Introduction to CraftWorld

How to Join CraftWorld

Although you can enjoy some of CraftWorld's benefits without joining, for the full experience you'll need to Join. The good news is, joining is easy and it's totally free!

Creating a Profile Picture

It's a great idea to upload a Profile Picture so that your friends can recognise you on CraftWorld. (Or if you're feeling too self-conscious to post a personal picture, why not upload a fun picture instead - perhaps of your cat or dog?)

The Inspiration Gallery

In the CraftWorld Inspiration Gallery you’ll find thousands of inspirational crafting ideas, video guides and step-by-step walkthroughs. Inspiration may come from your favourite craft experts or from other CraftWorld members. It’s even possible to add your own work to the gallery (see "How to Share Your Creations on CraftWorld", below.)

You can use the white filter buttons at the top right of the gallery to filter your view. Instead of displaying All Types, you can show only Posts, Videos, or Step-by-Step guides; and you can choose to sort by Most Recent or Most Popular.

Underneath this, there's an option to filter down the results to only show items with specific tags - things like Christmas, Birthday, Floral, Stamping and so forth. If you start typing a word, after a few characters you'll see a list of tags in the system which match watch you've typed, along with counts for how many items have been tagged with that word. Click on the word to add the tag to your filter.

You can use up to five tags in your filter. If you want to remove a filter to show more results, click on the cross within the pink tag. To remove all filters, click Clear Filter.

The icons underneath the pictures in the gallery show how many Likes, Shares and Comments each item has received, and you can click on these to Like, Share or Comment on a project yourself.

When you see something really fabulous, just click on the picture to explore it in detail.

The Social Feed

The Social Feed is where you can see all the latest updates from your friends, the groups you’ve joined and the experts you follow.

To get started, you can Invite a Friend, Join a Group or Follow an Expert. You’ll then start to see updates in your feed.

When you see something fabulous, you can use the icons underneath the post to Like it, or Share it, or Comment on it.

You can also post your own updates by clicking the Create Post button at the top of the Social Feed.

How to Share Your Creations on CraftWorld

It's easy to share your creations with other CraftWorld members, from various places around the site - click the Create Post button on your My Profile page, the Social Feed, or in Groups you are a member of; or click the Upload Inspiration button on the Inspiration Gallery page.

A box will appear enabling to to write a little bit about what you've been up to, or even paste in the links to any YouTube or Vimeo videos you want to share. You can also select pictures, videos or other files to upload.

You can choose whether your post can be viewed by Anyone, just your Friends, or just yourself (which can be handy if you just want to keep a record of your own work).

If you've added a picture or video, you can tick the Add to Inspiration Gallery box, and your work will be shared in the gallery for all CraftWorld members to enjoy. When you tick the box you'll be prompted to select various categories to describe your project, so other members can easily find it. Click Share Post to submit it. Then head to the Inspiration Gallery to see your work (although it might take a few minutes to appear there).

CraftWorld Forum

Everyone on CraftWorld has access to the Forum. This works like a traditional Web bulletin board, where you can create a new Discussion or reply to an existing Discussion.

The Discussions list shows all the conversations going on between CraftWorld members. The icons on the right show how many times the discussions have been Liked, Shared or Commented on. If you see a discussion you want to get involved in, click on its title in the list.

If you can’t find an existing discussion about something that interests you, why not start a new Discussion? Just click on the Start New Discussion button, enter a Subject for the discussion and then add a starting point for the conversation. Your new discussion will be added to the Discussions list so other crafters can respond to it.

Popular discussions can have hundreds of responses so CraftWorld breaks these down into pages, which you can jump between using the number icons at the top and bottom of the page.

Groups

Groups are places where you can get together with other members to discuss common interests.

There are hundreds of groups on CraftWorld, and you can browse through them by clicking the Discover Groups button. When you find one you like the sound of, click on the group to learn more, and to Join the group.

If you can’t find a Group dedicated to your passion, you can start a new one by clicking Create New Group. You can give it a name, upload a logo, write a brief description, and choose whether it should be Publicly visible with all CraftWorld users able to see its contents, whether or not they’ve joined the group; Publicly visible with the contents only visible to group members; or private so that the group is not listed on the groups page, and only you and anyone you specifically invite will ever know about it.

Experts

Many of your favourite craft experts are active on CraftWorld, and you’ll find them here. If you Follow an Expert, things they post will appear in your Social Feed.

Using CraftWorld on your mobile phone

CraftWorld has been designed to work not just on computers, but also on tablets and mobile phones. To add a CraftWorld icon to your mobile phone screen, so that you can quickly get into the site wherever you happen to be, just follow these steps:

Android phones: Launch Chrome for Android and open the website or web page you want to pin to your home screen. Tap the menu button and tap Add to homescreen. You’ll be able to enter a name for the shortcut and then Chrome will add it to your home screen.

Iphones / Ipads: Launch the Safari browser on Apple’s iOS and navigate to the website or web page you want to add to your home screen. Tap the Share button on the browser’s toolbar — that’s the rectangle with an arrow pointing upward. It’s on the bar at the top of the screen on an iPad, and on the bar at the bottom of the screen on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Tap the Add to Home Screen icon in the Share menu.

This page was last updated on 10th December 2020.