New Year, New Projects, New Sales

Once again I waited way too long in between blogs. But that's ok, because I have so much to share with you, it will make up for the past month of silence!

It looks like I have yet to show you the LARP pictures I promised, so here they are:

Aren't these photos amazing? I love the high quality, and I think the guys look pretty badass! All I can say is that it must have been tons of fun, and I hope to one day participate in something like this for myself!

It would be impossible to list all the treasuries I've been in since the last Treasury Love blog post, so I'll just include the ones I've been in so far this year.
Victorian Romance
Hazy Shade of Winter
Lord of the Forest

The latest project I've just finished is a set of hair clips for a friend of a friend's wedding. She wanted gerber daisies, and each of her bridesmaids is wearing a different color dress, so each hair clip needed to be different to match the dresses. For the bride's hair clip, she wanted white daisies with pink middles. This was absolutely impossible to find, so what I did was take apart white and pink daisies and put them together to look exactly how she wanted them. She also wanted them to have a few sparkly rhinestones, and to include a bit of her sister's veil. (Her sister tragically passed away far too young.) So here are the pictures of what I came up with. She cried a little bit upon seeing them.

I was so honored to be a part of her wedding day by making these for her. I love to make brides happy, because I know from experience that in the stress of organizing your own wedding, having something turn out just the way you wanted it to is incredibly important. I'm glad I was able to do that for her.

I also have another wedding for a coworker coming up in late summer, for which I'm creating some lily hair clips. I will share those with you when I complete them!

Speaking of big projects, I have the biggest project I've ever had coming up. I've been requested by a customer who is in charge of costuming at a dance theatre in Italy to make 30 custom clips for a performance. The dance is about the seasons, and I will be creating 12 autumn leaf clips for the adult women, and 18 summer berry headbands for the little girls. I am thrilled to pieces to be a part of this project, and I will definitely be sharing pictures of the finished project with you! I'm crossing my fingers I get some pictures of the actual dance troupe as well, and that they will be great photography like of my LARP group.

SALE ALERT:

The last thing I want to share with you today is a major sale I'm having in my Etsy shop right now. I'd like to clear some room in my inventory for some new projects, and make my load a little lighter to take to the upcoming craft fairs this season. Therefore, I've marked down some of my leaf clips and a lot of my feather clips, in some cases more than half off. This is a great deal and I will only be doing it for a little while, so get them before they're gone! Also, I will be giving free shipping on any purchase of $25 or more. The shipping will be refunded to your PayPal account. This goes for any of my pieces, sale and non-sale. I hope this helps you get the pieces you've been thinking about! :)

Listening to: Nebelhexe

Autumn Products and Craft Fairs

I have two imminent craft fairs:

Autumn Art on the Marsh on September 25th in Horicon,

and

Watertown Fall Festival on October 1st in Watertown.

Those are the Facebook event links. If you aren't a fan of Facebook, you can look at my Webs page for more information on the events. (My Webs page doesn't have much else going for it right now; I am frustrated with its lack of photo storage. Anyone have suggestions for free web page hosting sites, or should I suck it up and pay for a website?)

I am really excited for autumn. It took me a little while to let go of summer; sometimes I feel like we rush to the next holiday way too soon around here. Halloween stuff was up at the beginning of August, and Christmas stuff is already being put out. We see holiday items for so long, that by the time we get to the actual holiday, we're already sick of it!

But Halloween is something I don't ever think I could be sick of, even if it lasted all year. I love the creepy decorations and horror movies and haunted houses and most of all, the costumes. I wish we had excuses to wear costumes all the time. If I could throw a theme party to get people dressed up in costumes at least once a month, I'd be a happy happy girl.

So as you can guess, I'm really focusing on costume pieces right now. Of course there are the faerie wings; I'm even working on a pair with a matching mask and headband all made specifically for each other. I have many other ideas for matching costume pieces as well, which I'll hopefully be able to finish before Halloween. In addition to those, I'm working on several more masks. Leaf masks seem to be more popular at this time of year, but I'm also working on a super-secret project relating to masks that I'm not ready to talk about until I successfully finish a few.

In addition to all these projects, I'm also working on a few personal projects (as always). I am experimenting with terrariums, and when I complete my first one, I'll post a picture. I'm knitting like crazy as well. I decided that to be smart, I should start planning my Christmas gifts NOW since I like to make my gifts and I often don't finish all the gifts in time. If I start four months early, maybe I'll have a chance this year! As you can guess, with all the projects I'm working on, my sketch-of-the-day series has taken what seems to be a permanent vacation. I really do hope to get back into it, but with the projects plus work plus networking online plus an actual personal/social life, time is lacking. I will probably do some on-and-off sketching, and maybe I'll pick the habit up again during the slow winter months. (Ugh, I can't believe I just said the w-word... I'm so not ready for that one yet!)

As another personal side note, Kim Boekbinder of my earlier blog sent me a thank-you package! True to her unique style, I opened an envelope made from folded paper to find a handmade fabric envelope with a bright yellow flower, and I opened the fabric envelope to find a thank-you card with a cut-out picture of Kim that appears to be drawn by the talented Molly Crabapple. Inside is my name on sparkly paper and Kim's signature. Also inside the fabric envelope: a handdrawn notecard with a tree bearing golden leaves, small blue and white silk flowers, random buttons, and fabric scraps with extra-sparkly sequins. Let me just say that Kim is amazing. She is so personable with her fans, and her style, once again, is so unique and fun. In fact, here's a pic:

Ok, I'm done geeking out, I swear!

Here, to make up for my geeklove, have some photos of some of my new products! :)