Purple Leader - Maria Snell

My name is Maria, I'm a self taught dressmaker living in a small East Dorset village with my husband and 2 children. I wanted to be able to do something from home as my children are young and I have Multiple Sclerosis. I started my Minxtures shop to go along side my dressmaking and alterations and it was somewhere I could put all the things I kept making for no apparent reason (addicted to making patterns) You'll find all sorts in my Folksy.com shop. I do particularly like to make useful things, especially for children. I  recently opened a shop at www.wowthankyou.co.uk too.

I thought CRAFTfest was a wonderful idea to get more people using the network.

Teal Leader - Lorraine Dowdle

Step into Lorraine Dowdle’s studio and experience a world of exclusively designed and exquisitely unique, hand-created wearable sensations. Lorraine crafts all her own lampwork glass beads in the flame and incorporates these little artistic treasures with her passion for wirework, offering an eye catching, desirable, and unique work of Art, that easily transitions from being a daytime accessory to a glamorous evening conversation piece. Lorraine offers daily work shop classes in both mediums, to share her love for handmade with others. Custom creations are her speciality. Lorraine will help you express your own creative flair though her work, by making a special piece just for you. For more details visit www.lorrainedowdlecreations.com

Pink Leader - Natasha Tideswell

My name’s Natasha, I’m 25 and a half and live with my partner of nearly 4 years in a little flat where I call Stoke On Trent home! We don’t have any children (yet!) but we dote on our two godchildren who are 1 and nearly 3 years old.
I work full time as a project administrator for a bank and run the castle in the evenings and at weekends. I’m a bit mad, or as someone at work once said “you’re weird but in a lovely way”. I don’t have much luck with cars (first courtesy car I had, the back windscreen exploded and the next one got ran into!), I like drinking tea in big mugs (although my other half makes them better than me) and I don’t like odd numbers although my favourite number is 3…go figure!

Jeeberella’s Craft Castle opened for business Valentine’s Day 2011. I love

When I was asked to send a photo, I thought I’d send one that showed me at my happiest. It was taken in Devon last year. It was the middle of October and even though it was a bit chilly, it’s one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. It was a proper relaxing holiday in our favourite place in the country. Will hopefully be heading back there next year.

I didn’t actually volunteer to be a group leader for CRAFTfest I was asked to be one instead. I probably should have asked at the time why they thought I’d be good at it, but fingers crossed I’ve done a good job!
When I was asked what colour I wanted my group to be, I naturally chose pink. You only have to look at my logo to see that I like pink things.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from being a group leader if I’m honest but skills from my day job certainly helped. As a project administrator things have to be organised and at home, I take charge of the social diary and bills and things. It is different however, organising fellow business pages especially when a lot of my team have been in

Blue Leader - Kerry Goodman

I am Kerry and I own Scrapbookerry from home as well as running the family and looking after our little boy. Scrapbookerry is very new and is still in its first year, but is growing from strength to strength every day. I have always scrapbooked, and moved onto making mini albums when my son was born three years ago.
More and more people started asking for my handmade items and it suddenly occurred to me that I could run this as my own little business, and still be able to be at home with my son.

Scrapbookerry is your first stop for beautiful keepsakes made with style. See your memories come to life with our unique journal jars, mini albums and scrapbooks. Each a gift they’ll treasure forever.

I love the idea of CRAFTfest and love the concept of a Virtual Craft Fair. I don’t have the time to be going out and doing a Craft Fair. It would mean finding babysitters and dog sitters as my other half works very long hours and most weekends, so this is a great opportunity for getting new customers and meeting new people for me. Meeting people who understand others in the crafting business, and understand how we all tick.

I believe that if you are passionate about something you are the best person to promote it; this is the reason why I volunteered to be the group leader of the Blue Group for CRAFTfest. I have loved being a group leader, it has made me use skills I have not used for a long time, but the best thing is that it has got me communicating with people. I

Lilac Leader -  Felicity Howarth

My name is Felicity and I run Perfect Patchwork; I set the company up in 2009 after I found that I had created so many patchwork quilts, that I didn’t know what to do with them; and a friend suggested that I have a go at selling them. I create a large range of items; including bags, quilts, play mats, wall hangings and craft items. Here is a sample of one of my original designs.

I had my website created and struggled for a while getting traffic to the site; this led me to looking for other avenues and ultimately led me to Creative Connections. I joined the last CRAFTfest and loved it. I found the best part for me was meeting so many lovely people, especially through the chat room. It was one evening when I was on the chatroom that they were discussing running groups for the upcoming CRAFTfest and on the spur of the moment I offered to be a group leader (Lilac group).
I am so glad I did, I have ‘met’ even more wonderful people, and being a team leader has led me to closer interactions than I would have had simply as a seller. I feel I really know ‘the team’ and other group leaders, and they are wonderful people and so helpful.
The best thing for me has been the socialising with like minded people and swapping of knowledge; e.g. I have discovered some useful tools like Crowdbooster through the wonderful people here on Creative Connections. If I were lucky enough to be asked again, I would definitely volunteer to be a team leader for the next CRAFTfest; and think it would be easier next time, having created my spreadsheet with all the info I need to be able to support and promote all my team, in the easiest way.
Thank you guys for the opportunity.

At Creative Connections, we hosted our first trial run fair in September. We had over 140 stall holders attend the two day spectacular weekend, with fantastic feedback.

So, we did it again! On the 26th & 27th November 2011 we hosted our second CRAFTfest, with 175 stall holders from all around the world.

The idea of CRAFTfest is to showcase sellers using interactive albums, 'your stall', which allows sellers to browse and purchase items through an interactive link in your product descriptions, 'your voice'.

You sit behind your computer screen, and sell interactively to your sellers through Creative Connections chat room, Facebook, Twitter, and many other social networking sites.
Each seller was put in a group. Purple, pink, teal, blue, or lilac. The purpose of the groups was to to advertise each other and the upcoming CRAFTfest event, to chat amongst yourselves and work out campaigns and ideas.

We now go behind the scenes to meet our group leaders!