NFEST 2008 Annual Update Newsletter
RoseThis...@aol.com
Needle Felting Etsy Street Team NFEST 2008 Annual Update
Welcome everyone, new and established, to another year of this fantastic group of needlefelt artists exploring and creating virtually brand new one of a kind creations with the very new art technique of needlefelting! The time has come for our annual group email update. There is a major change to our membership requirements and several key changes this e-newsletter will cover, so please take the time to read this once annual letter.
Our NFEST team started as a group of sellers on etsy.com with two goals. One is to network with other needle felters and the other is to spread the new art form of needlefelting to the unknowing masses out in the rest of the world.
We were connected by our love of the craft Needle Felting when “Street Teams” on etsy were a brand new adventure. In fact, the street teams were so new at that time that there was not an effective way for teams to communicate within etsy. (Admin is still promising updates soon, though.) Teams went around this and created sites outside of etsy to communicate and share creations. Our team, NFEST, created a google site and a flickr site for our first goal of networking with other needlefelters. These two sites get regular “hits” from the internet where people are just surfing and exploring. So, these groups have also helped us toward our first and second goals of networking and spreading the love.
However, the google site was always a temporary fix for our group communication problem. It has served its purpose, but we have outgrown what the google site can offer. We now have over 100 members from all over the world. I think it is safe to say that not everyone is comfortable with technology, since we are primarily artists. Not every one of our members belongs to the google site or to the flickr site. The google site does not have a clear way to organize posts so that information can be easily found.
The time has come to update how we will meet our goals of networking with each other as well as spreading the needlefelt love to the unaware masses. We need a single place where members and web surfers can go and easily find information that may have already been posted.
The Felting Forum http://feltingforum.com/phpbb/index.php?sid=2ccf57ed835b50c6565c0b03f7e08b95 is a beautiful, organized forum that has already been established. Being a part of this forum will address both of our goals. By joining this forum, our group will not have to reinvent the wheel. The admin has offered us our own section for strictly team news. This will be our main meeting place and main source of group information. So, we will be able to better network with each other, but we will be a part of a site that is already spreading the felt love.
Belonging to this one site will be a requirement for group membership since it is the single unifying source of information.
Our required membership is at the FREE level. There are other levels of membership that people may choose to participate in, but that is voluntary.
We will transition as slow as we need to. I will do my best to follow up and help make sure we can all move over comfortably. Again, this will be the only requirement for belonging to NFEST. It’s essential that we be able to communicate effectively in order to maintain our unity.
Marie Spaulding is the person who set up the Felt Forum. She sent me this request to help make our large influx over there smooth for her, too.
The NFEST section is under DOWN TO BUSINESS and is the #2 forum.
Each person will have to create a USERNAME and a password. I cannot use email addresses to help people find passwords and such...so that is a good tip for your members.
Since you will have a large number coming over at once, and we need to manually approve everyone, best to give clear instruction.
1. UPON REGISTERING: fill in only username and password (see the red box = fill in profile info after being accepted)
2. IMMEDIATELY AFTER REGISTERING: Reply To the Welcome email so I can see their username and activate their account ***and put NFEST in the SUBJECT line so I do those first***
3.
After Acceptance, please post an introduction
*I accept users in the evening
so will try to keep up. Replying to the email with NFEST in the subject line
will help greatly.
Things to know:
1. Everyone gets a free self-serve listing in the Member Directory. It is brand new, so it is still small. Enhanced listings are available for members who choose to help support the forum.
2. We send out a weekly (3-4x month) email usually on Saturdays, this goes to all members.
3. We have a great etiquette going....with unspoken rules of no "advertising" type posts except in the designated forums such as are included in the DOWN TO BUSINESS forums.
4.
Our challenges are the big fun...great way to encourage each other and share.
Free prizes just for participating, all info here:
RULES/GUIDELINES: http://feltingforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=833
THEMES/PRIZES/INFO: http://feltingforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1301
5. Members who don't have a website or picture hosting can use our site: http://feltingforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=16
Let me know anything else you need to know, questions you have or needs you have.
Warmly,
Marie
Spaulding
www.feltingforum.com ~
online felting community
www.howtofelt.com
~ online felting classes for everyone
www.livingfelt.com
We will keep the google site open, but I expect when everyone becomes comfortable with how fantastic The Felting Forum is and how much easier to figure out, the google site will not be used as much. Our pages on the google site and all information that are currently there, will remain, so web surfers will still be able to find us through that site. If you have not created your own page on the google site, you are still welcome to take advantage of that if you would like.
Our second goal of spreading the needlefelt love is reached by our many other group sites on various social networks where individual team membership is voluntary. How many groups you decide to belong to is up to you and your marketing needs. I have set up the needlefelt groups on places such as myspace.com, indiepublic.com, weloveetsy.com and facebook.com as a structure that you can opt into if you want to have a presence in more places spread throughout the internet. All of these sites offer ways for you to have your own pages and galleries of your work that link back to your individual shops and websites. Again, this outreach is voluntary. If you are interested in these sites or already have your own pages there and would like to join the needlefelters groups, just do a search for groups with the word “needlefelt” or go to our team shop http://Needlefelt.etsy.com where all the links are listed on the shop announcement.
BANNER NEWS - Marti of http://Tecopia.etsy.com has been working on a gorgeous needlefelt tapestry to represent our Stabalot Lane Gang that will be sent to etsy admin to hang in the etsy labs and represent us. We are currently using pictures of this tapestry as our banner and avatar in various places. Here is what Marti has to say about creating our beautiful banner
“ I came up with this design for the tapestry after listening, or I should say reading, all the suggestions brought forth on the forum when we first started this group. Of those that responded, pretty much the same idea of rolling hills, sheep, and a cottage or cabin on Stabalot Lane was mentioned by everyone. So, I tried to envision the scene, and this is what I saw in my mind’s eye.
I thought about the banner for quite awhile before I started working on it. I decided that maybe it should be a different shape than the tapestries I normally do, because of photographing it for the banner. I thought that the shape would make for less distortion in the picture, when sized for the banner. The finished tapestry measures out at 27 inches wide and 11 inches deep. It was a great plan, however, did not work out exactly as I had hoped. For some reason, the computer program I was counting on using suddenly died. I sent the tapestry and pictures I had taken to Gina. She put it all together. I love what she did with it and think our combined effort was a great success. What a talent she is!!
The fiber used in the tapestry is mostly wool. First I made a solid color base, of natural colored wool. The wool I have for this purpose is uncarded and I have processed it myself. I find that for my tapestry purposes, just pulling it apart and fluffing it works for me. All of the green shades are hand dyed wool. Some of which I have dyed myself to get the color I want, and some I special ordered. The blue in the sky is also hand dyed wool. I used as many natural colors as I could and that I had on hand. The brown for the trees and background hills are all undyed, natural colored wool. The browns on the trees are also uncarded, because I love the texture the fleece has for my. All the sheep are made of undyed white wool. The black for their heads and for the trees and shadows, is all dyed merino. The flowers in the flower boxes are wool I had dyed myself to be an orange/red color. The other fiber used was cinnamon colored alpaca. That is also natural and undyed. I like a lot of texture in my tapestries. My tapestries are made to be touched as well as looked at. Everything on the tapestry has a slightly different feel to it, such as the rocks, the sheep, the cabin and trees.
Gina and I had both decided that she would send the tapestry to Etsy Headquarters to represent our street team. I have felted hangers on the back for them to use, should they desire to hang it on their wall. The NFEST tapestry was truly a labor of love for me and I was very happy to make it. “
TEAM SHOP NEWS - We opened up a team shop this year at http://Needlefelt.etsy.com All our members are listed in the shop announcement as well as in the shop’s “Favorite Sellers”. Team members have sent in links to their needlefelt items to be added to the “Favorite Items”. This enables us to create mini galleries and etsy provides us coding so we can copy and paste these on other sites throughout the web.
We have had several exciting new additions to our group this year, also.
WEB SITE CATALOG PORTAL NEWS - Anika from http://Orchidee.etsy.com has created a gorgeous web site/catalog of needlefelt artist’s shops at http://www.needlefelters.com . This is a catalog of shops that offer needle felt items and it has pictures of these items with links back to individual shops. This is an opt in program if you are interested. There is a very, very small annual fee to belong to this web site. It’s a great way for additional exposure for your shop at an incredibly reasonable fee. Anika has built in a lot of room for future expansion, as well. So, stay tuned for exciting new prospects related to this web site. Please contact Anika at http://Orchidee.etsy.com if you would like to be involved in this wonderful web site.
BLOG RING AND BLOG SITE NEWS - Rebecca of http://FaerieRebecca.etsy.com has set up a fantastic blog ring and blog site. View the blog here http://www.nfest.blogspot.com/ and the blog ring site here http://www.nearcircle.com/viewCircle?name=NFEST Please contact Rebecca if you would like more information on these beautiful new sites.
MONTHLY CHALLENGES ORGANIZER NEWS - Amy of http://DraigAthar.etsy.com has volunteered to co-ordinate and organize our monthly challenges. Monthly challenges are a voluntary contest where a theme is chosen and we each make a needlefelt creation based on that theme for that month. It’s a fun way to see how the same theme can be interpreted so differently. It’s also a nice way to keep spurring the creativity in case some of us hit road blocks at times. And it’s nice to share and support each other. Amy started with a vote to see what everyone would like to choose as our March challenge. The results will be upcoming. We will continue to have our own challenges when we make the move over to the Forum. The Forum gives us some great polling features, too.
So, NFEST has had a very fun and productive year full of changes and growth. We’ve gained a lot of new members with a lot of energy and new ideas. It’s very exciting to be a part of this rapidly growing new art technique movement! When I first started needlefelting around 2002, I would search the internet and find only 2 or 3 items. Now there are pages and pages with new people “Taking a STAB at it” daily and finding out how addictive, easy, fun, diverse and wonderful needlefelting is. From crafty to artistic, from beginner to advanced, needlefelting can be easy to start or challenging to the seasoned artist. I see creative, unique applications every day from all of you. We are on the cutting edge of this and many of our group’s creations are the very first time needle felting has been used in these ways. I am so proud to belong to this group! Thank you all for joining and bringing your unique talents and views to this group. Here’s to another year of stabby fun-ness!
If you have questions or would like more information on anything regarding this group email, please feel free to contact me or post in our new forum http://feltingforum.com/phpbb/index.php?sid=2ccf57ed835b50c6565c0b03f7e08b95 for all to benefit from your question.
Gina
http://RoseThistleArtworks.etsy.com
Founder of NFEST Needle Felting Etsy Street Team
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