wrapping up the Iowa Arts Festival

The Iowa Arts Festival was this past weekend, and it was awesome!  It rained while we were setting up on Saturday, but the weather during the rest of the festival was great.  The crowds were steady both days, as were my sales!  The only slow period that I had was the first hour on Sunday.  I barely sat down the rest of the festival because I constantly had people in my booth.  My sales way exceeded my expectations.  People who didn't buy still had positive feedback.  I got a lot of compliments about my designs, particularly my button designs.  In general, people were very friendly.  I've always said that people in Iowa are friendlier than anywhere else I've lived.  The crowds at the festival definitely lived up to that.

All in all, it was a very uplifting experience.  I have been pretty frustrated with Etsy sales during the majority of 2010.  I have done a lot this entire past school year to increase my advertising through my Facebook fan page, Twitter, and this blog.  It takes a lot of time and energy, and I don't feel like it's paid off for the most part.  I've had only one sale directly through Twitter and one directly through the Etsy forums.  It doesn't help that Etsy continues to be more competitive.  I got lots of Twitter followers who are brand new Etsy sellers with less than 10 items in their shops, already spamming people 5-10 times per day with self-promotion.  For all that Etsy is an encouraging environment, it is also a very competitive one.  If I don't list something or post something somewhere for even a couple days, I start losing followers.  I got worn out by the level of self-promotion that is necessary to stay on top.  It was great to have two days at the festival with tons of positive feedback and steady sales.

Digressing a little bit here: The best part of Etsy has been the continued support of my EBW and EtsyBlogger team mates.  I really appreciate all of you who regularly comment here.  That's been the biggest thing that's kept me going with the whole online selling process.

I am not ready to quit by any means, but I am reconsidering what I want to do with my Etsy shop.  I sold a lot of items that are listed there at the festival, so for now, I've deactivated all items that I just sold or had previously listed as "made to order."  I'm still in the process of figuring out what I want to continue to list as "made to order" and if there are any other changes that I want to make to my shop.  For now, I will list my new items that didn't sell at the festival, remake the designs that I want to, and not hurry too much with figuring out what I'm going to do with the rest of the items.  There are other projects that I want to work on this summer such as editing and posting pictures from this school year, making cards, making cork board coasters, and picking up counted cross-stitch again.  I love working on jewelry, but it is far from my only creative interest.  I don't want to get hung up on all of my Etsy stuff and not work on anything else

I am still interested in starting a mailing list this summer as well as working on writing a couple patterns for my designs, both of which I hope will also generate more interest in my Etsy shop.  I gave out lots of business cards at the festival and gave out 15% off coupons for my Etsy shop to everyone who purchased something from me.  I hope that those efforts will generate more interest, too.  If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know!  I'm always open to suggestions.

Finishing up with the festival: The person who helped me set up both days was supposed to take a couple pictures of me with my booth, but I didn't end up in either picture.  So here are some of the pictures that I took during the second day of the festival.

It was pretty windy off and on the second day so I didn't put up the tent walls and I pinned or taped everything and used all of my paperweights.

I set up my tables almost exactly like I did during my test run.  As you can see, by this point in the weekend, a lot of my button magnets and several pendants had already sold!

There are a few things that I might do differently in the future, but overall, I was pretty happy with the set up.

Green was definitely a popular color choice throughout the weekend.  I sold all of my green button earring studs.  Here are two of the pairs that I sold.

Among other items, I also sold my green leafy earrings.

I finished a new pendant today and spent about two hours with buttons, arranging new bracelets, earrings, and magnets.  I'll start listing new items again on Etsy tomorrow.

sneak peaks for the Iowa Arts Festival

As promised, I am going to post sneak peaks of new items that I'll have at the Arts Festival this weekend.  It's hard to believe that it's really tomorrow.  We were in downtown Iowa City earlier today, and things were already underway, which did help it feel a little more real.  To be 100% honest, I'm really nervous.  I think that I'll feel better once I get everything set up and get started, but I'm going to have a hard time waiting tonight.

For anyone reading this who is in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area: It will be in downtown Iowa City tonight-Sunday.  The art booths are up Saturday 10AM-6PM and Sunday 10AM-4PM.  Please come by if you can!  You can check out the Summer of the Arts web site for more information.

Before I get to the sneak previews, I have a couple other things to post.  The first one is that Sharla (BeadedTail) took me up on my offer to feature one of her items here for being one of my Top Droppers last month.  I picked her Copper Kitty - Moonstone Beaded Earrings. :)

This little bit of news is just for fun.  Angel discovered a new activity this week.

We have ended up pouring a cup of water in the shower for her a couple times because sometimes she wants to go in there when the shower isn't wet.  The things that we do for our pets!

I have a lot of new items for the Arts Festival.  I will slowly list whatever doesn't sell there on Etsy during the next month.  I have 24 pairs of button stud earrings, over 50 button magnets, and about a dozen new bead woven pieces.  Here are a few of them.

I also have a pair of these in blue now.

As I mentioned above, I have lots of button studs like this in all colors.

I made a pair of these as studs as well.

I am so excited about this cuff.  I've been working on this design in my head for a year.  And yes, that is a Lisa Peters's button for the clasp.

I have at least one more new striped triangle earrings, too.

I love pink and black together, but hadn't done anything in this color combination in a while.

As promised, I also have a pair of these in lime green.

Remember the birthday cake sneak peak?  This is the finished product. :)

If anyone wants to reserve anything before tomorrow, let me know!

May Top Droppers

Thank you as always to all of my regular droppers on Entrecard!  Your support means so much to me.  Here are the Top 10 for May.

1) My gypsygoods
2) Dave Lucas
3) BeadedTail
4) Go Las Vegas Baby!
5) The Sewing Mom
6) Da Dude's BBQ Thought
7) Moonangelnay on Etsy
8) A Rose By Name
9) English Wilderness: Nature Photography
10) Man Over Board

Those of you who also have Etsy shops, please feel free to post a link with one of your items that you'd like me to feature in a future post.

It's hard to believe that tomorrow I'll finish packing everything up for the Arts Festival!  Remember the pictures from my test run?  Everything is still set up like that haha.  So I still have some work to do.  I think that I have everything that I'll need, though.  Thank you so much to everyone who has given me advice for this festival!  I don't know where I'd be without all of your input.  I certainly wouldn't be as prepared.

I'm planning to post some sneak peak pictures tomorrow of some of the new items that I'll have at the festival. :)

test run

My mom came to visit this weekend. She brought the tablecloth that she'd made me for my craft fair tables! She also helped me set up the majority of my test run for the Arts Festival. When she left today, I finished tagging all of my items and completed the set up.

This is the best shot that I could get of the whole setup in this room. I'm sure that I'll be able to get better shots at the festival.

I have more $20 items than anything else. There are about 10 bracelets that I didn't even put out here. You can see lots of Edi's awesome earring cards in this shot.

I haven't been taking pictures of individual magnets or groups of magnets so far. This is everything that I've finished as of this morning. I'll have at least a dozen more at the festival.

Here are almost all of the $30 items that aren't bangles.

Close up shot of the right side of the table.

And another wider shot of the middle.

All of my non-jewelry items (mirrors, mailing list form, etc.) are at the ends of the table. I did not set up my non-price signs and matted pictures with it, but my mom and I brainstormed how I can set them up, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Pretty much everything else that will be on the tables is out here.

I'm hoping that these pictures will help the set up process go smoothly. Setting up all of the jewelry here also assisted me in the sorting process. For the few of you reading this who have seen all of my jewelry in person, you know that it's stored securely but not in a terribly organized fashion. I still have everything set up, but when I put it away, I can sort everything by price.

In case I didn't have enough going on with the festival prep this week, I decided to make a few thank you cards while I was making my two custom cards. All of the flowers and leaves are cut from recycled magazine pages.

continuation from yesterday apparently: yet another treasury feature and more Arts Festival progress

Karen (KRDesigns11) included my Champagne Party peyote cuff in her Fantasy World treasury. Thanks Karen!

You can view this treasury live by CLICKING HERE until Sunday May 30 5:27AM EST.

I tagged another handful of items tonight. I'm more than halfway now. I made progress with my button magnets last night. I was going to get back that tonight, but I ended up working on some cards. I need to finish up everything that I have in progress before I head to bed, which is 2 custom cards and 7 mini thank you notes for Etsy/craft fair sales. I will post pictures of the custom cards at some point, but the people who will be receiving them may read this so I'm not posting any more details right now.

Also, I should have done this a long time ago, but I finally created a user name for my Facebook fan page. You can now find me there at: http://www.facebook.com/randomcreative28.

wrapping up the weekend

Overall it was another productive weekend. I photographed all of my finished bead woven projects and a handful of button stud earrings. It was pretty cloudy most of the weekend, but I was able to get some decent photographs in the natural daylight. I finished a couple dozen button magnets. If I complete all the magnets currently in process, I'll have just over 50 for the Arts Festival. I will probably work to get at least a dozen more, but if not, I'm still pretty happy with I have. I made progress tagging my items. I'll finish that up sometime next week when I finalize my inventory.

I also got my cash apron in the mail yesterday. I ended up getting the RTG - A HENRY PICNIC vendor - craft apron from PoppysGardenGate. Poppy and Cinders have a couple really cute Hello Kitty aprons in their shop. It took all of my self restraint not to get one. Hello Kitty has been one of my favorite things ever since I was little. I'm 27, and a lot of people think that I look younger than that. I don't want to do anything to encourage that notion so I resisted. I'm still pretty happy with the Henry Picnic print. I was a little worried that the apron would be long (I'm 5'2 and skinny), but it's just right. I will be 100% honest here: It's not the finest craftsmanship that I've ever seen, but for something that I'll wear/use pretty infrequently, that's okay.

I almost finished a pair of peyote triangle earrings to match my new fall embellished cuff. I have a few more small projects that I've lined up for this week as well. I spent the majority of the rest of the weekend cleaning and doing laundry. I have spared you from the full washing machine drama here, but we do have a new washer (this is new #2) that is working so we are caught up again. I cannot tell you how good it feels to say that!

I hope that everyone has a good week. :)

3D in black

It turns out that the Arts Festival does NOT provide anything for our booths. I was hoping that they at least provided some sort of tent, but they don't. In the less than 2 hours that I saw Jake today (we're working opposite schedules this week), he okayed it for me to buy a tent. So I did tonight. I was certainly not planning to do this, but I'm glad that I did. Jake is an Eagle scout and has a lot of great camping equipment, but we've only been camping ONCE in the 8+ years that we've been together. Maybe the new equipment (I got an instant shelter and the screen walls that go with it) will motivate us to go again once the festival is over. Even if we can't go right away, the tent is something that we'll be able to use for years for both camping and future craft fairs.

I was also very excited to find picnic table clips in the camping section of Target! As I've mentioned before, I've been looking for them ever since I found out that I got into the festival. I also got a pack of large ("quilting size") safety pins tonight. Between the screen walls, the picnic clips, the safety pins, and my paper weight pen holders, I'm feeling pretty good about things not blowing away. As I'm sure some of you know, Iowa can be VERY windy, but I think I've done about everything that I can to prepare for it.

I mailed, e-mailed, or hand delivered my fliers for Eastern Iowa family and friends this week, minus the ones that I'll give out to my co-workers the week before the event. I think that my next little project will be sorting and tagging all of my jewelry. I have already tagged the majority of my items because I do sell a fair amount in person, but I need to make sure that everything has the rounded prices that I'll be using for the festival.

I've been keeping busy with all of the booth prep stuff and haven't done a lot of creating, but I did list a new pair of earrings tonight. These are the first pair of 3D triangle earrings that I have for sale! I am really excited about them.


I would wear a pair of earrings in this design a regular basis if I had pierced ears. Because I don't, I'm trying to figure out how I can incorporate a 3D triangle into a bracelet/cuff. I have 3D triangle earrings in both spring green and a blue mix that I'll be listing shortly, too. I'm thinking about doing a version in red next.

more details for my craft fair booth

I got my official information e-mail from the Iowa Arts Festival today! I still had a few questions so I e-mailed back (still waiting for a response). Actually I have more questions than that, but there are a couple specific issues that I need to know before I get that weekend. Everything else can wait. Now that I know all of the set up times and what not, I can try to recruit at least one or two people to help me. Normally I would be able to recruit my husband or my mom, but unfortunately they're both working that weekend so I need to ask other family and friends. If any Eastern Iowa family/friends are reading this, be forewarned that I will be contacting you soon haha.

I worked on a few more booth projects tonight. The Arts Festival booths are outdoors so I put together paper weights/pen holders. While Jake and I were living in Chicago a few years ago, I stored some of my stuff at my in-laws' house because my parents had just downsized and we had no extra space in our apartment. When we were there a couple weekends ago, I took the last of my stuff, which included a box of art supplies. I'd totally forgotten that I had a TON of these mosaic rocks leftover from a project that my mom and I worked on 5-6 years ago (what you see below is about a third of the collection). I bought some glass cups from Wal-Mart's floral decorating aisle ($1.00 each) for them.


I finished the major work on my large sign. A quick tutorial on this: I printed the letters from Word and cut them out. I glued them with rubber cement to red and blue scrapbooking paper (left over from when I used to make most of my own cards) and covered the front side with contact paper. (I buy large rolls of contact paper from Office Depot for work.) I cut the letters out again, leaving red/blue borders and glued them, again with rubber cement, to a piece of poster board. I'm going to put some jewelry pictures around the edges with Velcro dots (again, purchased in bulk for work) so I can update them in the future as needed.
I'm still not sure how I'm going to hang it. It depends on how long my table fabric cover ends up being and how the festival booths are constructed. I'm thinking either large safety pins or Velcro. If anyone has any advice, please let me know!

Those were the two major projects for tonight. I also finished the last couple table signs and photographed them. The process for these was pretty similar to the large sign. I printed the signs (again from Word), cut them out, and glued them with rubber cement to the red scrapbook paper (these are all edged in red). I cut them out with borders and glued them to a large piece of posterboard, allowing room under each one for tab. I measured out the full length and drew outlines before I cut. I covered the front of each sign with contact paper. Each one has tabs on the bottom so I can tape or pin them down as needed (which I'm pretty much counting on for this event anyway).

The other biggest project I have for this week is to finalize my PR materials for family, friends, and co-workers and start getting the word out.

continued weekend progress

I hope that all of the mothers reading this have had a Happy Mother's Day. :)

Today was another productive day with crafty endeavors. I finished the majority of the signs for my booth. Currently I have them under a large book to flatten them out a bit. I will take (and post) pictures of them later this week. I've decided that I will have enough magnets to sell them at the Arts Festival so I need to finish all of the ones that I have assembled but not yet glued. I made a decent amount of progress with that today. I photographed three bead woven items and two button stud earrings. I organized my finished but not yet photographed button stud earrings. The weather was gorgeous today, and I was able to photograph outside. Finally, I finished a cuff that I've been working on intermittently for the past couple months. It's similar to my Easter morning peyote cuff but with a fall color scheme.

I picked out the beads for a pink/black skinny peyote cuff. I think working on Sharla's cuff a couple weeks ago inspired me to make another skinny cuff right away because I finally finished pink/black one yesterday. While I had the pink base beads out, another idea came to mind. Normally if I name my pieces, I don't do it until they're completed. Also, I normally don't pick out the button that I'll use for the clasp until I've finished the rest of the piece. However, a name popped into my head right away, and while I was searching for a pink/black button clasp, I found a perfect button for this cuff, too.

Here's my mix with the button. It's going to be a wrapped cuff like this one but with more embellishment. I'm going to call it Birthday Cake.


I hope that this week gets off to a great start for everyone tomorrow!

leafy feature number 11

Thank you to everyone for your continued advice for the Iowa Arts Festival! I compiled my Etsy inventory today in a way that I'll be able to use it for the festival. I have almost a dozen other bead woven items that aren't listed or aren't even photographed yet that I'll add to the list, too, as well as a couple dozen button earring studs. I'm planning to photograph everything that I'm taking, but the weather hasn't cooperated lately. I did take Margaret's advice and rounded as many prices as I could to multiples of 5 to cut down on the number of small bills that I'll go through. I'll still have a few dozen pieces that aren't, but that's okay. Thanks Margaret!

I'll continue to post progress as I continue to get ready for the festival. I'll limit how much I post about it every day, though. I know that's not all that you want to hear from me.

I'm revisiting leaves tonight. Enjoy!
Leafy Earrings in Antique Silver by dallied

White Leaf Post Earrings - Free Shipping by IndieAndChic

Woodland Forest and Moss Green Sterling Silver Necklace, Lampwork Glass and Leather by ErikaPriceOriginals

soft cover for your journal/organizer - LEAVES by verityunmondoaparte

silver hummingbird - sparrow - cut out bird pendant - hangs on 18 inch chain by bethtastic

Leafy Green Bag by KnottyByNature

Sea Glass Filled Bottle, Sterling Silver Necklace by akkricket

craft fair stuff, random feature

I'm pretty proud of how much I've accomplished already for the Iowa Arts Festival. There is still a lot to do, but I'm making progress. As I've been working on everything this week, I've thought of a couple more things that I'd appreciate feedback on.
The first one is how much change do you like to bring? I've been reading various advice and people recommend everything from $100-$300. I don't like the idea of starting with more than $100 cash, but I don't want to run short, especially with smaller bills. Let me know what works for you.
Also, for those of you who have done outdoor shows, do you use anything to hold down your table cloth? I'm planning to use a fabric cover for my tables (hopefully music themed) and have been looking for something like picnic table clips without much luck. If you've found anything that works, let me know. If you don't use anything, that's helpful to know, too!

Random feature tonight. Enjoy!
Spring Jade Earrings by nemeton

Scrapbooking Armada Punch Buddy by tiram13

Mallard Drake - 8 x 12 Fine Art Photograph by PhotoGrunt

Wedding Tea Lights by CarolinaCottage

STRAWBERRY RED PENDANT....Free US Shipping by blueseraphim

Crystal Tabac Square Earrings by HidingPlaceBeadery

Spring Garden by Juliesparklybits

Iowa Arts Festival

I'm getting to this post a little later than I planned. I locked my keys in my car this afternoon (only the second time I'd ever done that), which threw my whole late afternoon and evening off by an hour. Thankfully it wasn't more than that.

As some of you may remember, I posted last month about getting put on the wait list for the Iowa Arts Festival. I didn't think that the chances of getting accepted after that were very high, but they offered me a spot yesterday which I accepted! I'm still kind of in shock. I've had the Arts Festival in the back of my mind for almost a year, and now it's really happening. It's only a month away. I have a lot to get ready before then. My inventory is in pretty good shape, especially my bracelets/cuffs. I have a lot of button earring studs finished that I just need to photograph and put on cards. I'd like to make a few more bead woven earrings, though, to expand my lower price range a little more. Whatever else I get done in the next month will be nice to have, too, of course.

I've been reading lots of advice online about craft fairs this week, which has been really helpful because everything else for the craft fair is not in great shape yet. I've compiled a list of what I need to do before then and what I need to bring with me for the Arts Festival. I'll get a packet in the mail from the Festival at some point this week, which I'm sure will clear up some other questions that I have. Any advice that others can provide about anything craft fair related is also appreciated! One specific topic that I'd like some input on is ProPay. I'm pretty sure that I will be using it for my credit card sales and wondered if anyone else uses it. If so, please let me know what you think about it. If not, let me know what you do use. Advice on any other craft fair related topic is much appreciated too!

Thank you much to everyone who commented on my post yesterday. This hasn't been the best week, but finding out about the Arts Festival has definitely been a high point. It's only Tuesday so hopefully there will be some other high points, too. :)

Happy Easter (and weekend happenings)

Happy Easter everyone! I hope that you've been able to relax and spend time with family and/or friends today. I have. :)



I've also gotten a lot accomplished with making jewelry, taking pictures, etc. No sales but otherwise no complaints for the weekend. I made fourteen vintage button stud earrings, retook pictures of four older pieces, took pictures of five new pieces, made progress on two cuffs, and started another pair of earrings. I still have a lot of photo editing work ahead of me before any of my new or reworked listings will be ready, but taking all of the pictures was still a big accomplishment. Here's a picture of the vintage button studs in progress.
My in-laws gave me a ton of vintage button cards for Christmas. I sorted through all of them this weekend and picked out one pair from each color/style: fourteen in all! There are a couple smaller (less than 1/2") buttons as well that I didn't use for earrings. I'm very pleased with the results. More details on these to come.

I applied for the Iowa Arts Festival a while back and found out this week that I'm on the alternate list. They'll let me know if a spot opens up by mid May. There are a huge number of applicants for it so I'm glad to be considered at all. It's still a little let down of course that I didn't make the first cut, but that's okay. At a friend's urging, I've been looking into the North Liberty and Iowa City Farmers' Markets, both of which have booths available for crafts. I sent an e-mail to the North Liberty contact today and will send my registration form to the Iowa City office tomorrow. We'll see what happens!