First Official Craft Fair Booth!!

I know this is loooooooooooooooooooong overdue, and I apologize but I have just been so incredibly busy these last..wow, has it been 10 months?!?!

Anywho, I wanted to share with you all how my first ever official craft booth went back on 11/1/14!!

I had gone to bed late the night before, it was Halloween after all and we had our yearly party with friends over till well after midnight, so when the alarm went off at 6:30am, I did NOT want to get up! But I still needed to make sure I had all the things I would need as well as, **sigh**, make a last trip to Wal-mart to get things I hadn't bought before. By the time my mom got to my house, the car was packed, I was back from my errand to Wal-mart, I was sans coffee but I was ready for my first ever craft booth at the Cedar Park Recreation Center!! Whoo!!

My boyfriend followed us on his motorcycle so that he could help setup the canopy I was to use, and we got there around 8:45am with a crisp breeze and the sun just barely making its way up over the horizon. We got the canopy raised and positioned between the 2 vendor tents on my sides and got the car unloaded with my tables and stock. Boyfriend said his farewells and went to hang out with his brothers, and my mom and I got started setting up!

The full-ish setup...the Xmas tree is front right and you can barely see it....

We opened up the tables, set the tablecloths/pretty curtains on top and I started putting out my merchandise to sell. The wind however had different plans... I couldn't use the 2 cardboard based displays I'd nabbed from my 2nd job working retail because, well, they were light-weight cardboard and the wind was too much. I also couldn't use my little easels to hold up my jewelry boards (from my Easely Amused display) nor the wood necklace/earring displays as the latter were being knocked over by the breeze and the easels just...slid...on the tablecloth/curtains I'd put on the tables (the curtains were sheers so verrrryy slippery...whoops!!) That's ok, I can work with this, everything just has to be laid out on the tables instead, that's not *too* bad...right?

The tree with a few of the perler ornaments on it....and a brass picture easel attempting to hold it down against the weather.

I also, in my non-preparedness, hadn't yet decided which mini canvases would be ornaments, sooo.... yes, I was also attempting to glue ribbon to some of them in order to hang them on the tree along with the perlers that needed only an ornament hanger pierced through a bead and they were ready to hang.

My front table display was a 2' fake desktop Christmas tree however, as I was going to be putting my perler sprites and mini art canvases on and around the tree/table, setup as ornaments. As I wasn't prepared for the wind, I had no weights to hold the tree down, so the tree ended up falling over about 3 or 4 times, but we just kept picking it back up, putting the ornaments that had fallen off back on, and it was fine!

The early morning sun by this time was peaking through the canopies so a better picture was not to be had. :(

One of the biggest problems I had however, was that I hadn't had time to price everything before we got there that day. I will NEVER do this again!! Why? One, it shows you're unprepared, so the shoppers that walk by while you're still pricing may be confused and/or feel that you're unprepared, and so may just walk on... Two, it makes it impossible to really catch anyone's attention and be friendly or have a discussion if you're distracted trying to make sure everything is priced after the fact! Also, I was unable to price all the individual pieces of jewelry so instead, I ended up putting price tag stickers on the TABLE within groups of items that I felt were similar enough to be priced the same. This entire way of doing things not only added extra stress to the morning, but made even myself confused on prices here and there later on!! It's better to price things when you're calm, at home, and can really assess how much you feel is acceptable for selling your hard work.

Some of my single perler pieces and tic-tac-toe sets, mini canvases off to the side, and a nifty little container for my cards!!

Mom, don't take it now, I'm not ready!!! Also, we moved the scarves over the perler/art table since they weren't visible off to the side where they were before.

There's also the added fun of trying to get people interested in your wares when you have so much going on, and yet, so little, all at the same time. I'm glad my mom went with me as there were a number of older shoppers there and she was able to start conversations very easily with them, so that helps a great deal of getting people in the booth to at least look. I feel as though I was ill  prepared in ways of marketing and getting people's visual interest seeing as how there was a variety of things and no real "specialty", there wasn't a good advertising type banner or display (perhaps behind the perler/art table would have been good), but with my lack of weather watching, all of my items were flat on the table with the exception of the Xmas tree in front, so there wasn't really much to draw people in!

Ha! Got her back..... lol Also, the whole setup, minus some of the business name flying in the wind...I *really* wasn't prepared for the winds.

I'm still not 100% exactly what the guy in the booth next to us was "selling".

You can see how I had the jewelry in the middle, but also had my clutches and tablet cases on the outside edges. Both to try and have a visual variety, but also....they were heavier and helped somewhat keep the curtains down through the wind.

Another item I realized after a while.... I had absolutely NO idea what kind of crowd there would be at this event. I had been warned to research the venue and the shoppers that might attend, to not even have a booth this year in lieu of this proper research, but I wanted to dive in and try my luck! It was only a $50 booth fee after a while, no biggie, right? I didn't research well enough who would be there, what a good price range of gifts would be, much less take into account the season!! People were preparing for Thanksgiving, but they were also SHOPPING FOR XMAS PRESENTS!! Duhhh......

This means I should have had more general gift items, things that you could purchase for a mere $5-$15 and could give as a gift whether as a stocking stuffer or an actual gift.

At some point after we'd gotten everything priced, and displays were staying put (the wind started dying down thank goodness), I decided I'd follow one of the pieces of advice I'd seen online while preparing for the show! I would... LOOK BUSY!! Yes!! So....I started gluing magnets on the back of some of the perler sprites to give them...added appeal? Yeahh.... I'm not sure what I was thinking on that one myself. Really, I should have been working on an in-progress scarf on a loom, or perhaps brought some paints and canvases to make some fresh that day.... **shrug** Ya live, ya learn, yeah?

For those of you curious, below are the two cardboard displays that I nabbed from work and was REALLY super excited to use, of course, until the wind.

Double decker display for smaller/mid-size stuffs (was planning on making more tablet cases if I could in the future to really utilize these guys.

That "shelf" looking piece isn't nailed down so it can move back and forth, or just come out. Excuse the picture quality, I only got to take quick pics while they were in the back of my car. :)

All in all, I paid $50 for the booth for the event, and I took home about $150 for the day, which makes $100 profit for my first ever craft booth! I figured it was an exciting accomplishment and worth celebration, so I took my mom to a local pub down the street from my house and introduced her to Hard Cider ;). She's not much of a drinker, so just one of these made her smile, and the second started making her giggle...ahh, it's the little things, isn't it? :)

I learned a LOT of valuable lessons from this event, and there may be too many to share, but I wanted to share with you some of the biggest things. 

In my next post, I will go over a simple list of the biggest things I learned from my first official craft booth!

Craft ya laters!!

It's been awhile....

I've been working on a post to tell you all about my first official craft fair over the last few months from last November....this last year has just flown by in an absolute blur however.

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog and if you'll bear with me, I would like to just share what's been going on for me.

I was working a 2nd job towards the end of last year for a little extra cash, but also because I enjoyed being able to spend ~20hrs/wk getting paid to talk to people about crafts and getting deals on buying my own supplies (at Joann ;) ) and it was pretty alright, it just made me a little extra tired during the weekdays at my desk job.

I quit working at Joann in February 2015 as I believed I was 5 minutes away from being promoted to being a full-time trainer at my day job since I'd been doing training responsibilities off and on for years, and had just finished an 8-month 'pilot" of sorts performing various training and project management (for building training materials) responsibilities and tasks. Instead, management determined not only that they did not want to have a full-time trainer, much less that person be me, but that I should be removed from any and all training tasks I'd been doing and I was moved back to full-time on my main project in Support.

As training is and was a pretty big dream of mine at this company, and I'd put so much into that goal for so long, this was a pretty heavy blow to my emotional stability. I was down and depressed for 4 months up until July hit and I sat down with my manager in my monthly one on one...with HR....to be given a written warning for my performance. I was caught quite a bit off-guard however as I'd been having monthlies with my boss in that period of time and he'd never mentioned there was a problem, and I didn't think my performance could be *that* low!!

July passed and I worked to improve my performance, but also took the last week of the month off to go out of town with my boyfriend to just get away and relax....The relaxing didn't do much good however as the day after we got back in town, I received a call from my mother telling me that my father had a heart attack earlier that morning and passed away. My boss allowed me 7 business days bereavement, but admitted that company policy usually is only 3 days, and it was barely only enough to take care of my mother and brother who'd flown in for the week (since he moved to Alabama 2 years ago) and neither of them were able to manage helping me with the tasks too terribly much. My brother was able to go to the funeral home with me the first time to help make general decisions on the funeral arrangements, but was unable to help any further as he was having difficulties, rightly so, concentrating for lengthy periods of time. It's easier for me to get through tough situations like these when I have tasks to focus on, so I was going what felt like non-stop that week in organizing the funeral with the home and being their main point of contact.

Anywho, I went back to work after the week and a half had passed, and of course had trouble focusing still for a few more days. Continuing on after the "main event", I was having to deal with additional stress as my father had taken care of EVERYTHING for my mother for 40 years (celebrated 4/20/15) and so I had to work to teach her how to adult (and still am working on teaching her these things...) My boss said he understands, and to just deal with whatever I need to as long as I'm getting my work done as well. I did what I could, but when I sat down in my next 1x1 with my boss mid-October, HR was there again. This time, I got questioned as to why my performance had still not gone up to where they expected it to be. I tried to stay calm but after the 4th time asked, I did happen to mention "perhaps I'm not quite over my father dying...????" They didn't seem much fazed and still gave me a final written warning, that if I don't get to where they expect me to be performance-wise by end of December, I'm to be let go.


In trying to ensure I was doing my best, I was running queries on my performance daily for the next 2 months and for all I could tell, I was doing fine; great even since I was usually in the top 2, maybe 3, of my team of 7! Alas, I was called in to a meeting room by my boss 12/10/15 and was informed that my work was not getting to where they want, steadily enough, and so they would have to let me go. No numbers, no stats like the other times, only the above statement and that I was "no longer a good fit for the company."

**siiigh**

It's been almost 3 weeks now and I'm not even mad or upset. I was vaguely shell-shocked at first, and for the first few days or so, nervous about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to find another job and help make money to pay the bills.....To be honest though, I was absolutely MISERABLE working there at this point and just about dreaded going in every day.

My boyfriend and I discussed and decided that for the month of December, there's just not a whole lot going on in the ways of finding a new job; searching for new postings to apply to or anyone in the office to even interview! Therefore, I will re-start my job-search in January and in the meantime, I have taken these weeks to decompress and spend some time on me. I have also gotten a LOT of cleaning done to de-clutter and get the main entertaining areas of our house looking much better for when friends come over...especially for Xmas!

I have also been working on my craft room (yes, again... I knooooowwww...it's just SO hard keeping organized!) and might share that progress with you tomorrow. I spent 8 hours alone in there today and am maybe a little less than halfway done? That sounds so pathetic, I know, but I am only just getting out of the major depressive funk I've been in since February, and my dad's passing sending me to the lowest I've ever been in my life, and so I have not been in the mood to keep up with any cleaning. Each time there was even an attempt, things were just tossed in to my room until it was just about impossible to walk in there or even climb over anything to anywhere in there.

If you've gotten this far, I want to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read and let me share a little of my life this last year with you. I did do a little crafting throughout this time, and I hope to share that all with you as best I can recall (and find as many pictures as I can since I had to replace my phone and may be missing some....) but I felt bad for being gone for so long. Also, with posting this, I hope to not have to go over any of the main emotional parts again (unless there are any questions/comments and I will try my best to answer/respond to any that you have) and hope to just be able to try and get back to a bit of normalcy with crafting and telling you fine folks about what my hands and mind have been up to!

Again, thank you and as always...craft ya laters! :)

Another Mini'd Rendering of Full Size BYOB Piece

I had my first ever craft booth this past Saturday, and I want to update you all but it will definitely take time to do even close to the amount of information I learned and want to update on here, so keep an eye out this week for that post (or maybe those 2/3 posts? We'll see how much I end up writing up!) 

In the meantime, I wanted to do a quick post to show one of the last mini art pieces I painted to put in my stock for the craft show!

Remember when I painted these pieces with my bff Airon at the BYOB painting sessions?

This post here

This post here

The third one we did, I only just realized I never blogged about to show you! But here's the piece we did:

As you can see in the first picture and below, I created miniature pieces of all 3 to mimic what we did in those sessions. This last one I only just made Thursday night however:

I'm really really glad I made this one though, and I think especially for doing it in a 4"x4" size, bc there was a woman that saw it and FLIPPED!! She just *had* to have it, along with these other pieces:

 

I'm thinking I might just have to paint some more pieces in the 4"x4" size....

Craft ya laters!

Embroidery Hoop Art - French Knots - Fire

A few months ago, I got interested in trying out some embroidery hoop art, and in particular, I wanted to work on some french knots. In the same vein as miniatures like the miniature art canvases, I bought a bunch of 3" and 4" hoops. I started working on one of the 4" hoops and wanted to do a design similar to this:

Only, I didn't want to worry about beads this time, I figure I'll just practice the french knots. So I got some brown cotton and some batting, put them in a hoop, and get started! I got some shades of red, orange and yellow going..(please excuse poor photo quality on these, I wasn't even sure how it would look out so photos weren't a top priority for me along the way....):

Ok, not too bad... messed up a couple of the yellow ones (far left and about an inch to the right of that one...) but off to a good start, I think.

Now to fill in the red some... 

Nearly all of the red is filled in and working on the orange and a little on the yellow now...

And done! I decided (much through feedback from friends mind you) that it'd be better to not fill in the entire area of the piece, and to just sort of phase out towards the top left corner. Also, I was about done with this thing as it took me around an estimated 22 hours!!!!

I think it's safe to say that I'm about 95% efficient at doing french knots now lol!!  I don't ever want to do a french knot again, but at the same time, I kind of can't wait to try some again! Maybe even in a smaller hoop and/or bigger knots all around, and even maybe try to add some beads for shine and spacers.

Craft ya laters!

Perler Bead Tic-Tac-Toe Sets

I almost completely forgot to show you guys some of the perler bead sets I made a few months ago and just never got a chance to blog about!!

The idea of perler games came to mind, and when I saw this one online, I just couldn't resist making one myself!!

Mario mushroom tic-tac-toe set made from perler beads.

Then the idea came up so I went online to get ideas of what looked best for small versions of Mr and Mrs Pac-Man along with the ghosts and this is what came next:

Mr and Mrs Pac-Man tic-tac-toe set made from perler beads.

The bff, Airon, is really enjoying crossfit and has found it as a passion and so when we were talking about the previous sets, of course it was logical that we'd come up with something like this!

Crossfit tic-tac-toe set made from perler beads with kettle bells as pieces and barbells as the grid.

What do you guys think?! I'm thinking maybe putting magnets on the backs of the boards and then the pieces so they could be put up on a wall, or for anyone that has a travel tin, the pieces could be kept in there and then the metal of the tin used as the magnet backing for car travel games and such!

Craft ya laters!!

Craft Show Prep - Miniature Galaxy Art, Daisies, Starry Nights and Display Ideas

I hung out with a friend of mine this last Saturday and we ended up getting some crafting done! I believe I was actually the most product craft-wise in that 4 hours than I have been lately....I really need to work on that one...

Anywho! She's been getting pretty into papercrafting and gave me this piece she'd done before:

And she got this one done while I was there:

I can't wait to see what else she comes up with!

So, what did *I* get done in the 4 hours we were hanging out? Well, I think I mentioned to you guys before about using some mini canvases to re-create a couple of larger art pieces I did at Easely Amused here, but not that I'd been on a huge miniature art kick earlier this year that was the reason behind even having those miniature canvases! 

Those little art canvases are so awesome! You can get in sizes like 2"x2", 2"x3", 3"x3", 2"x4", etc... I'd gone to a local art store and gotten a ton of them because I was seeing online lots of cute things you can do with them! They sold them in packs of 6 and were about $5-$7 a pack. These little things are perfect for use as doll house art pieces, putting on a little trinket shelf, or for me, the appeal is putting on my wall at work since I have a desk job and only so much space to display art and things. 

I also love the miniature canvases because I don't have to be a great artist to get a small piece of art that actually looks pretty awesome! The Starry Night especially is one of those cases where if I tried doing the detail of the tree tops on a bigger canvas, say, 2'x3' or something I would have taken FOREVER and still not felt like I got it just right.

Now, I haven't sprayed these guys in an acrylic gloss sealant but I wanted to show you what I got done. I will show you guys what they look like after I spray them though as they should pop just a tad bit more on the colors, similar to what resin does on the clay pieces I've done.

The whole set.

Galaxies - Top left is 2"x3" and then 2"x2" canvases, bottom row are all 3"x3" pieces.

Daisies - This piece is 2"x4".

Starry Night - This little guy is only a 2"x2"!!

There were a couple of these that I painted what I thought would look good and then completely painted over and started again, but hey, I'm pretty happy with the results! Now I just need to do more!

I was also given an AWEsome suggestion by my bff, Airon, about what other pieces I could do. She suggested I do some sets as Xmas ornaments by doing some wintery/Xmasy themes and putting ribbon on the back to hang them by, and sell them for something like "Any 3 for $12". What do you guys think?

Also, I've been thinking about how to display them and have seen this idea which I think is cute:

Seen here from Two Hand Design blog.

Or maybe something like this:

Seen on Jamie's Home Blog here.

I want to mix the two ideas above and make something that's maybe about 1' wide by 2' high, with a hinge, so really there would be 2 pieces that are each 1'x2' and instead of using 1/2" quarter round for the shelves, I'd use 1/2"x1" quarter round so there's enough space for the canvases to be leaned back.

For the Christmas themed pieces, ornaments and such, I have bought a 2' tall (tabletop type) green fake Christmas tree so I can display the ornaments on that. I'd be able to use a clip and put a yellow paper star on the top, and that could be my price sign!

Craft ya laters!!

Prepping For My First Craft Show Booth Has Begun!!!

Hey guys!

I know it's been a loooooooooong time since I've posted on here, but I've been focusing a LOT of my energy on my day job. I am working with the Director of Business Process Improvement to build training documentation for my company as we haven't had a trainer or training team in quite awhile. My ultimate goal is to become said Trainer and be in charge of the training and documentation for the company, but it's taking a lot out of my mental time to be able to handle the tasks as a pilot training team lead in addition to doing my actual title the rest of the day. 

On top of that however, I have gotten a 2nd job at the place we (nearly) all know and love here in the states, Joann Fabric and Crafts, for many reasons:

• Employee discount (duh!)
• Happy stress compared to some of the bad stress at my desk job
• People interaction I don't get sitting at a desk, sometimes talking to people on the phone and my co-workers
• The moving around instead of just going home and sitting on my butt like normal
• Learn new things all the time about crafts and supplies
• Get paid to talk about something I LOVE doing already anyways!
• Opportunity to attend classes and learn even more
• First dibs on occasion on some of the AWEsome fabrics we get in

Anywho, I've only been doing that a month now, but have already have it benefit me in my little wanna-be craft business! You see, I could never really figure out where all the small craft shows and fairs were happening, how to get in touch with the coordinator to get a booth and especially didn't know anyone else that was going to these things!

A couple weeks ago however, I was cutting a bunch of fleece for a woman and she was chit chatting to her friend about spending her "craft show funds" on this fabric. So, I did what any intelligent person would: I asked her, "Um, soooo what craft shows would you happen to be talking about?"

She and I had a little conversation about it being a craft show a few months ago but also about a show coming up on 11/1/14 in my city and when I told her, "See, I can just NEVER find out about the ones that DON'T cost me $200+ for a booth!! How do you find out?!" she simply replied, "Oh, you have to start going to the shows to find out about more......(cue my face freezing in shock!)....I can email you the flyer if you'd like..?" I had to refrain from jumping up and down as I excitedly said, "Yes! That would be fantastic!! Thank you!!"

And there you have it folks! I have the information, have talked to the coordinator, gotten the vendor application form just about filled out and now all I have to do is send it in with the measly $50 it'll cost me for a full booth of 100 sq ft and TA-DAAA!!! I'll be attending my first craft show as a vendor EVAR!! 

Only problem is now... making sure I plan out whatever displays I want to use, I've talked with a friend about sitting at the booth with me......... UH OH!! I don't actually have that much stock to put out!!

I guess that just means I will be taking every opportunity (except for this past Sunday as it was my first weekend day off in a MONTH so you bet your patootie I sat there watching tv and napping all day!!) to make what all I can!!

On the roster/application I've got:

• Jewelry
• Clutches
• Purses/bags
• Scarves
• Perler sprites
• Miniature canvas art
• Embroidery hoop art - 3" - 4"

I already have all the jewelry I've made through the years without selling, and I have the clutches that didn't sell when I had that consignment before, plus the displays I'd made for both.... Now I just have to make some of the other items I listed up there and figure out displays, enough to fill what I can of a 100 square feet space!

This should be....easy?.........oh goodness.....