Facts and Fictions.
So, I went ahead and made all of my filtered stuff just friends-only. I have made all of your comments on past ones invisible, as they were said in confidence. Here, they're going to stand, and going forward. It's all coming out in the open, and if need be, I will make everything public. [ETA: I have made this public and after consideration, screened comments because they were written under friends-lock.]
I had a good chat with a friend I respect who has an impeccable record re: integrity issues, and she told me that I should entirely name names if it comes to it. We'll see, though. It was a good talk, though, and reassured me that people I thought would think less of me after only hearing one side of the story, as she had, don't at all. A big relief.
However, I did want to do a fact-check on things I know Alicia's been saying, some of which you might have seen. This, for instance, was published to a very large crafting group, SFEtsy-- the San Francisco street team, and sums up a lot of what she's been saying in other venues (emails as recent as early summer, etc):
Claim: I copied her photography style, phrasing, & style of descriptions.
Truth: I never copied her photography style, because I'm not really sure what she's referring to. We both take pictures of items lying down and on neckpieces. We use different props. I don't know what else she could be referring to, because it's not like she has a distinct photography style (like hyper contrast or soft pastels, which I've seen with other sellers on Etsy). We're both kind of point and shoot, capture the item accurately. Although she has on occasion chosen to use the same backdrop paper as me. Specifically, the one with a predominant "carte postale / post script" markings - which I already was using, mind. Again, this is verifiable by our Etsy sold orders if you wanna go look. Check around summer '09 - early '10. As for phrasing and style of descriptions? I'mma need to see the receipts on that. I'm an English major, I write all my own copy, and I do not plagiarize.
Claim: I copied her banner redesign.
Truth: LOLWUT. Go look at her banner. Now look at mine. Do they look... remotely similar to you? Yes, last year, I redesigned my banner. My old one was through my former graphic designer, STypecreative. It was heavily steampunky. I don't do steampunk jewelry very often anymore. So instead I made a new banner that more accurately described my brand and the kind of jewelry I create. It's still there today, though I reserve the right to change my own shop banner in the future, as the need strikes. Hey, Starbucks redid their logo this year. They might be copying too. Better look into that.
Claim: I copied her by going into wirework.
Truth: She was doing wirework before me, it's true. I think she started her "signature wirework" (her wording) in December 2009, with a series of pieces derived from tutorials from other Etsy artisans like Galadryl, Julida Designs, and Danagonia. I started developing wirework skills when I was hired for my job at Terra Firma, a metals and beads shop. I was hired in September 2009. Part of my job is to do demos and create inspiration pieces/ tutorials for the customers who shop there. I demo wire (wrapped and forged), basic stringing, and resin. There was nothing "random" about my developing wire skills-- if anything, I considered it getting paid to learn!-- and I have no idea why "random" is in quotes, as it's certainly never something I claimed. And I love wirework, so I incorporated it into my own work, posting some forged wire pieces in early 2010. I probably wouldn't have gone into wirework had I not gotten that job, but I'm glad I did. It's just another skill in my skillset, which I hope will keep growing.
Claim: I copied her by going into PMC.
Truth: To the best of my recollection, we debuted silver PMC leaves very close to one another, mine coming first. Because of my own experience, I know that she probably had been looking into PMC for some time-- stetup and costs are high. You gotta get a firing method, textures, sculpting tools, and various metalworking tools. It cost me something like $700 at the outset just to get the basics, and well over a month until everything I ordered arrived. So it's not like it's something you can buy and do overnight on a whim. There is a lot of planning involved. The fact that we did it so close, I'm guessing, is coincidental. We had not been livejournal friends for some time at that point, and as her journal is locked, I have no way of knowing how long she'd been planning to do PMC. I don't think she copied me here, is what I'm saying, and there's no way I copied her.
Claim: I have done work derived from her work.
Truth: Yeah, no. The timeline actively disproves that. But hey, that's a nice switcheroo you just tried.
Claim: We only talked because I "got wind" she suspected me of copying her.
Truth: Bullshit. I contacted her after her Yule '09 update to discuss similarities where her work had followed my work in '08-'09. She claimed that she was pregnant with her daughter and not online a lot during the pregnancy and after, so she hadn't been looking closely at my work. She said this is why several of her later works resembled mine, and that it was coincidental. At the time, I believed her. Silly, silly me. She did have concerns at that time that my work was too close to hers-- the two examples she gave was that my Black Widow too closely resembled her Tangleweb (Black Widow had been a revisit that premiered in Autumn '08 and thus predated Tangleweb by a year), and a bracelet with skulls on it, though she had sold said bracelet off-site and did not have a photo to reference. We left that conversation on a positive note, agreeing that the similarities were coincidental. In retrospect, it was the first incident in a long pattern of, um, "coincidences."
Claim: I made thinly-veiled posts/tweets about her.
Truth: True, mostly. Every time she'd copy something else, or do something else shady and unethical, I'd post about it to the posts that are now only friends-locked, where they had been filtered. A couple did contain links to the copied stuff I was talking about. Mostly they didn't, though, because if you knew who I was talking about, you didn't need links. You already knew. As for "thinly veiled"? I assume she's talking about this, which wasn't actually about her at all. But if the shoe fits, I guess. I will say I never took aim at her artistry. I've said time and again, she's good at what she does. Her finished products are usually gorgeous. Which makes the copying even more sad, imo.
Claim: I look at her site once a week.
Truth: I'mma need to see the receipts on that. I do check occasionally, to be completely honest. One reason is that customers send me "hey, this looks suspiciously close to yours" emails. The others is to double check that what I'm posting in my update isn't too similar to what she's done, because I don't want to give her ammo to claim that I'm copying her. Not that she needs, you know, a valid reason or anything.
ETA: That said, she will probably see a spike in my viewing her sites (blog & Etsy) this week because I looked at a lot of things (sold items/her guess the gemstone contest's timing) in order to verify that I was accurately presenting information.
Claim: She doesn't look at my site.
Truth: Here's the year-to-date Google analytics on that.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
So. Basically. That's the last I have to say about this unless I need to make it alllllll public. Don't really want to, but if she continues this bullshit, it'll happen. She's lying, and lying shamelessly and blatantly at that. I am going to kick back, try to relax, and do my best to forget I ever knew her. Never fuck with a Virgo. We have facts.
I had a good chat with a friend I respect who has an impeccable record re: integrity issues, and she told me that I should entirely name names if it comes to it. We'll see, though. It was a good talk, though, and reassured me that people I thought would think less of me after only hearing one side of the story, as she had, don't at all. A big relief.
However, I did want to do a fact-check on things I know Alicia's been saying, some of which you might have seen. This, for instance, was published to a very large crafting group, SFEtsy-- the San Francisco street team, and sums up a lot of what she's been saying in other venues (emails as recent as early summer, etc):
I want to offer a perspective that you may want to at least consider.
I have had my own issues with a copycat. She was a former friend, so
she knew my work and had exposure to my personal blog where I would
show my current work, sometimes talk about ideas, goals, and upcoming
concepts. My suspicions mounted for over a year of "coincidences" in
various things like photography style, phrasing, style of
descriptions, banner redesigns, and derivatives of my actual jewelry.
I chose to take a left turn with my creations and picked up wire work
to get her off my heels (which she, "randomly", started doing a month
later, and again with PMC). At that point, things were getting obvious
enough that over a dozen people, independently of each other,
contacted me with concerns. That's when I knew I wasn't imagining it.
It gets worse, but this is the tl;dr version of it.
Here's the catch: once she got wind that I suspected her of things, we
had a difficult but honest private conversation about the issues and I
thought, naively, that things would get better and we'd both step back
from each other. HOWEVER, that very day she began a smear campaign *on
me*. Suddenly, I am the onecopyingher. For the past year, since last
autumn, has made various blog posts and Tweets that either plainly
(with links to my shop) or passive-aggressively (thinly veiled
potshots) make stabs at my ethics, reputation, and artistry. Funnily
enough, I haven't been to her site at all this year, and Google
Analytics shows her on mine once a week.
Etsy is rife with problems like this, some worse than others.
I just wanted to offer a summary of my story so that you can consider,
and make certain, that you are okay with all the possible outcomes of
taking this more public. I don't want a potential turning of the
tables on you to blindside you if it happens. I was definitely
blindsided.
--
~Alicia
Claim: I copied her photography style, phrasing, & style of descriptions.
Truth: I never copied her photography style, because I'm not really sure what she's referring to. We both take pictures of items lying down and on neckpieces. We use different props. I don't know what else she could be referring to, because it's not like she has a distinct photography style (like hyper contrast or soft pastels, which I've seen with other sellers on Etsy). We're both kind of point and shoot, capture the item accurately. Although she has on occasion chosen to use the same backdrop paper as me. Specifically, the one with a predominant "carte postale / post script" markings - which I already was using, mind. Again, this is verifiable by our Etsy sold orders if you wanna go look. Check around summer '09 - early '10. As for phrasing and style of descriptions? I'mma need to see the receipts on that. I'm an English major, I write all my own copy, and I do not plagiarize.
Claim: I copied her banner redesign.
Truth: LOLWUT. Go look at her banner. Now look at mine. Do they look... remotely similar to you? Yes, last year, I redesigned my banner. My old one was through my former graphic designer, STypecreative. It was heavily steampunky. I don't do steampunk jewelry very often anymore. So instead I made a new banner that more accurately described my brand and the kind of jewelry I create. It's still there today, though I reserve the right to change my own shop banner in the future, as the need strikes. Hey, Starbucks redid their logo this year. They might be copying too. Better look into that.
Claim: I copied her by going into wirework.
Truth: She was doing wirework before me, it's true. I think she started her "signature wirework" (her wording) in December 2009, with a series of pieces derived from tutorials from other Etsy artisans like Galadryl, Julida Designs, and Danagonia. I started developing wirework skills when I was hired for my job at Terra Firma, a metals and beads shop. I was hired in September 2009. Part of my job is to do demos and create inspiration pieces/ tutorials for the customers who shop there. I demo wire (wrapped and forged), basic stringing, and resin. There was nothing "random" about my developing wire skills-- if anything, I considered it getting paid to learn!-- and I have no idea why "random" is in quotes, as it's certainly never something I claimed. And I love wirework, so I incorporated it into my own work, posting some forged wire pieces in early 2010. I probably wouldn't have gone into wirework had I not gotten that job, but I'm glad I did. It's just another skill in my skillset, which I hope will keep growing.
Claim: I copied her by going into PMC.
Truth: To the best of my recollection, we debuted silver PMC leaves very close to one another, mine coming first. Because of my own experience, I know that she probably had been looking into PMC for some time-- stetup and costs are high. You gotta get a firing method, textures, sculpting tools, and various metalworking tools. It cost me something like $700 at the outset just to get the basics, and well over a month until everything I ordered arrived. So it's not like it's something you can buy and do overnight on a whim. There is a lot of planning involved. The fact that we did it so close, I'm guessing, is coincidental. We had not been livejournal friends for some time at that point, and as her journal is locked, I have no way of knowing how long she'd been planning to do PMC. I don't think she copied me here, is what I'm saying, and there's no way I copied her.
Claim: I have done work derived from her work.
Truth: Yeah, no. The timeline actively disproves that. But hey, that's a nice switcheroo you just tried.
Claim: We only talked because I "got wind" she suspected me of copying her.
Truth: Bullshit. I contacted her after her Yule '09 update to discuss similarities where her work had followed my work in '08-'09. She claimed that she was pregnant with her daughter and not online a lot during the pregnancy and after, so she hadn't been looking closely at my work. She said this is why several of her later works resembled mine, and that it was coincidental. At the time, I believed her. Silly, silly me. She did have concerns at that time that my work was too close to hers-- the two examples she gave was that my Black Widow too closely resembled her Tangleweb (Black Widow had been a revisit that premiered in Autumn '08 and thus predated Tangleweb by a year), and a bracelet with skulls on it, though she had sold said bracelet off-site and did not have a photo to reference. We left that conversation on a positive note, agreeing that the similarities were coincidental. In retrospect, it was the first incident in a long pattern of, um, "coincidences."
Claim: I made thinly-veiled posts/tweets about her.
Truth: True, mostly. Every time she'd copy something else, or do something else shady and unethical, I'd post about it to the posts that are now only friends-locked, where they had been filtered. A couple did contain links to the copied stuff I was talking about. Mostly they didn't, though, because if you knew who I was talking about, you didn't need links. You already knew. As for "thinly veiled"? I assume she's talking about this, which wasn't actually about her at all. But if the shoe fits, I guess. I will say I never took aim at her artistry. I've said time and again, she's good at what she does. Her finished products are usually gorgeous. Which makes the copying even more sad, imo.
Claim: I look at her site once a week.
Truth: I'mma need to see the receipts on that. I do check occasionally, to be completely honest. One reason is that customers send me "hey, this looks suspiciously close to yours" emails. The others is to double check that what I'm posting in my update isn't too similar to what she's done, because I don't want to give her ammo to claim that I'm copying her. Not that she needs, you know, a valid reason or anything.
ETA: That said, she will probably see a spike in my viewing her sites (blog & Etsy) this week because I looked at a lot of things (sold items/her guess the gemstone contest's timing) in order to verify that I was accurately presenting information.
Claim: She doesn't look at my site.
Truth: Here's the year-to-date Google analytics on that.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
So. Basically. That's the last I have to say about this unless I need to make it alllllll public. Don't really want to, but if she continues this bullshit, it'll happen. She's lying, and lying shamelessly and blatantly at that. I am going to kick back, try to relax, and do my best to forget I ever knew her. Never fuck with a Virgo. We have facts.