twirling betty cake bunting now available – and you could win some!

I have written and deleted this post 10 times now. Later on I have to talk about something yucky and I don’t want to. But I’ve decided I must. But first…

THE GOOD NEWS

twirling betty cake bunting is now available in my Etsy and Made It shops. Hurrah, hooray, hip hip and all that!

And if that didn’t toot your horn (or whatever it is you do when you’re happy – and I’m not judging) I’m giving one of my lovely blog subscribers a chance to win some twirling betty cake bunting. Read on for giveaway details after the photos.

So far I’ve listed these three designs in my shops:

More designs will be listed shortly. Here’s  a peek of what you can expect.

THE GIVEAWAY!

EDITED TO ADD: All comments on this post up to and including Heather’s on 11 October 2010 are eligible for the giveaway. However, no further comments on this post will be entered. Entry can now be gained by commenting on this post. Sorry for the inconvenience but it is important to me that the issue outlined below is clarified.

To enter, you simply have to be a subscriber to this blog and leave a comment on this post. EDITED TO ADD: SEE PRECEDING PARA.

Entries close Saturday October 23rd at 5pm Australian EST. One randomly picked commenter will win their choice of any one of the bunting designs in this post (personalised or plain). Good luck my little twirlers!

THE YUCKY BIT

EDITED TO ADD: The issue outlined below has now been totally resolved. That proces is explained in this post on my blog and I unreservedly retract the implication I make below that Kiki La Ru copied my cake bunting. Please do read it to make sure you have the full story.

So, I’ve written and deleted this bit of the post (both in my head and on the keyboard) many, many times over the last few weeks. After all that, I’ve decided simply to say the following.

There are a few people making, blogging about and selling cake bunting now. In fact, there seems to have been a veritable explosion of it in the blogosphere the last few months.

I first came up with the idea of cake bunting – a natural progression from the fabric bunting cards I have been making and selling in my online shops since late 2009 – back in January and blogged about it here. I then posted this tutorial for it which was featured on both Whip Up and One Pretty Thing both of which have over 10,000 subscribers each. In other words, it’s been seen by lots of people.

To be frank, it annoys me a great deal me that certain people are now passing this idea off as their own. I am TOTALLY open to anyone who can show me someone else had this idea before I did but as far as I know (I’ve done extensive searches of the web  both at the time I came up with idea and since) I was the originator of this idea.

And in the absence of any evidence of origination by anyone else, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that there is some copying going on.

And it might seem a minor thing but it is important to me that you know about this. Otherwise there is the risk you might think I have copied the idea and just jumped on the cake bunting bandwagon – when it is in fact, I believe, the other way around.

I’m still deciding exactly what to do about the copying and commercial sales of this idea but in the meantime I’m going ahead and selling the ORIGINAL (!) twirling betty cake bunting, as I had always intended to do, and hoping people might slowly start to realise that mine was perhaps the original inspiration for the cake bunting that’s cropping up all over the blogosphere.

You can’t stop the flow of creative ideas on the web – and I wouldn’t want to. But pretending someone else’s idea is your own is just not cricket, people. It’s just not cricket.

Look, in the end I know it’s simply some scraps of fabric, some thread and two wooden skewers. We’re talking neither high-level art or design here but we are talking twirling betty’s little idea. And as I pointed out in my last post…from little things, big things grow.

What do you think lovely readers? What would you do? (You don’t have to respond to this question to be entered in the draw for the giveaway by the way, all comments, are eligible)

THE REASSURANCE

PS: Hello to all my lovely new subscribers who have arrived from Ashley Ann’s fabulous blog. I just want you to know (and I think those who have been reading this blog for a while would attest) that I generally try to keep the negative stuff to a minimum and the goodness to a maximum here on the old tb blog. But since I also work hard to make this a place where you get to hear the real me, I also need to occasionally recount the less lovely things that happen. But stay tuned, k?  There’s goodness galore on the way.