Over the Memorial Day weekend, news broke of the impending closure of the popular lifestyle site Bluprint. I term it a lifestyle site and not just a crafting site because over the last several years, the offerings have expanded from quilting, sewing and needle arts to include such things as cake decorating, home decorating and photography. I’ve been a big proponent of the site ever since the launch of Craftsy ten or so years ago. I’ve spent a lot of money buying “forever” classes, and then on the subscription service when it was offered. I was one of the earliest adapters of the subscription model, and as an annual subscriber, received 12 credits each year to use on the “forever” classes. I would basically audit a class and then decide if it was something I wanted to keep long term before using a credit on a class. I have nearly 100 classes I’ve purchased in the last ten years. Nearly 100 classes I was told I would “own forever,” and now we’re told that Bluprint is shutting down.

The news has created quite the backlash in the crafting community, and people have demanded answers on what will happen to those “own forever” classes. In a letter to their members and customers, the CEO, John Levisay, claims that the platform is working on a way to allow people to download the classes they’ve purchased. But based on the talk across Facebook and other crafting communities, I think there is little hope for an acceptable resolution to this issue.

Personally, I will be content enough to be able to download my classes so that I can view them. It would be even better if I’m also able to download the materials that go along with the classes so that I can have everything. I’ve already downloaded all the patterns I’d collected over the years, so at least in that regard, I’m set. My concern is, if this news hadn’t leaked over the weekend, would we have known about the closure before it actually happens? Considering the knee jerk reaction of Levisay’s letter, I have my doubts.

I have seen varying responses to the leaked news – everything from outrage to resignation to incredulity that people would expect to have access to their “own forever” content, well … forever. In an unusual mindset for me, I will be honest that I never really thought about the possibility of Bluprint going belly up. To the contrary, when they were bought by NBC Universal, I had hope that they would make it a bigger, better platform with classes for all manner of artistic and crafty people. Instead, they tried to turn it in to an entertainment venue, and it didn’t work well. There were rumblings in the craft world from the instructors who had their contracts modified and cancelled. There was talk of instructor revenue being slashed, and disgruntlement among them. Still I hoped things were about to turn a corner and something would change.

I never dreamed it would be a complete shut down of the site.

The truth is, I’m disappointed. I’m a bit angry. I’m just not sure if I’m angry at Bluprint/NBCU, or myself for falling in to something like this. I am now suddenly distrustful of anything that claims “own forever” access. What about my embroidery designs I’ve purchased from various sites? Classes on other sites?

At this point, my plan is to download everything I can and put it on my personal Cloud. I am also considering buying a second Cloud drive to back up the first, because redundancy is not a horrible thing. All things considered, it would be less than ideal for me to download all the content and then lose it to a hard drive failure.

Are you caught in the closure of Bluprint? What are your plans to get your content off the site? Let me know in the comments.