shower preview

We all know that I don't have the best track record for taking pictures during the parties that I host. So I'm making a point to share a few of the things that I've been working on for the shower I'm co-hosting for my future sister-in-law this weekend.

 

Are you hosting any events in the near future?

fall show prep

My first 2012 fall show is this coming weekend! If you live in the Milwaukee area, please consider attending. Information is right here. Here are just a few of the things that I've been doing this past week to get ready for it.

I've been saving Sprecher boxes ever since we moved to Milwaukee and started buying their root beer regularly because I got it into my head that they would make neat Milwaukee Christmas cards. I shared a preview back in May. I'm finally going through the bulk of my collection so I can get some sets finished for the holiday shows.

I'm putting together some new holiday earring sets as well as some other earring sets. The holiday sets did well last year so it's time to expand a little.

I keep working away at glass magnets. I'll have plenty for this first show, but I want to have a stash ready for the other holiday shows.

I still need to get a bunch of new items tagged.

In addition to the Christmas cards, I have a bunch of new all purpose "Just a Note" cards and seasonal thank you cards finished. I still need to put them in plastic sleeves and tag them.

What have you been working on lately? Does anyone else have a show this weekend?

one party down...onto the next one

Jake and I are fully enjoying his new weekends off schedule and have a lot of things scheduled for this summer.  We started July with a little open house for his birthday and the end of intern year, and then I'm hosting the open house next weekend.

I made sangria for the first time.  I am planning to write up the recipe in the near future.

The sangria was part of the biggest drink selection that I've ever put together for a party.  We also had bottle/can drinks in a cooler outside.

I can blame Pinterest for giving me the inspiration to make my own cupcake toppers.  Jake got a lot of comments from people who claimed that they had no idea how old he is. :) And yes, you can see that I did use one of my favorite color combinations here.  I am also planning to write an article about how to make your own cupcake toppers in the near future.

The cupcakes were just a little part of our food selection.

Of course I took a bunch of pictures before people arrived, but did I take pictures of people enjoying the party?  Nope.  Many apologies.

We get a lot of gifts  from my father-in-law's True Value that for one reason or another can't be sold.  We got the table with 3 chairs for Jake's birthday last year.  One chair from the set was broken so we got the 3 good ones, and they also gave us the table.  Obviously 3 chairs isn't a great number.  We finally added some more to the set this year.

Two days after the party, there was still ice in the cooler, even sitting out in the heat the entire time!

I have been working on open house projects for the entire past month, but I'm in full swing now that we're down to the last week.  I will still be offering loose magnets that people can make into sets however they like, but I've been putting together some sets, too.  I know that the one on the right is upside down!

I'm going to put those sets in bags with toppers.

I have some bottle cap magnets ready to go, too.

I have a whole bunch of new items to price tag.  Does anyone else put that off until they have an upcoming show?

What have you been up to lately?

Newest article:
Fresh Homemade Lemonade Recipes

weekend show prep

I'm sure that most of you already know that I have a show coming up this weekend.  Getting ready for a show is always a lot more work than I think that it will be.  I'm glad that I continue to evolve my product lines and tweak my display, but that means extra work every year.  Hopefully it will continue to be worth it.  Here are a few of the things that I've been doing to get ready for this next show.

Making more cards.  I am not stressing about having tons of cards, but I'm advertising that I'll have graduation, Mother's Day, and spring cards so I've been getting final singles and mini card sets finished.

Packaging more cards.  I did another round of packaging last week and will do one more today or tomorrow.

Packing more cards.  I am so happy that both the card boxes and sleeves will fit in this old shipping box from ULine.  This will be perfect for bringing cards to and from shows.

Gathering all of my craft fair supplies.  This is the one area of this room that I did not overhaul earlier this week simply because of this upcoming show.  After the weekend, I'll figure out a more permanent solution for some of these supplies.

Pricing and sorting new jewelry.  Similar to packaging cards, I like to price and sort jewelry when I have a bunch of items to do at once.  Do you remember how I sorted all of my jewelry back in the fall?  It was a lot of work, but it has been a huge time saver for pulling ordered items and for show set up and tear down.

Re-working popular designs that sold out during the fall and winter.  I have a handful of listings are made to order on Etsy, which is fine most of the time, but not so much for shows.  I'll have a few popular shell and charm bracelets back in stock for this show.

Working on a new flower idea.  Do you remember the flower bouquet that I put up on my Mother's Day post over the weekend?  I've been making a whole bunch of felt and paper flowers the past couple weeks.  I started doing this so I could make a bouquet just for our house and so I could have some new flowers for cards.  However, like most projects, I got carried away cutting and now have a lot of flowers.  I also decided that I could write an article about this project so I'm taking a lot of pictures of the process.  They would make a fun impulse item for Mother's Day.  We'll see if I can get enough done to sell them.

What have you been working on this week?

I included this post in Michelle's Delicately Constructed Friday - 5/4/2012.

Christmas show preparation

Do you remember in my second fall show round up post how I mentioned that I had a potential offer?  What happened was that two of the women who jury one of the biggest Christmas shows in the Milwaukee area personally invited me to apply for the show.  When I say, invited me to apply, I mean that they handed me an application and told me that my work would be a great addition to the show.  I don't think that I need to elaborate on how amazing this opportunity is, especially because I didn't have another show lined up for 2011.

Everything worked out with the application process, and I will be doing this show this coming weekend.  This means that I had less than a month to get everything ready.  It might not seem like a big job when I'd already prepared for 2 shows this fall, but it has kept me really busy.  Not only had I not prepared enough show inventory for a third show, especially a large show, but there were a number of things that I had to do for this show than I hadn't had to do for the first two.

I have been working on show inventory almost every day since my last show, which has included lots of button magnets, pins, tacks, and earrings.  All of our items have to be individually tagged with our artist numbers, which means that I've been making 8-10 piece sets of magnets and tacks instead of planning for my usual "make your own sets" set up and pricing.  People really like the "make your own" (especially kids) so it'll be interesting to see how this works.

As mentioned above, because all of our items need to be tagged with our artist numbers, I've been re-tagging all of my items.  While this is a very tedious time-consuming task, I do have much more professionally tagged items now.  Even though all of them have my artist number for this show, I can still use the remaining items as is for future shows.  I included my Etsy address on my tags.  One of my issues with shows is that they almost never generate repeat customers for me.  I would really love to change that, especially as I build a local following in Milwaukee.

I've also been creating an inventory for my entire stock of items.  Normally I record sales as I go during shows, but I won't be able to do that this time so I need a way to check off everything that sells.

I've been busy finishing my December EBW Challenge piece (more info on that tomorrow), but in between that, I've been creating some new jewelry pieces, too.  I'll have a small line of Christmas bell button charm bracelets that will first be available at this show.  If they don't sell out, I'll list what's left on Etsy in early December.  Most of my remaining focus has been on smaller pieces like shell bracelets and earrings.

One of the requirements for this show is that all vendors wear aprons with bibs that represent their art.  Thank goodness for Michael's plain aprons, cheap seed beads, and fabric glue because I seriously did not have the time, energy, money, or motivation to do much more than this.

I safety pinned it through the middle like that so the pockets will be at a functional placement for me.  Hopefully this will be a successful show for me, and I'll be able to use this apron again there in future years.  I love my half vendor apron, but this will be another fun option for other holiday shows, too.

I'll post the details about this show on Friday in case anyone in the Milwaukee area is interested in attending.

getting ready for fall shows

Believe it or not, I haven't done any shows since December 2010.  Needless to say, there are a lot of things that I have not done to get ready for a show in months.  I've had plenty of time to get ready, but there has still been a lot to do.  I'm doing two shows this fall: October 15 and November 12.  The first one is right around the corner now so I thought I'd share a few things I've been working on for these fall shows.

My sign made it from Iowa.  A few of the letters needed a little repairing, but it will still be plenty functional for this year's shows.

I hadn't properly sorted or price tagged any of my new pieces in months.  It's much easier to set up for a show when all of my inventory is sorted by type/price.  (For anyone who thinks that this is a lot, I have 3 more containers with earrings plus a couple more with bracelets.)  I'm also planning to label the tops of the containers with descriptions.

Now that I have everything sorted, I've been going through one box at a time, pricing items that need tags.  I've used nylon threads to tie tags to bangles and pendants in the past, which has never worked well.  I'm hoping that the ribbons hold up better.  They certainly look better.

I keep a little photo album with pieces that have sold, including custom work.  It hasn't been a huge attraction at shows, but it does get some attention.  I like having it for my own posterity as well.  I have no idea when I last ordered photos, but clearly it had been a while.  Shutterfly sends out free 50 print coupons sometimes so I used one of my recent ones for new jewelry photos.

I'm adding a few new components to my displays, namely so that I can make them more vertical.  I feel like that's one thing that my booth has lacked in the past.  We'll see if it helps.  I'll be sure to take pictures so you can see everything come together.

pink/red rock garden bracelet and other weekend projects

As promised, here is my pink/red rock garden bracelet that I listed today. :)


Red is one of my favorite colors. I enjoy incorporating it into my pieces all year round. So I didn't plan for this to look like a Valentine's Day piece, but it works well with the holiday coming up! I really wanted to use the rose quartz chips and red coral chips together as soon as I got them. I was a little worried that the contrast would be too harsh, but other beads in contrasting pinks and reds in the bracelets pull everything together nicely. This is the first rock garden bracelets I've made that doesn't actually have any leaf beads in it. I have other Czech glass beads and cubic zirconia hearts mixed in with the rose quartz and coral.

Unfortunately that ones that I used in this bracelet are currently out of stock, but there are lots of other colors still in stock in the cubic zirconia Valentine's Day section. I just put my latest blogging order in this weekend, which also included some of the hearts from the Czech glass Valentine's Day section. I'll post more details about my full order and all of my plans for my new hearts later.

Since last night, I've taken and edited pictures of my newest leafy bracelet, completed a new celestial themed bracelet, and put together partial mixes for several new pieces. During the week when I don't have as much time to work on jewelry, I sometimes get frustrated when I spend most of a night resorting beads from an old project, then sorting beads for a new one, and not having much time for the actual assembly of a new piece. Hopefully having new project mixes already partially assembled will help this process go a little quicker during the week.

Today I also did some baking. I made bread pudding and monster cookies. I'd never heard of monster cookies before I moved to Iowa, but they're very tasty. Different people's recipes vary, but the recipe I use (which Jake got from one of his research co-workers in the summer of 2008) has oatmeal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, and M&Ms.




I start student teaching (in my own classroom) and my last master's class tomorrow. That means that things will be that much crazier than usual until the end of April, but then I have ALL of my coursework for my master's finished!

Disclosure - I received my ArtBead's products free of charge through their blogging program. I am honestly reviewing their products and have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products I received.