Supporting Creative Friends

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Hey everyone!

I’ve noticed something recently. A lot of smaller businesses online are either having to shut down or they’re scaling their portfolio down a lot. So I’ve decided to write a a post for people who want to know ways to support small businesses and independent creatives they follow on various social media.

Purchase their work!

This is the most obvious. If you want creative people and small businesses to continue creating at a regular pace and put all of their time and effort into what they’re doing, your best bet is to purchase from them. The amount you spend and the frequency of which you do it is down to you, and it’s largely dependent on what you need, what people are providing and the cost of the items themselves. I’ve been encouraging some friends to include payments in instalments to make things more accessible. I’ve introduced it in full scale to my store recently and it’s been pretty popular.

Let them know what you want more/less of!

Is your favourite artist releasing a bunch of designs you like on items you don’t want/need? Contact them! Small retailers are usually more able to respond to direct demand quite quickly and can sometimes make things as a one off.

Please keep in mind some people may have to release items as a pre-order to generate the funds (and establish the demand) for certain products. A couple of years ago I released t-shirts at the request of a few people, they started as a pre-order and when I had the funds I ordered in as many as I believed demand to be (from people saying they’d buy one) to not sell nearly as many as I’d anticipated. Had I done this as a full pre-order I wouldn’t have had this problem, and the situation itself nearly led to me having to close down my store.

Patreon!

The next couple are pretty similar. The first of which is subscribing via a service such as Patreon. This is great for people who make content on YouTube, write blogs or generally create content that may not necessarily always result in items for sale. Most Patreon creators include rewards and regular updates for Patrons, and it’s something I’m still getting the hang of. Some people need the funds to cover project costs, others to cover their regular outgoings. They usually list their reasons for using it in their description.

You can sign up to support creators on Patreon from as little as $1 a month (around 80p) and even if you can only pledge $1 a month it’s a huge boost to the creator. At the time of writing, my pledges come to around $50 and a bunch of those are $1. It builds up if enough people do it and it means creators can focus on making great content for you full time without worrying about money, and you’ll get rewards in the meantime!

I should probably mention that once you make a pledge you can edit or pause it whenever you need to. You’re not tied into pledging a certain amount until you cancel or anything like that.

Donations!

Not able to pledge every month for whatever reason? Does the creator you want to support not make anything you can buy/afford? Almost all of them have a PayPal account you can send funds to as and when you see fit, even if it’s just a couple of quid. As I mentioned before, it all adds up.

If PayPal isn’t your thing (or theirs), see if there are other ways you can send them some cash.

Share their work!

A lot of people don’t have a disposable income to support creatives financially for a variety of reasons and that’s ok! There are other ways you can do it. People tend to use all sorts of social media, and if you think someone isn’t getting the recognition they deserve then share their work. You never know who might be following you. They might end up interested in someone’s work and be able to support them in any of the ways I’ve mentioned.

Whatever your main social media, follow your favourite creators if they have a profile there and share their content. If they don’t, post their work with credit and try to either include their @ from Instagram, Twitter etc or a link to the best place to view them. You’re a part of the media and, whether you choose to believe it or not, people listen to you and care about your opinions. They usually also have things in common with you, which is why they follow you. So chances are if you like something for whatever reason, some of the people following you will too! It doesn’t matter whether you have 10 followers or 10,000. You’re important to your followers and to the people you amplify and share the work of.

As well as purchasing items from my store, you can also support my other projects by donating via PayPal or pledging via Patreon. Patreon pledges start from just $1 a month (around 80p)!

Future Plans For Mr Crypt!

Here’s something I haven’t mentioned on my store yet! My future plans for Mr Crypt’s Curiosities.

Let’s go with the obvious stuff that I’ve discussed previously. I’m currently planning a podcast with my mate, Paul. We’ve had a few chats about it and we’re slowly working out what we need and getting everything lined up for it. At the moment it sounds like we’ll loosely try to stick to a topic while Paul gets increasingly frustrated at me for constantly going off on tangents. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

The details of this blog post as well as yesterday’s will end up as a series of videos up on YouTube too. Each section will have it’s own specific video so you can watch whatever’s most relevant for you rather than skipping through to try to find the right part. I’ll also be uploading the same videos to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I plan on making more video content like time-lapses of me making new products. I’m still getting used to it but expect more soon!

As for products, I’ve got some ideas for bamboo and wooden items that have been laser cut and engraved. These include phone cases, keyrings, toothbrushes and even some “prints”. Some of these items will be limited in number but I’m very excited to get them made. I’ve spoken to my potential supplier about providing me with some engraved faux-leather wallets too, but that needs some more research.

On top of those, I’m also looking into getting some patches, pins and badges made. It’s generally a matter of affordability. In an ideal world I’d be able to order everything in at once for a totally new range but we’ll see what happens there.

And finally, I’m looking into improving my packaging situation. I currently send items out in plastic postage bags with loads of sellotape etc and I hate it. At the moment it’s the most cost-effective way to do it so I’m using those up while I look into more sustainable packaging options. Any help in regard to that would be much appreciated. My aim is to be totally plastic free in terms of products and packaging by the end of 2018!

If you want to support these plans and ideas you can do so by subscribing to my Patreon page, where you can pledge from just $1 a month (around 80p), donating to via PayPal or by purchasing through my store.

Attention Artists and Small Businesses!

I have news!

I really hope this is of use to some of you. I’m sure it will be.

You know at the start of this year I was sorting things about buying equipment to start manufacturing myself, and as a result also being able to manufacture for other small businesses and independent artists? If you didn’t, you do now. Well I’ve been working on things and have finally started producing my own mugs and tote bags. This should speed up delivery time for those items, and a few others that’ll be developing soon. For the moment I’m not going to be making phone cases myself as it means having to guess the number of blank cases I’ll need for each model and I don’t have the storage at home to accommodate them at the moment.

This means two things. One, I’ll be able to make stuff for brands, bands and artists. Either in bulk or to order. I’m still working on prices as it’s fairly new but from what I’ve seen it’ll be pretty competitive. I already have the mug prices worked out. I know a few people have been looking to add some items to their stores but didn’t want to pay for a lot of items etc in bulk. That’s not a worry now! I can make them for you as the orders come in, and even send them direct to your customers if you like.

Before moving on to number two, I’ve also recently purchased a lovely thing called a light tent for my product photos. Once I’ve got that fully sorted and worked out I’ll also be offering pictures of the items I make for you as part of the package. That’d be especially useful for anyone who’d prefer for me to send items straight to their customers.

Second, I’ve started work on a new set of products to sell under a different brand name under the Mr Crypt umbrella. A few of my designs are vaguely linked to the BDSM/kink/DDlg community (my Daddy’s Little Princess being one of the most notable) so I decided to roll with that and make a few more. I’m working on the same sort of items as I sell through Mr Crypt alongside new products that I’ll soon be introducing to both brands. The new brand is called Little And Hyde and at the moment largely works around pet names and terms of endearment used for partners. Very soon these will be customisable for people who have less common names for their partners. There’ll also be a range of colours etc too. It’s all very exciting!

In other news I’m looking to do more big pieces, particularly ukuleles and woodburn projects. I already have two ukulele plant pots that need painting and finishing off and you kindly picked a theme for a skateboard deck by voting on Twitter. There’ll also be pint glasses coming very soon to mrcrypt.bigcartel.com. In the meantime, head over and get some lovely stuff!

Seeing Refused

This is over a month late but whatever.

The Shape Of Punk To Come is my favourite album of all time. I don’t say that lightly, I’m pretty much the biggest music snob I know (something I’m not proud of but can’t seem to break from). I first heard it when I was about 14 or 15 – around 2002, fuck you, I’m old – and immediately fell in love with everything Refused were about. It broke my heart when I found out they broke up several years prior to me discovering them. I’d never get to see them live. Sad faces everywhere.

Then! In 2011! There were rumours of a reunion! Followed by an announcement that they’d be performing at Sonisphere 2012! I already had tickets for Sonisphere and the news had my dick so hard my knees almost burst. Happy faces everywhere. Then, because at this stage fate was deciding to just fuck with me in the most awful of ways, Sonisphere was cancelled and Refused were added to the Download line up instead. The people with whom I was meant to be going to Sonisphere couldn’t make Download, so my wait to see Refused live continued. Sad faces again.

They did a couple of other festivals after that, which I couldn’t afford to attend, but last year they finally released a follow up to TSOPTC. As soon as I knew there was an album coming I hoped for a tour. Freedom was released last June and a tour was announced. We got tickets. Happy faces. I was half expecting it to be cancelled and more sad faces but nope. I finally saw them last weekend, after around 14 years of waiting. My brother didn’t even have to wait that long to see Guns N Roses (albeit not the ‘real’ Guns N Roses if you want to be a dickhead about it).

The setlist was perfect, older tracks being combined sublimely with the songs from Freedom. They even found space for Coup d’État, Rather Be Dead and Life Support Addiction from Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent. As they closed with New Noise into Tannhäuser/Derivè, the atmosphere in the room was electric. From front to back, the whole room as getting into it either by singing along or by taking part in the pit with the oldest average age I’ve seen for a while.

Seeing a band live can sometimes ruin the magic or something like that, but The Shape Of Punk To Come is still my favourite album and Refused are still my favourite band. Happy happy faces.

Vegan aliens and a quick update

I feel like I should apologise in advance for this one, it’s pretty bizarre. A few weeks ago I tweeted that I’d had a dream about vegan aliens and a few people asked about it and it made sense to write about it here rather than make a thread on Twitter.

So you’ve already got the basics. It was a dream. About aliens. Who are/were vegan. They were your typical alien in terms of how they looked, which kind of annoyed me. I thought my imagination would at least interpret their appearance somewhat but no, just your standard “greys” doing their funky space thing. I don’t remember much about how they communicated but it wasn’t just body language and I don’t think it was 100% telepathic. Some of it was telepathic though; they projected an image into our minds of the future of our planet if we continued with our unsustainable practices with regard to animal agriculture, habitat destruction and insecticides that are harming pollinating insects. It was their aim to come to Earth and ask those of us already challenging one or more of these practices to go and live with them. We could stay if we wanted, so we could continue our efforts in striving for change on our home planet, or we could go with them to what seemed like a utopia with clean air and renewable energy.

I know this sounds really odd. I guess I was processing the mistakes made by humanity and imagining a world without them, in a way relevant to myself (which, of course, had to involve aliens). I say mistakes because that’s how I view them, in regard to the long-term health of Earth and everything living on it. It comes down to interpretation and which industries you support, if you even support any industry at all in their current forms. When I woke up it encouraged me to consider the longer-term effects of my decisions and actions. It also made me wonder if those who had made the decisions leading to our Earth being in its current state had been given an insight into the future like we had done in the dream, whether they’d continue with those actions or reconsider and attempt to find a more compassionate and sustainable approach. Obviously, some would change their minds and some would carry on regardless of any information that might persuade them otherwise. I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to imagine what the world could be like if various decisions had been made, and how they would have affected the global economy as well as the planet on an environmental level. It’d take days to write down all the possible outcomes, similar to writing out all the possible numerical combinations for a lottery, only slightly more extrapolated to include knock-on effects.

Anyway, back to the dream. What did I choose? I chose to stay. I’ve always tended to shy away from the easy way out, which is what I thought agreeing to go with them to Planet Alien would be. Vegans often refer to themselves as a voice for the voiceless, the voiceless in this case being animals (as well as the humans directly and indirectly affected by animal related industries). The aliens were only asking vegans to go with them, so what would happen to the voiceless on our planet once their voice is taken away, once the people fighting to improve conditions and life for them are taken away? Leaving seemed like a way of washing my hands of the whole thing and saying I’d done my bit and wasn’t prepared to keep fighting.

So yeah, that’s what happened in the dream. It was all pretty lucid and getting it written down has made me realise I’ve probably levelled up as a vegan in terms of my thought processes.

If you’ve had one similar drop me a message somewhere and let me know. Or let’s just talk about aliens.

May as well chuck some updates for work at the end of here:

I finished an Andrew WK woodburn piece the other day, which was lovingly shared by Andrew on Twitter and Instagram. It was really fun to do so I’m glad it got a good reaction. I’m happy to take on custom woodburn pieces or just consider suggestions for future pieces.

 

I was recently at the Nottingham International Tattoo Convention, which was a great learning experience. I’m considering my next move in regard to tattoo conventions, and conventions in general. I’d love to try some music and craft kind of conventions, I’ve also had a thought involving a local vegan coffee shop but I’ll have to see what happens with that.

And finally, bee and mandala tote bags are now available at mrcrypt.bigcartel.com 🙂

Have a great day and be excellent to one another!