Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal data Caramba Crafts (carambacrafts.co.uk) collects, how it’s used, and the choices you have. Caramba Crafts is a hobby sewing and cooking site run by Isbelis, and nothing on the site is sold directly through it. Last updated 22 August 2026.
Who we are
Our website address is https://carambacrafts.co.uk. Caramba Crafts is owned and run by Isbelis, based in the UK. You can reach us directly at hello@carambacrafts.co.uk with any question about this policy or your data.
What personal data we collect
We collect personal data in a few limited ways: when you leave a comment on a post, when you contact us by email, when you subscribe to our newsletter, and automatically through analytics cookies when you browse the site. We don’t ask for payment details or create visitor accounts.
Comments
When you leave a comment, we collect the data shown in the comment form (your name, email address and any website you provide) along with your IP address and browser user agent string, to help with spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (a hash) may be sent to the Gravatar service to check whether you use it. The Gravatar privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment is approved, your profile photo is visible to the public alongside your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, please avoid uploading ones with embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the site can download and extract location data from images.
Newsletter
If you sign up to our email newsletter, your email address (and name, if you give one) is stored with our email provider, MailerLite, so we can send you updates about new sewing patterns and recipes. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send. MailerLite’s own privacy policy is available at https://www.mailerlite.com/legal/privacy-policy.
Cookies and analytics
This site uses Google Analytics to understand how many people visit, which pages they read, and roughly where visitors are browsing from. Google Analytics sets its own cookies and collects data such as approximate location, device and browser type, and pages visited. This information is aggregated and doesn’t identify you personally. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites using the browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
If you leave a comment, you may opt in to saving your name, email address and website in a cookie for your convenience, so you don’t have to fill them in again next time. These cookies last for one year. If you visit our login page, a temporary cookie checks whether your browser accepts cookies; it holds no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. Logging in sets further cookies to save your login details and screen preferences, and editing or publishing an article stores a cookie containing that article’s post ID, which expires after a day. None of this applies to ordinary visitors reading the site.
Embedded content and social media
Some pages include content embedded from other sites, most often our Instagram feed (@caramba.crafts) shown through the Smash Balloon plugin. Embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website directly. Instagram (Meta) may collect data about you, set its own cookies, and track your interaction with the embedded content in the same way it would on instagram.com, particularly if you are logged into an Instagram account at the time.
Affiliate links
Some posts include affiliate links, mainly through Amazon Associates and the Awin network, and Caramba Crafts may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases made through these links, at no extra cost to you. Clicking an affiliate link takes you to the retailer’s own site, where their cookies and tracking apply, not ours. We don’t pass any of your personal data to these networks ourselves; anything they collect happens on their own site under their own privacy policy.
Who we share your data with
We share data with the services that help run this site: MailerLite (email newsletter), Google Analytics (site statistics), Automattic/Gravatar (comment avatars), and our hosting provider, IONOS, which stores the site’s files and database. If a site administrator requests a password reset, their IP address is included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
Comments and their metadata are kept indefinitely, so follow-up comments from the same person can be recognised and approved automatically rather than held for moderation. Newsletter subscriber details are kept until you unsubscribe. Analytics data is retained according to Google’s standard Analytics retention settings.
Your rights over your data
Under UK GDPR, you can ask to see what personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how it’s used, subject to any legal or administrative reason we may need to keep it. To make a request, email hello@carambacrafts.co.uk. If you’re not satisfied with our response, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.
Where your data is sent
Comments may be checked through an automated spam-detection service. Some of the services above, including Google Analytics and MailerLite, may process data on servers outside the UK; where that happens, they do so under their own approved data transfer safeguards, such as the UK/EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Children’s privacy
This site isn’t directed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy occasionally, for example if we add a new tool or plugin that changes what data we collect. Any changes will be posted on this page.
Contact us
Questions about this policy or your data can go to hello@carambacrafts.co.uk.