Years ago when I had my first wordpress quilling blog I came across Craftgawker.com  What a great place to get your photos shared!  Similar to foodgawker and other sister sites, this site allows crafters to browse through beautiful photos to find fun crafts to do.  Of course I wanted to be part of it!  Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as Pinterest where anyone can share any photo.  This is both good and bad – it is harder to get submitted, but you’ll get a good amount of traffic from there once you do!

I started submitting photos of my jewelry from my original blog, and a few of them got accepted.  I have continued over the years to submit, and I now have thirteen of my posts on Craftgawker.

What you see when you go to my gallery is a set of 13 lovely photos.  What you don’t see is that there are also currently 78 declined submissions from me.  That means 13 times I sent in photos they were accepted and posted.  78 times when I submitted my photos they were declined.  Ouch!  **note** actually, more than 13 of my photos were accepted in the past, but when they started being more strict about the types of posts that the photos linked to, some were deleted.  At the time I was mainly selling my quilled jewelry, not making free tutorials, so I think some of those were deleted over time.

It can be depressing and aggravating when you submit what you think are great photos and they are declined for various reasons.

The lesson to learn here is NOT to give up!  Keep taking better photos and keep submitting.   You never know who is looking at your photo, and so much is subjective.  Your photo might just not be the favorite of the person who is looking at it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a great photo! So choose another, submit again, and cross your fingers!

Here are some tips for getting your photos on Craftgawker:

• Make sure the lighting is good.  Natural lighting is best, without harsh shadows.  I find that afternoon sun works best for this at my house.  Click here to read a post about photography tips.
• Take a look at all of the photos that are already listed on Craftgawker to get some ideas of what they are looking for.
• Your photo should be in focus.  If you have a macro lens, use it!  I don’t, but I really really really want one, as it helps to get those up close photos of small items such as jewelry.
• Your photo has to be on a post in a blog (not in a shop!) and it has to be a helpful post.  Meaning that if you are trying to sell the item, they won’t post it.  It needs to be some sort of pattern, instructions, tutorial, etc.  (this rule used to be more flexible, but now they are quite strict!)
• Seasonal and holiday photos do really well if you have them (they have to match the season/holiday at the moment!)
• This is usually not the place for extremely artistic angles and such.  At least in my experience those photos get declined.  They want to be able to clearly see what the craft is.
• The submission page says that your photos should be 550 pixels or bigger.  If you submit bigger photos they might just crop them to be the right size, which doesn’t always look the best and they could be declined due to that.  To be on the safe side, crop your photos yourself so that they are 550 by 550 pixels before submitting them.
• No watermark.  I put watermarks on all the photos on my blog now.  But when I submit them to Craftgawker I have to remove that watermark first.  They don’t want unsightly watermarks on all the photos there!

• Don’t Give Up!  Sometimes it really is just chance that your photo didn’t get put up.  It could have been a great photo but didn’t match the others that they chose for the day.  You’ll notice that they seem to put up ones next to each other that kind of match in color, tone, brightness, theme, etc.  You can’t keep submitting the same photo, but you can take more photos of your item and keep submitting them.  Just remember to put your new photo on the blog post before submitting, as it needs to be there!

Looking for more craft blogging and business tips?  Click here.

Stick around, there is lots to see around the blog!  Here are some places to start:

• Click here to view free paper quilling tutorials!
• Click here to view paper quilling tips and tricks!
• Click here to view a list of places to buy quilling supplies around the world!
• Click here to view some of my own quilling projects, with tips so you can make your own if you’d like!

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