Blogging is a GREAT way to show off your projects, to stimulate conversation and to create interest in the crafts or craft products you're working with.  Pictures, video, audio, links to relevant blogs are important components to any blog and Crafty Nation's blog authoring tool allows you to integrate many of those.  Before I get into the specifics of the Crafty Nation blog publishing tool, I want to point you guys to the blog of a dear friend of mine, Chris Brogan.  Chris really has a smart perspective on the dynamics of social media and always has terrific blogging tips.   The best blogging recognizes the work and ideas of others with link-love and uses different types of media to convey ideas.

Let's get started with YOUR first Crafty Nation blog!! When you first log in to Crafty Nation, you're taken to your start page.  This is your launchpad to the entire site.  On quick way to get started writing a blog is to click on "My Blogs"

From there, just click on "New Blog Post" which takes you to the blog editor.

The blog editor gives you a bunch of tools to format text, add images, add text links and embed video, audio, and pictures from third party sharing sites (think Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket).  Moving left to right, let's take some of the formatting tools you'll use the most.

• on the left, the "Body" icon toggles between the HTML editor and the WYSIWYG editor

• that big "A" icon changes the font color (useful to change text link color)
• the "chain" text link icon opens the "insert/edit link" dialog box
• the "tree" icon opens the "insert/edit image" dialog box

The other formatting tools are pretty typical of most publishing platforms and should be familiar.  Every single picture on Crafty Nation, either your own in "My Photos" or images from other users, generates code snippets that allow you to use them in your blog posts.  In addition to images, embedding video, audio and images from third party sharing sites (think Flickr, Utterli, Photobucket and YouTube) is a snap.  

MOVE ON TO PART 2