Why You Should NOT Join Crafty Amino

Hello Crafters,

Can I ask you all when did (DIY) or Do It Yourself become a bad word in the crafting community yet saying Crafting Tutorial is not DIY?  In addition, what do you as consider crafting? By definition, it’s 1. Exercise skill in making (something). 2. An activity involving skill in making things by hand.

Are these definitions not the same as DIY? I’m sure you all wondering what I am getting at. I had a conversation with a fellow crafter on Crafty Amino. The conversation was “what it deems as crafty?” And you bet there where “RULES” and Guidelines, terms and conditions were thrown back and forth. But once I sat down and read the so call “guidelines and terms” they didn’t match up with the “RULES” these crafters were spitting out as truth.

Why is this a problem? Really it’s not until you get people, band, have their artwork taken down, or just felt small under the wave of comments of “why this is not crafty relevant”.

As I dug a little more I found out there are other crafters bashing other crafters because they didn’t follow these made-up rules that no one seems to know where they came from. No Link, no author of who made the rules, not even contact from Crafty Amino. Just a lot of re-hashed posts going nowhere.

It gets worst, after looking at the reviews for Crafty Amino the list goes on and on of crafters taking on dictatorship on what is and is not crafty. Sending other crafters to other Amino sites or just telling not to bother crafting.

When I saw Crafty Amino being hyped on YouTube by SoCraftatsic I was really excited to post my work and see what other crafters were doing. You know, get inspired make what they are making, check out new tutorials.

Man, I was so wrong. So very wrong….

I had made two spiders out of polymer clay that I saw on YouTube by SugarCharms. Now My spiders were different from hers and I had learned some things that SugarCharms didn’t cover in her tutorial.  And I thought “Hey let me make a tutorial that’s different from SugarCharms since I was inspired by her original design.” And I posted this small bit of info on Crafty Amino. And that when it happened I started getting comments on why not put up SugarCharms tutorial instead of making your own, that I should be aware of copyright on videos if I copy someone else stuff. At every turn, I was defending something that I made with my own two hands. It’s not like I robbed this woman and put a stake through her heart and claimed it as my own.

That got me really thinking, is this happening to other crafters? And sure enough, it is. Someone posted a DIY Hair tutorial with the title Bad Crafters. With 27 comments on why this person account should be deleted. Now, mind you this crafter didn’t handle herself well and was using foul language trying to defend herself. And frankly that a big no-no. You can never get your point across with foul language and that is what got her band.

You should have seen the comments on why she needed to take down her DIY because it was NOT considered crafty or crafty relevant. That she should show her work on her own blog and not on Crafty Amino or better yet try to put it under Makeup or Health Amino. The same conversations went for nail art, drawing/sketching, recipes, and you guess it DIY. With each crafter calling for heads to roll for even considering posting such things.

Geez, why did I even join up in the first place? If I knew then what I know now I would have never done it. Now I have to figure out how to delete my account.