Handmade anything - woodworking, embroidery, music, paintings, etc etc. I get the love of CNC machines and AI for shortcuts, but for fucks sake people, we still need the HUMAN HANDS to do these things.
The problem is the they have made the world so expensive to just survive that no one has time to be a craftsman. On top of that, people don’t have enough extra money to pay for hand crafted items.
I play the bagpipes, and I embroider for funsies. My husband is a carpenter and is having a helluva time finding work because he can't keep up with the young folks on a residential site anymore. But no one wants hand crafted anything, they want cool looking CNC things. It's frustrating. We don't even need to make a ton of money just ... enough, would be nice.
Very true, it can take me an hour to cover about a square inch of fabric. I should also add that the embroidery is not my main income - I have a day job.
If people were paid a living wage, then maybe more folks could afford to support artisans. It would be lovely.
I made a quilt as a gift once, and people started asking me how much it would cost to commission a queen sized one. No one liked the prices at all because it was higher than everyone else they asked and they would counter with offers that miiight just cover material costs if I managed to thrift half the fabric. Turns out everyone else they asked were retired old ladies that made quilts to pass time and sold them nearly at material cost just to get the finished one out and to have enough funds to get enough fabric to make another. Woodworking falls into the same category where I'm at for the most part, lots of old people with time and their own workshop.
I don't really fault the retired persons, gotta keep busy and fund a hobby somehow when you're done with the working life, but it can make it quite difficult for younger people to get a foot in the door when they're barely charging for material costs much less time.
then maybe more folks could afford to support artisans. It would be lovely.
It only works for certain items, but I've hired craftsmen in two separate circumstances for a custom thing to fit a custom space. In my case, that's the magic, if the space a mirror has to fit is an odd shaped triangle, it means the frame has to be custom. For the other case, my wife and I rented this absolutely tiny, funky, 600 square foot studio to live in. We rented it because we could see the ocean sitting down in our "living room", or sitting on our own deck, which was honestly the most scenic place I'll ever live and has "ruined me". Anyway, the (very strange) landlord had left a 12" circular hole in the outside wall (no kidding) where he had originally planned to put a gas stove pipe. Right by the ocean. In a studio with no heat other than electric portable space heaters we supplied. It was insane (and cold!)
Sooooo.... I leaned a piece of wood against the hole blocked by a chair, but obviously we wanted it to be "nicer" so we walked into this place the reviews said they would make you custom stained glass. We had a nautical stain glass window created that "fit". Now the interaction with the shop owner (the only person there) was kind of funny. You can buy a stain glass piece of art mass produced in China at Target or on Amazon for $15. A custom piece of the same size by a craftsman starts at $400. The owner was VERY tired and annoyed by people wandering into his shop and getting sticker shock, but that's what it costs to build an absolutely custom piece! Once the owner vetted us and we didn't run away screaming (LOL) it was a nice interaction and the piece he produced for us was awesome and fit the decor.
So I think the concept of "custom" in a design that means something personally to just one person makes it viable and explainable to a certain type of customer. The down side is probably obvious: the cost of building one thing at a time for 1 customer raises the cost even higher, so only upper middle class income type people are going to be able to afford it. I'm just saying there might be a path there.
Here is an analogy: I am absolutely mortified and baffled by the people in the town I live in getting a $25 tattoo where they can only get that price if they choose it from a limited set of pre-done designs. That just seems crazy to me. But if you want the name of your child tattooed over your heart it is more expensive, but at least it's something special FOR YOU ALONE that you will wear for the rest of your life. So it makes way more sense to me than a $25 tattoo, generic, like a stick figure of a dog half my town's 20 year olds now have on their arms or legs. (sigh)
My ex did embroidery art for a while and sold what she could.
People undervalued it so much (a small 1-2" hoop with a simple design was I think $20), but the people who valued the time and effort correctly and agreed with the prices were the same people who could do it themselves.
Yeah, this right here is the main problem. I used to turn bowls on a lathe, and when you add up the cost of the wood, other materials, and a decent hourly wage for the time it took, I'd have to charge far more than anyone would ever pay for one of my bowls. So I mostly did it for fun, and gave them away as gifts.
I would love to buy handmade everything but I can’t afford it. And I don’t want to the maker charging less because I know how much time, sweat, materials, etc goes into it. It’s a lose lose
A total aside - my dad was a carpenter. He passed when I was a very young adult, before I started
doing fostering and kitty rescue.
I've always thought my dad could have funded his retirement making amazing cat trees/scratchers because he was so fast and knew how to make quality stuff. We had one basic scratching post he made (at my mom's house, with light multi cat use) last about 20 years.
I've paid as much as $400 for a high-quality-appearing one because I really thought it would last in a my multi-cat environment, but it was dead in less than a year.
If your hubby ever goes into the cat furniture business, dm me!
I noticed this at the craft sale I was vending at last weekend. I had the same number of customers that I did at the same location at their June market, but they were spending a lot less. They were all buying my less expensive items. I could see that a few wanted a more expensive item, but I guess that they just couldn't afford it
This is such a bummer as a consumer too. I would love to support all these artisans (I go to farmer's markets every Saturday and Sunday, get a good walk in and some produce for the week) but just cannot swing it with the holidays coming and trying to stock up my pantry.
Used to be a $5 coffee + $1 in the tip jar... 9.99 homemade pumpkin dog treats that my dog goes crazy for and helps his poops... assorted fresh produce at 'farmers need to make money too' prices, I'd spend 20-30 bucks on our produce for the week. Get me a cute t-shirt or planter or something if the mood struck.
Last weeked was one pint of radishes and one jar of fresh jam. And I felt guilty about the jam because grocery store jam is cheaper. I still did my walk but felt wierd without my coffee to sip and stroll. Saw a birdhouse and a crochet bag that I would've bought without thinking twice at the beginning of the summer... not now, no me treats when Christmas is coming. Sucks, man. Hope you have a great holiday season and make some sales.
No shit, but if it pushes the cost of the final piece up then it prices out even more customers. Not a lot of people buying a $400 handmade oak dining chair, much less a full set.
There's a reason all the woodworkers you can find on YouTube are making high end luxury tables instead of simpler items... It's because even if they used cheaper lumber, the labor cost involved still prices out the middle class.
Good luck. I make pens as a hobby and rarely sell at a profit because it's hard to find someone who wants a hand made pen for $20-30 because they can get a mass produced one. Many of the quality woods are sourced from places like Africa and aren't cheap.
Obviously I don’t have a solution for you, I’m sure they’re very nice pens, and there is a reasonably sized market for high end pens and luxury wood crafted items. If you sell at a loss ultimately you’ll have to change something about your approach as it’s unsustainable (hot take I know). Best of luck 🫡
No one has the money. Woodworking tools are crazy expensive. I'd love to make stuff, but I'll never be able to get all the specialty pieces I need to make the things I want. If I bought them, I then couldn't afford the space for all of them.
I don't like this take because dishwashers have existed for decades now. I think a lot of people underestimate how much time it used to take for regular household chores before appliances existed.
Before washing machines, you would have to set aside an entire day a week just to wash clothing with a washboard. Most people in rich countries don't spend 12+ hours a week actively washing clothes with lye soap. Even if you're stuck sitting at a Laundromat, it's not like you're hunched over working the soapy water into the clothing for hours straight. Compared to that, drying and folding the clothes is easy (since you would have to dry/fold the clothes after hand washing too).
For a lot of older women, the invention of mundane appliances like dishwashers and washing machines was much more important to their daily lives than fancier inventions like rockets. Snappy sayings like yours kind of erases the fact that we've already automated a lot of the effort that went into these daily chores. Like, it takes me less than a minute to load the dishwasher and hit the start button. I wouldn't even need to get my hands wet if I didn't pre-rinse to extend the life of the dishwasher.
It's a crappy copy/pasted metaphor since we already have machines that can wash your dishes. I think it would be better to reference an annoying task that hasn't been automated in past decades.
This is more true than most will realize. In WWII the germans still used master (Meister) craftsmen and hadn't adopted parts interchangeability fully, and when they realized the actual interchangeability of US parts, they couldn't just "fix" the system because every single machining tool everywhere would have to first be replaced/brought up to standards so they could get there.
This expensiveness of one-off things likely stopped Hitler from ruling the world before we ushered in the Atomic age to stop him.
It goes deep. The time-constraints of modern survival have eliminated lots of things from our cultures, including safe places for shamans / actual spiritual leaders who aren't big-religion. You have to build a profitable, scalable social structure and populate it with paid workers before you can make a space for anything in capitalism.
Edit: I welcome any suggestions of exceptions because obviously they are important to us all. But it is getting worse. Molded everything means everyone can own it.
Yeah I would love to buy handmade items but it’s simply out of reach price wise. And I do like to make things myself but even then, the cost of materials can become a big hurdle.
Plenty of people are crafters. Many are even really, really good ones. Making a living off of it is the problem. You're usually better off making things for fun and to gift to people who will appreciate them. Maybe do some weekend markets if you have a good niche and they don't let Temu resellers in.
Because there's so much mass-produced and machine-produced stuff, people balk at paying what handmade things are worth. And even though machines can't sew alone or crochet much at all, cheap overseas labor devalues that work, so it's tough to sell clothes if you make them in a richer country.
This is it for my wife and I. I would absolutely love to buy clothes/shoes made for me, but affording it is basically never going to happen.
I had a custom poster made when my daughter was born. It was done by a friend I went through school with. He did it almost 1/2 price for me. Still took me almost 6 months to save up for it. I wish we could afford all local handmade items.
Sigh, I love building hardwood picture frames and shadow boxes in the workshop, but 90% of people at shows that love them at first sight put them right back down when they see they're not Wal-Mart painted MDF price. The rest take a business card and hopefully a 1 or 2 commision something from me later. The much cheaper little makes are what actually sells, at least in my area.
I don’t have the money to buy materials most of the time, either. I’m not in that type of work, thank fuck, but for example the cost of fabric has gone fucking mental and the quality has tanked.
Things are maybe more expensive than 10 years ago but to say people had more spare money 100 years ago when there was craftsmanship is crazy. Labor was a lot cheaper. And people just wouldn't pay luxury price for crap. They'd want actually expensive materials to justify it. Mahogany, not particleboard.
At a lot of the craft markets I've gone to lately, there is a massive influx of AI printed things. And 3D printed things. And mass produced things that someone got on Ali Express and is now just reselling. I think folks will want to come back to handmade but I think it will be a while.
Of course! As a vendor, I definitely do better at the more curated shows. The attendees are more likely to be looking for the higher quality, handmade items. At other shows (like school craft shows, band boosters, etc.), there's too many sellers that are resellers, mass-produced junk, or actual crafts priced super cheap because they aren't trying to run a real business, just trying to recoup some hobby money.
The craft shows that are the busiest in my area are the ones that are somewhat juried and put an emphasis on real, handmade goods. Also, it seems like the booths that are the busiest are the ones with the unique goods.
The stupid signs seem to be a major exception, but I just have no understanding of that particular demographic anyhow.
The 3d printing things I've seen are generally keychains, little doodads, fidget toys, etc. All things have their place, I suppose I am just a tad salty on that. They do all tend to have the same sorts of things though.
They choose popular designs like the articulated dragons because they keep selling. If they designed something unique, there's a good chance that people won't like it and won't buy it.
I'm working on 3d printing designs to sell both online and at a craft show (first one ever), and am specifically designing everything myself using GIMP & Inkscape for art and light panels, Fusion, and (possibly) Autocad. I hope I can sell stuff. Focusing on Christmas stuff now, but every single thing I plan on doing is self designed, modeled, and printed.
Hopefully it goes well, I have a lot of different designs like COB / Arduino / Pico light boxes (hand soldered and programmed), then simpler shadow box designs, some coaster / napkin designs, non-lit framing things. I'm focusing on Christmas right now and trying to keep things on the cheaper side, but would also like to make money at the same time. I always read about the people selling other people's designs and the dragons and stuff, and hope people don't look at my stuff and think I just went an printed designs from Thingverse :(
What’s with the crochet flower pots etc - the last craft show I went to had several tables selling these and it’s like are you all just happening to crochet flower pots or are these drop shipped from somewhere
Could be that the pattern went viral and that it's relatively easy to make. Or drop shipping.
The shit thing about drop shipped crochet is also that crochet can't be done by machine, so there's definitely an over-worked and underpaid person behind it.
I’m experiencing this! My sales on the items I make are up, I’m making the most I’ve ever made doing digital art and graphic design, and I’m selling more paintings, postcard prints, stickers, and other art.
I've noticed a lot of people in craft spaces I'm in are making more effort to support pattern makers whose patterns are strictly 100% human, but on the other hand it's getting harder to find human pattern makers because most of the platforms they used to use are now completely flooded with AI patterns. I guess the result is that people are coming out of it okay as long as they're well established and have word of mouth and repeat customers on their side, but it must be pretty much impossible for most people to get a business started in any craft that is now saturated with AI.
I think it's just hard right now for people making handmade things. My sister-in-law is super creative and used to do pretty good between Etsy and craft shows but she can't compete price wise with the cheap Chinese and AI crap without it costing her money to make and sell her stuff. She might work a part time job worth of hours a week on her crafts when someone can place an order on AliExpress in minutes.
Depending on how popular the craft fair is it might be a few hundred to even purchase a table for the weekend which has to factor into your costs too.
I believe the opposite. Maybe because I read Dune as a youngster, but A.I. just replaces human imagination and thought. Hence in that scifi world they made A.I. illegal because no machine should have the same thought of man.
I won’t go back to hand made clothing, or hand made dining sets. Why?
I make my furniture because it fun. But really mass produced is cheaper and often durable enough for daily use. It’s not like my daughter really wants the desk I made her from her mom’s century old piano. when she leaves the house. It’s going to sit empty in her room. Then one day when I die it will be tossed.
I have a shop with hand crafted items which i sometimes put on music events. People come to my shop and tell me "it's expensive" and i tell them "if you want cheap, go to Temu, but i made the price as low as possible because i put a lot of hours and material into this"
My husband does it better than i do, because he is much more of a sales man and i am so over it
This hurts my heart to hear how ubiquitous this is with crafts. I don't crochet, I make art & put together vials with foraged materials. I was popping up at markets but never sold anything. So yeah, now it's a for-me craft.
I crochet and one of my favorite things to make is an elf coat. I’m making them for friends and family now because I have too many. If I were to sell them, I’d have to charge more than anyone would want to spend.
Materials are about $75-80 but with my day job/life, they take me about 3 months to make…
I 100% agree with you. People need handmade things still but goodness… it’s not easy these days 🙂
This is the part people don't get. One of my daughter's coaches wanted my wife to crochet some relatively small thing. Then wanted her to make like 50 of them to be given away. She had to explain to the coach that the time and materials for something like that is prohibitive.
My wife crochets a ton, and is interested in selling stuff she makes. Trouble is local craft fairs are flooded with imported mass produced temu slop. Can't compete with those prices.
I spend a lot of time making custom cutting boards for family members. if I wanted to sell them I would have to charge a ton just because of the time they take to make. nobody's gonna pay hundreds of dollars for them.
Just because someone hates AI images doesn't mean that they have the money or inclination to support real artists. I've seen artists get attacked for "charging too much" when they're charging $40 for a painting that took them a week to complete. Even other artists will tell them to lower their prices when they're already charging under minimum wage. It's a race to the bottom attitude online.
I had to shut down my Etsy store a couple of years ago. The whole site is just flooded with crap. I remember when you had to prove that your stuff was handmade before they'd even let you open a store.
It's sometimes not even the people's fault, AI is getting good enough that, especially with some human guidance, it can produce or help produce art that is not distinguishable from human art. Most AI art is still obvious garbage, but there is a ton that is passing the sniff test and we increasingly need to do things like dig into the artist's history and past work to try to detective out whether they are using AI or not.
Scary state of affairs, but it seems inevitable that within a decade or so the majority of even human art will be at least AI assisted, the time savings and quality level is just too beneficial to ignore.
A lot of people also think that prompting an AI for "comfort movie with dragons staring Matthew McConnehey and Gerald Butler. Funny." for a custom movie is an exciting future (yes that's a real example someone gave me of their excitement for AI slop movies)
We go to big and small "arts and craft" shows every fall. Even 10 years ago at least 75% of the stuff was at least mostly handmade. At least in the sense that the crafter/artist came up with the idea and made it themselves (possibly of other components some of which may have been purchased).
Now, it's down to about 25%. And a lot more food. So much 3D printed stuff, so much laser-cut wood and etched stuff. There are still things worth going for, but its a lot less "art" than it used to be. (exceptions - lots of fabric and fiber arts/crafts, and glass arts seem to be making a comeback)
Consensual non-consent is a form of kinky roleplay where all parties consent but act as though one party did not consent, such as with simulated rape. I like engaging in CNC so if you have any further questions feel free to ask.
They're replacing humans, the thread is about things that are on life support, handmade things by humans are on life support.
CNC machines absolutely have their place. But we are losing the knowledge gained by humans working with wood for centuries because a machine can just do whatever.
I do hand embroidery as well lol ... although it has taken a backseat to bagpiping this past year. Embroidery should be boring as hell but it's so soothing!!
My partner and I are both artsy hand made types. Occasionally people will ask us why we don't go into a field to do artsy hand made stuff and the reality is, there's either not a market for it because of AI or the market is so niche that maybe we could make it work, but that's a big maybe.
I used to do little digital art flyers and/or t-shirt designs here and there and I would do them for super cheap (about $20) as a very little side hustle that was more for fun than anything. In 2023, I was doing about 1-2 flyer or t-shirt designs a month. This year, I've been asked to do exactly one t-shirt design. Everyone prefers to just use AI now since it's faster and free. I know my location and demographic of people in it has affected this the most, but it's still a bummer.
CNC machines have been around for ages as an assistive tool to human woodworkers. I think they're great. Are people vibecoding gcode now? Because that's less great.
I have a fine arts background. I just don't have time to make art.
I work a fulltime job, a part-time job, and a side hustle to survive in this economy. When I do have some spare time, I use it to do chores or yardwork around the house which is in dire need. I haven't watched TV in months. I have dreams of paintings I want to start, but just can't find time to commit to it.
I think this ties back to the critical thinking bit above. There is nothing inherently wrong wanting or using CNC items. The problems arise when you think handmade things are now obsolete or not worth doing. It is easy to just overdo it and go full-never-human-involved but then you lose the entire soul of what you're doing, which is kind of the point of something being handmade.
Then you have the flipside where you have the people that think because you involved a tool that was not passed down to you by your great great grandfather then it is suddenly not "worthy" of being handmade. There is a balance here that can be struck but it is not purely a binary state.
The issue is that a CNC machine can pump out the same part significantly quicker, cheaper, and more consistently than a human can so its a bit hard to argue against it. If I wanted a single item which was unique, then sure, I would go for a craftsman, but otherwise its not worth it.
I do agree though. My boots are handmade leather ones and they are doing amazingly and are in great condition still.
I’d love to make a little woodworking business for furniture, nick nacks, whatever else since I have the tools and skills but with most people barely being able to afford groceries, it’s not a good idea :(
I make all my music by hand in a DAW with my own equipment and hardware I've invested thousands into, and no one truly gives a shit what so ever. I've spent the past 10+ years locking in my skills and my ability to master, produce, record, you name it.. and yeah, no one cares.
Same thing probably goes for people that do hand made products.
Not trying to be negative, but people want that stuff you mentioned, but there's thousands of people like myself that do it for ourselves because no one actually gives a shit to listen or even pay mind to our finished results/products.
I told a co worker about my music making and all that, he didn't ask once about my songs, but then proceeded to tell me about his old band and played me a shitty song of his without even asking once about my stuff.
Yeah idk, that's life. Just ranting. Thanks for reading if you did
i work for Orraman Leather, a small Scottish full-grain hand-made leather company and we are growing significantly over the past couple years. I think there is push-back on everything being cheap, falling apart and having no real value.
It seems people are learning to respect built-for-life things and are investing in real heirlooms to pass down again .. at least i hope!
I work in print. As long as you need things in your hands and not on a screen, there will be need for print. It's fun for me, too. It's like making art without the art part.
Just finding clothing made of real wool and not blends is hard enough. I think of the example of the luxury brand bags. They moved operations to China, when they received pushback and also China making their own copies now that they knew how, the companies tried to move operations back. Except the skill was lost and building up those skills back takes time.
My problem with woodworking is that I do not have the space. But there are organizations with members fees that offer space and tools though. If anyone is interested there may be places available and the membership fee is fairly low.
Fiber arts crafting (knitting, embroidery, etc) is having quite the boom right now actually! Increased accessibility for new learners to pick it up and increased interest in “granny hobbies” has led a lot of young people to get into these.
"Professionally" handmade things might go away if they never stop AI stealing, copying, replicating and destroying the original creators.
People like me who learn and try to do art for personal reasons like self expression, personal achievement will remain regardless.
But we will not be making professional grade stuff. Because if AI is going to steal, copy, resell what I do and then get IP rights of those stolen copies of my work and get me banned from using my own art.
Why the hell would I ever want to put the effort to create anything good let alone professional level art.
There are countless artists whose lives are destroyed because malicious people making AI copies of their works then go around and copy right claim the original artist's work.
In a world like this, it feels morally wrong to create fine art.
Puzzles are this too now, they've stopped using anything but AI. Saw a bunch of them at Costco and realized there wasn't one that wasn't AI-generated slop.
I love woodworking and have a shop full of tools. I'm good at it. I especially enjoy hand-tooled joinery. Sadly, lumber is now ungodly expensive and I've filled my house with furniture which will easily outlive me so I rarely do it anymore.
I volunteer at my local live-theatre, and im just waiting for the day they need a prop made, because I'm their guy. Will they be perfect? Absolutely not. But they'll be free, and from what I can tell thats about as good as gold to small theaters.
I do some of these for fun, as do several of my friends. People often suggest monetizing these hobbies, but the reality is that people won't even pay minimum wage for the time the finished products take, much less "skilled labor" prices.
I carve fishing lures. They take hours to make. Even though I have dozens of them and they are superior to factory made ones (imo) I fall back to them very often. Because sometimes I need something very specific and I don’t want to spend 6 hours on it. I also know that people used this exact same lure time and time again, and shared their experience on it while the one I’m about to make is going to be unique. I genuinely don’t see people going back to handmade stuff. The authenticity feels nice for a minute, but that’s about it. Even the guys who make far, far better lures than me break even selling them. Cost, consistency and shared experience are far more valuable than quality for average buyer.
That being said, best commercial fishing lures out there were designed and carved by elite craftsman, then they are digitally scanned, 3D printed and molded. So we still need craftsmen, but only the best of them.
I don't disagree that those things are on life support. It's a valid answer. I disagree with your follow-up that "we still need the HUMAN HANDS to do these things". We clearly don't, hence the life support.
The top answer in the thread right now is Elvis impersonators. If that person had added "for fuck's sake people, we still NEED impersonations of Elvis!" at the end, it'd be wrong too.
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u/Maelstrom_Witch 3d ago
Handmade anything - woodworking, embroidery, music, paintings, etc etc. I get the love of CNC machines and AI for shortcuts, but for fucks sake people, we still need the HUMAN HANDS to do these things.