How to use Craft Juice - a tutorial

I see a small number of posts on Twitter, blogs and forums from people that don't know quite how Craft Juice works so I thought I would put together a tutorial for you all! Craft Juice (if you don't know) is a great way of showing off your craft items to a huge number of people - there are over 2,300 followers of Craft Juice on Twitter alone so goodness knows how many actually visit the site! It's also good for networking and I have sold many items as a result of posting my items on there. So here goes for the tutorial for loading your things onto the site - it's picture heavy so be warned!

When you go to the main homepage you will see this page. You want to click on the tab at the top that says Submit a New Craft Item.

You will then be taken to this page where you have to put in your item url. This can be from your online shops, flickr, blog etc but make sure that it is for one particular item - not your whole Etsy shop or your whole blog - just the actual post/item or photograph will do.

Here is an example of where to look for your url - I was uploading one of my Peter and Jane books onto Craft Juice as I had just listed it in my Etsy shop.

Copy and paste your item url into the box and click continue.

You will then see a page like this. Sometimes you will get an added extra bit in the story title. The bit extra in this one is the 'by swirlyarts'. Sometimes it will say 'misi' or 'folksy' or 'flickr' - it's my personal preference to edit this out but you can leave yours in.

You will then see this option - add an image. This is very important as most people will look at the image straight away. Simply do as it says and 'click here' It will link to the url and show you the range of photographs you have there. So for Etsy it will show you your main photograph and then the thumbnails of the smaller photographs. Your main photograph is normally the one you will be using on Craft Juice.

All you have to do is click on the photograph you want - remember though that if you click on a thumbnail then it will come up as a thumbnail on Craft Juice - so small in other words!

Your image will then come up in the post like this.

You then need to add tags that are relevant eg jewellery, earrings, steampunk etc etc and also a description. As it says your description should be about 2 to 4 sentences long.

Then choose a category for your work - if there isn't a specific one then choose general crafts. Then click to continue.

You will get a preview of how your item will look - if it's ok then click on the submit story button and if you need to edit anything then click on the modify button.

Your post will then be live!

You will notice that you have 1 vote on your post - this is your own vote. The whole idea of Craft Juice is to vote for others work that you like and promote networking - as well as seeing some fabulous handmade items!

To vote for others just click on the vote button next to their work - easy peasy! Just make sure you are logged in :)

And then when you have 5 votes you will be automatically moved from the upcoming crafts tab to the popular crafts page - and when that happens you will be automatically tweeted about too which will bring even more people in to look at your work!

So go and join - it's free and fun! Oh and another thing to add - when I list things in my shops I have a routine. List the item, put it in the relevant groups etc on Flickr, tweet about it and then add it to Craft Juice. That way I maximise the number of people that will see the item!

Feel free to ask any questions :)