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! :)

Introducing: Faerie Wings!

I have been a busy bee since that last post. I went camping for a week and spent the rest of the time working on that "mysterious project" of mine. Well, I unveiled them at the Riverfest craft fair, and since then I've put the ones that didn't sell on my Etsy site. So here they are: Faerie Wings!

I have really enjoyed putting these together, and this is just the first batch. I have plans for many more. I am trying to make some that match some of the masks I have available, for stunning Halloween costumes and more. In my Etsy listings, I've already suggested matching masks and accessories right in the descriptions. It is such a joy for me to see people get excited about them. I love all of my accessories, but I think costuming is my absolute favorite. I've always loved Halloween, Mardi Gras, masquerades (hell, my wedding was a masquerade party) so this is definitely the way I love to do things.

Faerie Wings section of my Etsy shop

In other news, I made it about two weeks with my sketch-a-day commitment until I kind of took a break. (read: I haven't done a sketch in about a week.) This is mainly because of the stress of the craft fair, but it's been almost a week since the fair and I haven't really made an attempt to get back into it, so I need a kick in the butt. I finally have a full day off that I'm not spending cleaning or re-organizing or listing Etsy items, so I have no excuse not to get one done today. Keep an eye on my Twitpic feed to see my sketches, my new products, and more. I promise I'll get back to it!

I have two fairs coming up in September, so I'm looking at another busy month. Speaking of things I haven't been keeping up on... Remember the walk I vividly described in the last post? I haven't taken one since, unfortunately. I've been suffering with knee pain for awhile, but lately, it has gotten much worse. I've been managing it with a knee brace and naproxen, and I made it through camping and hiking just fine, but I haven't braved a nice long walk in awhile. I want to do more walking before the weather gets too cold. I love autumn very much, but it is a bit of a depressive season as we head into the frigid winter months.

~Segue~ Speaking of autumn (lol) I have been listed in a few more treasuries, and made one of my own. Here are the links:
Deep in the Forest
What do you MEAN that was POISON ivy???
Autumn
Fall is Comming [sic]
All Hallows Eve
And the one I made: New England Beach

That is it for today. I will tell you more details of how the Riverfest craft fair was and all about the upcoming craft fairs next time!

Listening to: A Particularly Vicious Rumor
Pics: I was going to post a few more autumn-themed items, but Blogger is being stupid at the moment, so I'll add them next time! :)

Rainy Updates

One of my favorite craft fairs of the year is coming up in a few short weeks. I'm keeping very busy with preparing and creating more products. All of my usual products will be there; feathers and flowers for your hair, masks for your face, and my latest adventure, jewelry with its roots in natural materials. I am also rolling out a new product for this craft fair, and for many others after if it goes well. I don't want to give too much away just yet; I'll show pictures when I have a few more finished, but for now I'll tell you my house is quickly filling up with glitter.

For information about the coming craft fair, please see my Facebook page or my Webs page. (By the way, if anyone has suggestions for a different web hosting site, please let me know, as Webs is frustrating me with its lack of storage. I had to take down a lot of pictures just to put in a few new ones.) The Riverfest craft fair is a two-day event, with plenty of other things to do, including a carnival, live music, and more. The only frustrating thing about that weekend is that I could not manage to get off work for Saturday. I'll be there for a short time in the morning to set up and get started, but my lovely sister will be manning my booth for the rest of the day. I will be there all day Sunday, though. Stop by and check out what my glittery new project is! ;)

Oh, and I promised to tell you about my last craft fair, Oshkosh's Faire on the Green, but there's not much to tell. We got rained out again and left way too early. I wish we could have stayed; things were going very well until the rain. We were next to a goat milk soap vendor I bought soap from at the last craft fair, very good stuff! They have a local farm and do everything by hand; from raising the goats to making the soap, which they mixed with other great natural ingredients. My lime soap had lime peels in it, my cedar soap had actual ceder needles in it (great for exfoliating, lol) and my coffee soap had coffee grounds in it. Great stuff! If I would have stayed longer at the craft fair, I probably would have bought more. I had some great customers in the morning as well.

The main reason we keep getting rained out is that our tent is not very waterproof. We are using a tent that my brother-in-law saved from the garbage, which was being thrown away because a few of the clips were broken. He fixed the clips and gave us the tent to use, and we discovered its other shortfalls quickly. Despite being much easier than our old tent to set up, the seams inside the tent leak at any rain harder than a mist, and it only comes with half-sides, no full sides. The wind blows right through us and the rain comes right in. For most fairs, this isn't even a problem if the weather's fine; we have just had some bad luck in Oshkosh, with each fair happening on a stormy day.

Our first experience at Riverfest (which was our first fair ever three years ago) was a stormy one. We set up in the rain and expected a very bad day. We were successful way beyond our expectations, despite the rain. With the liberal use of tarps and umbrellas, we made it through that weekend just fine. We thought we could do anything. However, apparently that tent, though not as sturdy and not as big, was a lot more waterproof than this one. None of our products got wet that entire weekend. At the last couple craft fairs, though, our products got soaked. Certain products can handle it and be fine; my feathers and fabric masks did not fare so well in the rain. Besides the products, our business cards and display cards can only handle so much rain before becoming unusable. I'm hoping to make enough money to purchase a brand-new tent, with proper waterproofing and large sides. They are expensive, though, so I have a lot of sales to make.

Listening to: Amanda Palmer
Pics: More of my latest products!

Craft Fairs, New Products, and More Updates

It's been too too long since I've written what I'm up to here. The last time I wrote was May, just before my first craft fair. Of course I have been busy busy busy, but also just a little lazy lazy lazy. I suppose it happens to the best of us once in awhile.

The Festival of Spring craft fair in May went very well. That one always does. I appreciate the beautiful surroundings of the Paine Art Center and Gardens; it makes for a very good backdrop to showcase some beautiful art. Our booth was next to a guy who made wooden frogs which, when you ran a stick across their back, made a noise quite similar to a croaking frog. Of course, I totally had to buy one. The noise was annoying to my booth partner, but I loved it. On the other side of us was a seller of Pampered Chef. Don't get me wrong; I support your right to make money however you choose, but there's always something about resellers at a craft fair that rubs me the wrong way. Just two booths down from us was someone selling bulk cheap jewelry for as low as $1. It was flying off his table, but it was plastic and shoddy and I just don't understand how you can bring such a low-end mass-produced product to a craft fair.

The last craft fair was the Taste of the Dells in Wisconsin Dells. Being a high-tourist area, I was really expecting that one to be very busy. The crafters around us, for the most part, were very talented and there seemed to be much less in the way of resellers. I was thrilled to get started. A two-day craft fair, and the booth fee was pretty cheap for such a huge event, I thought. Well, I soon understood why. I did passably fair, my booth partner unfortunately did a little less than fair, and all in all it felt disappointing. The actual "Taste" festival was over three blocks away from our little craft fair, which was not on the main drag of the Dells like I had thought, but just off of it. It felt like two different festivals with not much traffic between them. I'm always grateful for the customers I did have, though, and for the people we meet around us. The booth next to us had unique vinyl records (scratched) which had been partially melted under high heat and bent to form bowls which could be used for pots or just decorative bowls around the house. They also had purses made from "garbage" like Capri Sun wrappers, and bracelets woven from other wrappers. It was very fun. The vender who really caught our attention made fantastic candles and lotions from soy, with really unique scents like Ceder and Sage, White Zinfandel, Macintosh Apple, and more. In fact, here's her website: Makenna Del (I would share the website of the frog guy from the first craft fair, but he doesn't have one :P)

Our next craft fair is the Faire on the Green in Oshkosh at the Paine Art Center again. I hope it goes as well as the first, and I'm looking forward to seeing what unique venders will be joining us this time. Here's the info on Facebook: Faire on the Green and on my website, in case you're not a Facebook fan: Faire on the Green. That said, I'd like to introduce a new product that I've been working on for about a month or so now: Jewelry! I will include some pictures at the bottom, as always. Of course, I encourage you to check out my booth partner's jewelry as well, seen here: Lily Kay Designs I think our jewelry has a very different style. My friend's jewelry is trendy and fun, good for a night out or dressing up at the office or a lot of different things. She showcases several styles, with some hemp jewelry, a lot of sterling silver, large pendants, and several themes.

For my jewelry, I prefer to use as much natural material as possible. I use bamboo or cotton string, sterling silver when I can, natural stones and shells, polished stones, cameos, feathers, and more. My jewelry is more for people who have a sense of style similar to mine, I suppose. My friend likes to call me a goth hippie, and I suppose it's kind of true. I love my natural materials, but I also love the dark glamour of skulls and Victorian style cameos and other things. My jewelry is a perfect example of that. One thing I started doing which I really love is making hoop earrings that fit through gauged tunnel earrings. Finally, I can wear dangley feather earrings like all the cool kids, I just have to attach them to a hoop through my tunnels! Lol. I don't have pics of those yet; I'll post those later, but I do have pics of the rest.

Ok, that's a long enough post for this time. I promise to stay more up to date in the future! I won't let another two months go by before I update this again. I'll let you know what fun and interesting vendors and customers I have at the next craft fair.

Listening to: Hungry Lucy
Pics: New jewelry :)

Wisconsin Weather and Gardening Adventures

A day like this calls for piping hot tea first thing in the morning.

Wisconsin can't seem to make up its mind on the weather, which is not at all unusual for Wisconsin, I suppose. Last month we had an amazingly warm week. Flowers bloomed, people put away their winter coats; it was lovely. Then we spent a week being rained, snowed, and hailed on. Really, weather? Fine, it's April, sometimes things like that happen. The next couple weeks were actually quite springlike. The weather was cool, but not unbearably so, and we had warmer days. It rained, but no more snow and hail. Then last week we apparently jumped into summer a bit early. The humidity was terrible, but it was followed by some pretty epic storms with thunder that rattled the windows. (The storms are my favorite part of summer, by the way.) This week, we are apparently back to cold again. The temperature wouldn't be so bad by itself if it weren't for the icy, strong winds.

Getting any gardening done has been next to impossible. The nicest days always seem to be when I'm working, especially when I'm working a long shift. I have flowers planted in my front garden, and I even did some weeding, which for me is impressive. Usually the weeds and the flowers grow next to each other all season long. In the backyard, I did a bit of weeding and planting in the flowerbeds, and my husband and I installed some new bushes around the patio. We even went to the city's free yard site and collected a few bags of mulch to put around the bushes. I still need to tackle weeding and mulching the blueberry bushes, but the rest of the flowerbeds look quite professional right now. The poor vegetable garden, on the other hand, looks atrocious. I haven't been able to find a nice day that my husband and I are both actually home to till up the vegetable garden and re-fence it. Thus, no vegetables have been planted back there yet. I have some rhubarb growing from last season, and some seedling veggies from the farmer's market on the front porch just waiting to go in the ground, but no time to actually get them back there.

Last year, I will freely admit, I didn't put any time or effort into gardening and just let whatever happen happen. Surprisingly, I did get a few blueberries from the bushes, but the birds had free reign of most of them. I also had a few perennials sprout on their own and take care of themselves pretty well. I even had pumpkins in the veggie garden. They must have sprouted from the rotted Halloween pumpkins we put back there the autumn before. This year I intend to put as much effort into gardening as I tried to the first year I lived in this house. The first year, I planted tomatoes and herbs and pumpkins and gourds and flowers and peas and so many other things.... and almost nothing came to fruition. Perhaps that's why I was so lackadaisical last summer. Why bother, I said. But even without bothering, I did manage to have some results, so if I actually put in some effort this year, maybe my results will be even better now that I've learned a little.

Today is windy and chilly, but also sunny. I have a lot on my to-do list. I have to start getting ready for the first craft fair of the season coming up this Saturday. That means packing up my tote full of displays, taking inventory of everything I've made and/or sold since the last craft fair in November, pricing everything and getting it onto cards to hang on the displays, organizing everything into more totes without crushing anything, deciding what to bring and what to leave behind, and packing an emergency fix-it kit. Don't get me wrong; I LOVE doing craft fairs. They are my bread and butter all summer long, and it's really rewarding when you have a good fair where your items sell at a decent pace, or even better, sell like hotcakes. But the effort is exhausting sometimes. I only have a couple days off this week to use to get ready. Whenever I look outside, though, despite the chilly wind, the sun beckons to me. Nature is what I take my inspiration from. I can't resist the chance to go outside and revel in it.

I think I'll try to do a little of both today. I'll work inside and see if the wind calms down, and if it stays sunny out, and maybe I'll spend a couple hours outside before I come back in to finish the task at hand. I suppose I'd better finish my tea and get to work.

Listening to: Rasputina's latest album, Great American Gingerbread
Pics: Some of my flowers :)