part of the book is the section on how to sensibly price your goods by applying a simple formula, something I hadn't come across before. I think this is the kind of book that you could read and glean information from but you would need more practical advice if you were considering starting a business.
* Workshop On The Web *
June 14
In this inspiring and very creative book Torie uses profiles of successful crafters to illustrate how to set up your own workspace, create your own brand, and how to promote and sell your own products. Packed with advice about craft fairs, online selling, and other business tools it is a brilliant guide for anyone wanting to run their own craft business. Highly Recommended!
* Hot Brands, Cool Places *
Jan 14
Turn your craft hobby into a business is the byline in this book. It is divided into Getting Started, Branding, Selling, Marketing and ideas to become successful in business. It shows you how to organise a workspace and offers practical solutions to keeping tidy. I love the How to Make Ribbon Spool Holder Box, because I need at least two of those, tangled ribbons are so annoying. Artists talk about how they got started, their inspiration and success. There are lots of tips for crafters starting out. The crafter's profiles did not tell me anything about how to be a successful crafter. This book contains very basic information, some good how-to projects and great photography. It is not an entrepreneur's book as it suggests, neither does it provide a successful business role model. The title - is it Craft Show & Sell or should it be Craft, Show & Sell???
* Karen Platt Yarnsandfabrics.co.uk/crafts *
Jan 14
I was completely blown away by what this book has to offer. While I have read other books on setting up and running craft businesses before, this is the first one that I have read that has had such a strong impact upon me. The focus on the little things and the attention to detail enables you to consider every element of running a successful business, and this is incorporated seamlessly with facing bigger challenges such as selling techniques and marketing. All of the information is easily absorbed and a pleasure to read, using encouraging case studies; this is a book that anyone who has ever considered setting up a craft business must look at! http://hannahackroyd.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/craft-show-sell-expert-tips-for-confident-craft-selling/
* Handmade by Hannah *
