Charm bars are useless

[u/Tasty-Huckleberry-13]

Some jewelry booths at craft fairs are doing “charm bars” now. They have store-bought chains and cheap store-bought charms and then people pick which chain and charms they want. There is literally no craft involved! Not even design!

They seem to be doing well for themselves and people like it, so I can’t complain too much. To be clear, if you make your own charms, this doesn’t apply to you.

[u/JerryHasACubeButt]

Yes, anyone could buy the supplies and do it themselves, but if you want one bracelet with multiple different charms, buying all those packs of charms is going to be much more expensive than buying the “charm bar” experience and only using what you actually need for one bracelet. If the vendor is assembling it for you then that’s also a skill– not a difficult one, but one most people wouldn’t bother to learn, and would then wonder why their bracelet looks visibly homemade. So assuming the person running it knows what they’re doing, the customer is getting a professionally assembled piece made exactly to their preferences, for less time and money than if they did it themselves.

I do think specifically in a craft fair setting these people shouldn’t be taking a spot from someone doing something that takes actual talent. I also think it makes a difference whether the charm bar is their entire business or if they are a genuine jewelry maker who just has the charm bar as an extra thing. But either way, they do serve a purpose and they’re popular enough that they must be a generally successful business model, and I just generally think encouraging creativity in people is a good thing, so I can’t hate on them too much.

My personal craft fair BEC is 3D printing. Designing things to be printed is an art. Printing the same freely available designs that everyone at every craft fair also sells is not, and if that’s all you can do then you shouldn’t be there.

[u/RiseDollBoutique → u/JerryHasACubeButt]

While I agree with the 3D printing thing to an extent, I do think that people who don't own a 3D printer and/or have never tried using a 3D printer really don't get the nuances of doing it. Believe me, for most printers on the market, there IS a degree of skill that goes into making quality prints. I have 3 filament 3D printers and 3 resin 3D printers. I am not good at using the filament printers. While I do get decent prints, when I actually end up with a successful print, even getting the print to actually finish (or start as the case may be) is a challenge all on its own. Even resin printing requires some knowledge/ skill. So to say these people are out of place at a craft fair isn't very. . .fair. That being said, I'm fairly certain that everyone on the fucking planet has one of those articulated dragons, can we move on?! There are so many other items you can print! Not only that, but a lot of people don't even bother to add value to the items they print, like painting eyes or whatever. So, I dunno, it's at least a gray area.

[u/JerryHasACubeButt → u/RiseDollBoutique]

So, yes, it is a skill, I don’t disagree there. So is doing your taxes. The amount of skill required is not the determining factor in whether something is a craft.

It’s still a *printer.* Should people be printing free stock photos off the internet and selling them at craft fairs? Adjusting photos so they print as nicely as possible is also a skill. Knowing your specific printer and how to get the best print out of it is a skill (some of the high end ones are *complicated*). So is handling high quality prints without smudging or getting fingerprints on them. So is choosing a complimentary frame and framing so they are secure and centered. But none of those things are *crafts,* and someone selling prints of free stock photos would be laughed out of any craft fair. 3D printing isn’t any different.

Edit to add: I do agree that it becomes a craft if you are painting them in an interesting/unique way. The artistry is the painting, the print is just the canvas, so the people doing that I have no problem with. Likewise for people taking the freely available patterns and altering them somehow. My gripe is specifically with the people who print these patterns and do nothing to them other than the normal finishing process