Adventure is in the air! Joanna Yeoman is a wonderful blogger, crafter, and burgeoning business woman. On her blog Adventures & Tea Parties Joanna shares a whirlwind of ideas, crafts, and news about her hand-crafted accessories and jewellery business.

But what goes on behind the scenes? Jo’s here to tell us all about it in her own words!

I’ve given a quick introduction, but could you tell us a bit about yourself and your business?

By day, I’m a 30 something Librarian who can live without chocolate but not cheese or avocados. I have an absolute addiction to both. By night, I’m the face behind Adventures & Tea Parties, a crafty blog and online shop selling my handmade accessories. When I’m not stitching or blogging, I can usually be found either knitting one of the many projects I’ve got on the go (I’m terrible for starting yet another knitting pattern!), playing geeky board games with my hubby, dancing round the house to my latest favourite song and experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes. On warmer days, I can easily spend whole weekends in the garden planting seeds or out looking for birds in the trees.

I like to think that in another life I would have been a backing dancer for Tina Turner or a drummer in a rock and roll band.

We love handmade. Our crafts are ‘made with love.’ And so many of us start selling our crafts so we can make a living doing what we love.

But does loving the work we do mean it’s worth any less? Too many crafters sell their goods without giving themselves a ‘living wage.’ If the work you love can’t pay you at least £6.31 an hour after material costs, are the other benefits worth it? Are the highs worth the lows of getting paid less than minimum wage to deal with accounting, taxes, National Insurance, marketing, and an incredibly competitive market?

NO. The highs don’t make up the numbers. Love doesn’t pay the bills. Crafting and designing is worth a living wage.

There is value in the work you do that goes beyond it being work that you love. (Enough that you’re willing to pour blood, sweat, and tears into it. Now that is love.) Sometimes we forget that.

What is handmade?

We’re quick to blurt out the answer, but the truth is that defining the concept is getting a lot harder. It’s a bit like saying blue. There are a heck of a lot of shades of it!

When Etsy changed its definition of handmade last year, there was a lot of confusion. And backlash. The new policies meant that shops could hire others to help with high demand. (It’s not easy to churn out handmade goods all alone.) Before the change, Etsy sellers had to make their ‘handmade’ goodies themselves.

And since Etsy got so popular before they changed their policy, maybe that’s why so many of us think handmade means something made by one person, from start to finish.

Yet we can’t forget the community so many crafts thrive upon.

Crafting can hurt. Office work and crafting aren’t two things I compare often, but as it turns out they’re both likely to cause RSIs. (Repetitive stress injuries. Or as I would call it, ‘ow why does my shoulder hurt after 5 minutes of doing anything?’ syndrome.)

I’d heard of RSIs but it’s not something I thought I was going to have to worry about as someone in their early 20s. Turns out that was a big fat lie!

Shoulders are tricky things, too. It will easily take 6-8 months for my shoulder feel good again, and that’s after physiotherapy. If I’m honest, before the doctor told me that I was terrified it would be early-onset arthritis, so this was still good news.

Long story short? My plans for 2014 have been thrown for a loop! As fun as it was, if my lifestyle in 2013 led to this then some things have to change.

If you’re a fellow computer-loving crafty type, please learn from my mistakes!

No matter how young, physically fit, and healthy you are it’s a good idea to stretch after crafting. (Isn’t it funny how we naturally stretch as kids? Why do we grow out of that?)
… and stretch after being by the computer for a long time. Smartphones and tablets count, too. (Looking at fellow Twitter lovers!)
Schedule in breaks. Breaks are just as important as whatever craft work you’re doing.
If your shoulder hurts and you can’t keep on top of email, double-triple-quadruple check that the auto-responder you set up is actually turned on. Argh!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. This is a holiday close to my heart!

(My years in America might make me a bit biased, though, especially because my birthday often fell close enough to Thanksgiving that I got my birthday off school. How awesome is that! It did make epic birthday parties hard to organise.)

The truth is that whatever the reasons behind the tradition, everyone everywhere has something to be grateful for. When we’re all rushing to make plans for the upcoming holidays, it’s nice to sit down and remember to just enjoy what we already have. No matter how long or expensive our crafts wishlist is. *cough*

This week I postponed my 21 things from Monday until today. Thanksgiving felt right to share these 21 things I’ve been making, reading, and been grateful for this past week.