CraftedLink Is Here: Give Every Crafted Piece a Voice

CraftedLink is live today. If you buy something crafted — a tray, a carved sign, a keepsake — the piece itself can now carry its own story: a photo, a few words, maybe a voice recording, sitting behind a single tap of a phone. No app to open first. No account to make. Nothing to charge, ever.

Here's the whole mechanism in one breath: a tag about the size of a coin, thinner than a veneer, gets set into the piece and sealed under the finish. You can't see it and you can't feel it — that's on purpose. You tap your phone where it lives, and the piece's page opens, right there, for as long as you own it.

One quick word choice, because it matters to me: I say "crafted," not "handmade." A good share of what leaves my shop starts on a CNC before a hand tool ever touches it, and I'd rather be exact about that than reach for the cozier word. Honest is the whole point of what I'm building here.

Three kinds of tags, from day one

The simplest is the included Crafted page — as of today, every order out of my own CraftedCarvings shop carries one at no extra charge, and tapping it opens a page with what the piece is made of and who made it. That page carries the same written ten-year term as every paid tier, counted from the day it goes live — free doesn't mean second-class here. One step up is the Link, which points the tag at a web address you choose — a family site, a photo album, wherever — and you can repoint it later without ever touching the piece again. And then there's the story page, in three sizes — Snapshot, Story, and Together — a hosted keepsake page that grows with the story: photos, your own words, a voice recording, even video, up to a page with room for the whole family's memories. Editing what's already on any page later costs nothing extra within its own size; only moving up to a bigger one does, and only for the difference. Prices live on the Etsy listing, not here, so there's exactly one place to check and it's always current.

I didn't build this and hand it to strangers first. My own wood trays carry these tags — sealed under the finish, same as I described above — and have for a while now, from before today. Tap one and it opens straight to that tray's page: what it's made of, who made it, the story behind it when there is one. It's the same tag, the same tap, the same kind of page a buyer of yours would get.

How those ten years of hosting actually get funded, what happens if I ever had to close this down, what a "save your own copy" button does — I take all of that seriously enough that I already wrote a whole post about it. I won't repeat it here; it's a few posts back if you want the details.

It's also launch day for CraftedTracker, the tool-tracking side of what I build — same idea, different problem: tap a tag, see the whole history. More on that from its own corner.

If you make things — custom orders, personalized keepsakes, anything with your hands in it — and want your own pieces to carry a tap like this, I'd love to talk with you about it — write to me directly, that's how it works right now, no self-serve signup yet. And if you're the one buying or receiving something crafted, look for the tag. It means there's more to the piece than what you can see, and it isn't going anywhere for a decade.

Every crafted piece has a story, a reason, a purpose. Now it can be shared. I didn't write that line for a launch page — it's the actual reason I started this. Thanks for being here on day one.

— Jennifer