There are groups on Facebook that are set up just to illegally share intellectual property of small business owners that are just trying to make a living for our families.

I grew up crafting, my Mom (who passed from Cancer at 51) was an avid crafter. She passed that on to her three girls. She had her own small business selling dough ornaments "Rollin' In Dough" and she worked the craft fair circut for a long time. She was so proud of herself. My Dad was successful in his career in sales and I'm not sure we needed the money but she LOVED that feeling of being able to provide. Crafting gave her that opportunity.

I'm in a different space. 15 years ago I learned graphic design for a Marketing job and when I got my Cricut machine right after I had my 2nd baby Sophia it was like my crafting heart came flooding back to me. I felt myself connecting to my Mother in a way I haven't been able to since she passed away. It helped me so much with the postpartum depression I was dealing with. I poured myself into my crafting and slowly I started to use my graphic design background to create my own svgs.

Shortly after I decided to create my own business. Just a side hustle that actually turned into way more of a hustle. I called it Beauty of Two as it really does take two... the designer behind the designs and the crafter using that design to create something beautiful.

Lately, there have been lots of groups popping up on Facebook geared for the sole purpose of sharing these digital crafting images illegally. I'm unsure why Facebook is actually allowing this. Many of these group names have the word "FREE and SHARE" just in the name alone. Some of these groups have upwards of 250,000 members. There is no place to even report these easily to Facebook. If you do try to report for something else to alert them to it they send a canned automated response (likely from a bot) that the group is not violating Community standards.

I also want to comment today on how disheartening that is for a creative. I pour my heart and soul into this business of mine. I lose sleep and my mind continually races with ideas that flood my head, but I love it, I love creating. It's unfair for people to steal things and share things that they don't have rights to. We rise by lifting others. I would hope that the designers behind the scenes, that create these images that people love to use could be respected for doing so, as every human should be respected for doing their job, whatever that may be.

I would also hope that Facebook as a company would show some integrity. They need to understand that some of these "groups" are nefarious in nature and it's dangerous on a psychological level to create spaces with no oversight allowing group think mentality to take over.