Complete Fragments Blog

While planning to launch Complete Fragments I have been thinking about ways to get my name out there and joining Facebook was on my To Do list as a way to network with people I may not have met otherwise. After reading the information posted by Crystal Driedger (copy below), I am still thinking about joining up, but I will be very careful about what I share there. I’m sure there are lots of home-based, small scale businesses using Facebook as a marketing tool, and I bet they don’t know they are giving away the copyright to their work.

 Anyway, just wanted to share this as I think people need to be aware of this stuff so they can make an educated decision about being involved with these types of websites.

Reproduced from Crystal’s Blog:

Oh facebook, it’s so deliciously beautiful and so richly addictive. You can post pictures & artwork, music, videos, email your friends and get updates on what everyone else is posting quicker than you could ever have dreamed possible (i mean, how else are you going to keep up with your ex-boyfriends sister-in-laws holiday in Spain?). And who actually reads a websites terms of use before posting artwork or music they spent hours creating? I mean, isn’t it all the same anyway? Well, after a concerned friend passed along this note:

“I’m not sure exactly what the deal is with facebook and imagery.. but I’ve heard that they own the images once you post them… eeek! You, especially, might want to check that out if you already haven’t.”

This, of course, must be a rumor. Why would such a reputable company put something so ridiculous in their terms of use policy (you know, that thing you have to check off every time you upload a photo on facebook, or import a blog, or link your flickr photo’s to your facebook profile…)? But then… I did some digging I found exactly what I was looking for, plain as day, in the top of a large section of text called “Proprietary Rights in Site Content; Limited License” And it didn’t look good…(Facebooks Terms of Use)

“All content on the Site and available through the Service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the “Site Content”), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved.”

But the more shocking news comes a little farther down the list of terms:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.”

So, what does this all mean to us anyway?According to LegalAndrew.com:

“In plain English, this means you’re giving up copyright control of your material. If you upload a photo to Facebook, they can sell copies of it without paying you a cent. If you write lengthy notes (or import your blog posts!), Facebook can turn them into a book, sell a million copies, and pay you nothing.”

Just because I’m uploading an image to a website should not mean I’m granting them a license (with right to sublicense!) my work. Not to mention that this rule can also apply to people who post your work under a creative commons license to their facebook profile. Also, be aware that using the flickr application in your facebook will put you in the exact same place as if you’d posted your images there directly from your computer. Same goes for all blog posts (imported or otherwise)…
So, can you trust any site to upload your photos?
Here’s what flickrs terms of service are:

“With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.”

Sigh, these are terms I can live with (and i will! Yahoo for flickr!… ha ha, yes this pun was intened, much to your dismay!). I know how hard all of you work to create your art, music, writing and crafts. I will advise any of you who respect intellectual property rights to stop posting your images to facebook and to avoid posting “from flickr to facebook”, especially if the images are not your own. As far as creative commons licensing goes the only way this would be appropriate is if the photo is in the public domain.So as far as lessons in trust go, this one is a big one for me. I find that it’s easy to trust the sleek and polished face of a company that has attracted 62 million users and has become lovingly known as “crackbook” by it’s biggest fans. I’ll also admit that yesterday I was happily posting pictures of each and every illustration I’d created since I went freelance (well, the “good ones” anyway), imported each and every blog post I’d written (which included images of my work and some that I’d asked others if I could post of theirs), my flickr account, a live feed from my etsy store and of course pictures of myself with friends. And while it all may seem very unlikely that facebook would ever post an image from my collection I was in Chapters (Canada’s largest bookstore chain) before Christmas and saw a magazine, created by facebook, full of users photos. So then… who knows?

Anyway, the above are Crystal’s thoughts on the matter, I just wanted to share this with you so you can be aware of this and then make your own call on if and how you choose to use Facebook.

Congratulations to Pamela of http://quiltsnmore.blogspot.com/ who is the winner of my One-World-One-Heart giveaway.  I used a random number generator, which came out at no. 7.

Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by here and entered. I loved hearing about you and visiting your blogs. I hope to email everyone over the weekend to let them know the results as I don’t expect everyone to be checking back here. If the entrants are anything like me, they entered ALOT of giveaways!

Thanks again.

I have to apologise to anyone who has been trying to access my blog, especially those trying to enter my One-World-One-Heart giveaway. The hosting company have been having problems and my site has been down intermittently over the weekend. I have been in contact with them, so hopefully everything will be OK now. Thanks for your patience!

Hi lovely blog readers! I just thought I’d give you a quick sample of some handbags I’ll be listing in my Etsy store in the next few days. They are both made from vintage scarves and I think are pretty gorgeous. I have seriously considered keeping one of them for myself, but I really want to get some handbags listed, so off they go!

If you want to be the first to know when they are listed just subscribe to the feed in my store.

Thanks! Hope you are having a lovely weekend.

I just found out about this wonderful event, and decided to join in on the fun.

It is created and organized by Lisa Oceandreamer at Heart of the Nest, the original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way.

So, to take part I am giving away one of my handmade necklaces!! It is a one-of-a-kind paua and glass bead necklace on a suede cord.  The centrepiece is a gorgeous piece of paua shell 2cm x 3cm which shimmers with blue, green, purple and pink. the cord is 45cm long and the dangles of glass beads and paua hang 8cm below the paua centrepiece. Put together, it is a beautiful, shimmery necklace with lovely movement and colour.

Paua is the New Zealand Maori name for the local species of abalone. To Maori it is considered taonga, or treasure, esteemed both as seafood and it’s shell as a valued resource for traditional and contemporary arts and crafts. It is iconic in New Zealand.

All you have to do to win it is leave a comment on this post telling me a little something about yourself. To give you some ideas - how about telling me what your favourite band is, or the blog you visit most frequently, or your favourite thing to do on a rainy day, or something new you just learned - anything!! The point of this event is to meet and get to know new people via blogging, so lets start by sharing something about ourselves. Please also include the URL of your blog so I can visit you.

Ok, the formal stuff - to enter you must have a working blog, leave a comment on this post with your blog URL and a little something about yourself before February 14th. This is open to anyone anywhere in the world. On the 15th I will use a random number generator to select a comment number. I will then post you the necklace that will hopefully attract lots of lovely compliments to you.

Good luck!!

I’ve done it! I’ve just listed my first 5 items on Etsy. Now it’s like the proverbial boiling pot - trying not to watch, but hoping some lovely people will like my jewellery and buy it!

Below are some samples, over to the right is a widget linked to the store, or you can go straight to the store by clicking here. 

This afternoon everything seemed to conspire to remind me how fortunate I am. The day didn’t start out so well (No1Son vomiting on himself and me in the supermarket!), but after he had a sleep and I had some quiet time everything just got so much better.

No1Son and I had the best time playing outside on a gorgeous afternoon - warm, sunny, humid, but with a cool sea breeze - just about perfect weather really. I pushed him in the swing (he calls it a “whoosh”) for ages, listening to him giggle while I took in the view from our front lawn and relishing the weather. Then lots more laughter as he rode his bike down the hill, then I pushed him back up.

What a lifestyle I have! Don’t be fooled - I have as much stress and worry in my life as the next person. But I do realise how blessed I am to be able to stay home to raise my wonderful son, to live in such a beautiful part of the world, to be outside in the fresh air on such a gorgeous day, to be able to pursue my dreams. Remembering these things on the darker days helps get me through.

Ok, so it’s seems appropriate to write a little about who I am, what I do and where I’ve come from. I won’t go into too much detail here about everything as I’d rather leave that for more topic-specific posts in the future.

I’m Michelle, a 30-something mum of one wonderful, funny, sweet, frustrating toddler who shall be known on this blog as No1Son. I’m Australian, but I now live in New Zealand with my patient, creative, successful, fabulous husband who shall henceforth be known as Mr N. My professional background is in Information Technology (IT) - before becoming a mum I was IT Manager for a medium sized winery. I really enjoyed this work, I just didn’t enjoy “working” as such - alarm clocks, office politics, inflexible working conditions, ownership changes, etc. The actual work and (most) of the people I worked with were wonderful.

My work was always very right-brained, technology based which I enjoyed. I love having a problem that needs solving, I like analysing current systems and coming up with better ways to do things and I like having set tasks that I need to complete and getting the satisfaction of finishing something.

 But, outside of work I have always felt very drawn to a left-brain type of life. When I dreamed about the perfect job it was never in an office, it was always creating something unique in a beautiful studio, working to my own schedule, hopefully making a reasonable income. As long as I can remember I have always made “stuff” - clothes for my toys, handmade cards, curtains and cushions for my bedroom, etc as a child. I then went through a stage of making cloth dolls, which I really enjoyed. Then it was mohair teddy bears (I actually sold a few too). But I have always loved wearing and buying jewellery and a few years ago I started making my own. Family and friends liked what I made, so I started making them birthday and Christmas presents. I realised that I lost myself and I lost time while I was working on jewellery. Being able to spend a couple of hours in a gem shop made my heart skip a beat. 

So, for many years I dreamt of escaping the office and making a living following my creative pursuits. But I never truly believed I could actually make a living out of it, I had family members depending on me, I got married and we had dreams for travel, a home, a family.  I doubted my ability to succeed - my inner critic constantly whispered in my ear that I’m not good enough, no-one will like my stuff, I’ll fail and then look a fool.  All these things stopped me taking this dream any further.

Then one day at work I was surfing the Internet and stumbled upon Another Girl At Play and it was a revelation - creative women living amazing lives, expressing themselves and actually making a decent living from it. This site was the start of quite a journey through the wonderful world wide web of successful, interesting women sharing their stories, information and inspiration. I now have over a hundred blogs I subscribe to (thankyou Bloglines!) that constantly inspire me.

Then in the space of 2 years I experienced so many huge things that led me to a place where following my dream became possible. My Mum was very ill, my husband and I were both made redundant from our jobs, we travelled the world, I got pregnant, my husband got a job in a different country, I became a mum. So I found myself a lonely stay-at-home mum with no plans to return to traditional work until all our (current and possible future) children are at school, I’m married to a man who is happy and satisfied in his new job, my mum’s illness reminded me to make the most of everyday. The Internet has provided me with the information and inspiration and life has presented me with the opportunity.

So I plan to take this opportunity to risk failure, to put myself out there to the world, to maybe feel totally satisfied in my creative pursuits, to hopefully have some fun along the way and maybe even make a little money!

 I hope to share here with you some of the process of setting up this type of business, the challenges of balancing career, family and home and anything inspirational I come across along the way.

I subscribe to “Notes from the Universe” at www.tut.com. From the web site - “These e-mails are designed to help remind us all of life’s everyday magic. Generally, the Notes are emailed out early each morning so that they catch you before you’re overwhelmed into thinking like the herd, on the days of the week you choose. These inspirational, philosophical and often humorous notes are meant to remind you of the awesome power you possess for the creative manipulation of “all things time and space” - especially your happiness!”

I have only just subscribed, but I am enjoying the daily reminder to focus on my goals and to be thankful.

Todays’ note is timely I think:

“It doesn’t get any more beautiful, any more magical, any richer, or any easier, Michelle, than things are right now. Until, of course, you start expecting it to. At which point, I hope you have a really good broker.

Expectation summons legions,
    The Universe”

Hello and welcome to the blog of Complete Fragments. Complete Fragments is my new business, selling one-of-a-kind and limited edition jewellery and fashion accessories. My name is Michelle, I’m a married stay-at-home mum of 1 very busy toddler who is the light of my life.

 I’m very excited to finally be establishing Complete Fragments - it has been a dream of mine for many years to focus on my arts and crafts and to try and make a living from them. This has been a big leap for me - my inner critic has held me back for a long time from starting this. But, finally I have sufficiently silenced the negative voices (not all the time, but mostly!) and I am making a start. Wish me luck!!

 Please come back and visit often as I share the trials, tribulations and (hopefully) joys of setting up a home-based, creative business.