Age: 48
From: Canterbury in Kent, but work in Ashford.
Shop Name: Glowbiles. I use the name Prototyper on Facebook, and the UK Craft Forum, but have to use the name Glowbile on twitter as Prototyper had already gone.
Favourite colour / Favourite animal: I am a proper bloke so don't have a favourite colour or animal, but if you had to hold me down and listen to Celine Dion until I gave you an answer, I would choose Blue and Penguin respectively.
Favourite band: there are two, The Jam and The Clash (ask your mother kids).
Favourite film: has to be Gladiator ("At my signal, Unleash Hell"). Favourite book possibly "Catch 22" or "1984" (obviously a numbers thing). However, be distrustful of people who read things meant for 12 year olds- Harry Potter etc!
How did you learn your craft?
I'm afraid that my "craft" doesn't really fall into the accepted craft credo. In fact I was pooh poohed from one particular craft site for not being a real crafter. Our particular items are Glow-In-The-Dark hanging mobiles, which have to be made from injection moulded plastic for reasons I won't bore you with. However, they have been designed and assembled by me/us, and every single one is unique.Thus my craft was learned from my actual job, which is Prototyping (hence the name) and plastic moulding, something I have been doing since 1986 ( although I was actually trained as a Laboratory Technician and have an HNC in Chemistry).
Your eureka moment - tell us about your favourite thing you have ever made?
My favourite thing made was when we got our first glowbile made, assembled and tested and found that it actually worked.
Your "D'oh!" moment - tell us about you biggest crafting disaster
Because the idea is slightly different to some, it isn't like making, say, a necklace (not that I am denigrating anyone who makes jewellery, far from it), where you can undo it if you don't like it, it has to do what it supposed to do, and if it didn't glow through the night, then we had just wasted 2 years of our lives. That said, we had more than our share of ups and downs along the way. One particular time springs to mind. I was experimenting with different colours and knew that we could only put in a hint of colour or else it would swamp the Glow material. All was going well until I tried the merest soupcon of red. It was honestly too small to measure accurately. We had a small batch made and absolutely nothing. The red colour not only completely nullifies the Glow-In-The-Dark properties, but because it was there in such a small percentage, it looked disgusting. Imagine a yellow/green colour with an anaemic amount of red added. Attractive you'll agree.
Where do you do your crafting?
As you can now ascertain, my crafting duties only happen when we have no work on. So although its nice to make them, it usually means that my paying job is not going so well, so it is a double edged sword. Although we can't do the injection moulding on site ( it is a very specialised process), the actual Glowbiles are made up on site. We say that every mobile is unique, because there is no set formula to make these up. The beads are added as we see fit, and each birth stone is different from the next one.
Tell us a bit about your crafting philosophy
The philosophy is simple. Everything that we can do, we do. If certain parts have to be made outside the workshop, we get them done as locally as possible. They are the best quality, locally sourced, British made but best value for money that can be achieved. They are unique. Our biggest problem is to try and differentiate ourselves from the "Glow In The Dark" stickers you buy that disappear after 20mins. This product genuinely lasts a full 8 hours and has no external power requirement except for 15 mins of recharge using any light source.
Tell us why you think there are far more female than male crafters?
Normally crafters are women because they tend to be more creative than men. Traditionally men are the hunter gatherers, who provide the food etc, whereas women are the nest builders that make the home nicer and are therefore more creative. I believe this to be a genetic thing rather than a made up in my mind thing. At the sake of making a sweeping generalisation, many of the men who do crafting are a certain type, and not the traditional tub thumping male.
Tell us something surprising about yourself (non craft related)?
A surprising thing about myself, apart from being as atypical a crafting person as you could find, is that I have actually rung the New Year in using Church Bells ( back in 1978) and have run marathons and took part in the first ever London Triathlon, where an old gentleman on a push bike went steaming past me (it later transpired that he was Britain's fastest triathlete pensioner). If you saw me now, you would realise just how surprising that is.
What's the manliest thing you make?
Unfortunately I don't really make anything that is either manly or otherwise (I believe the term is gender neutral). If it were possible to make a man listen (being one I appreciate how unlikely that is), I would encourage them to take up crafting as it is an ideal way to not only relax, but make something that you can look at and think that I did that. I guess that the word "craft" is associated with more "feminine" past times, whereas if you were to encourage the increase of woodworking, metalworking, blacksmithing etc, more "manly"stuff, you might have more chance.
What would you say to encourage more men to craft?
Well having probably alienated both sexes, I'd better get back to work. I'm afraid that I haven't really checked the spelling and grammar properly. If you have further questions or comments, feel free to ask. If something hasn't come across right, I can happily reword it. Sometimes things sound right in your head, and when you read them back, they sound the same, but someone else reading them, they sound offensive. I hope I haven't done that. If I have it wasn't meant.
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