Throwback Thursday to my 'Straight Arrow' Beadwork from 2012 and a blog post I wrote about sharing work vs keeping it off the internet.

This is something I still haven't truly figured out, and which comes back to bite me in the bum on a daily basis as work-in-progress that I share gets spread around and people even travel around teaching it and submitting it to magazines. Sadly I have a whole saga (which has been in progress for 3 months now) about what happened with one designer and a magazine but for now I'm too weary of, and disgusted by, the situation to write it all up.

It's endless frustrating and I don't want it to destroy my creativity, or love of sharing, but it has definitely changed how I work and what I share. For example I no longer put photos of work in progress up on the internet and no longer take work in progress to classes.

It's a shame but I like to spend a long time on my designs and instructions to ensure they work for everyone and can be resized and altered as needed and that can't be rushed.
I also like to make sure that they definitely work if you choose a different colour scheme than I did and make sure any thread or stitch advice I give works. All of that takes time and a project can easily take me a year (or more) from first idea to launch, and sharing photos and ideas before it's done gives others the chance to swoop in and copy it before I launch. And that's no fun.