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My First Spring Show
Not that you can tell it’s spring anymore – we got about 6″ of snow last night, warm, wet stuff – but I had my first show of the spring season yesterday evening.
This one was a fundraiser held by the Market Collective and it ran in the evening at the university. Completely different crowds of people than I usually see at my shows which was neat. Being my first show of the season I was woefully unprepared and understocked but that was good as i had a 4ft table!
At the show I did get to meet Cheeky Nado of my Alberta Etsy team. She had the cutest table setup:
I got to see her super mustache necklace in person!
Also at the show I met a few other Etsy and ArtFire vendors – FakeSweatShop with whom I will have to arrange for something plush with attitude from and Neckghetti who’s got the very neat alternative to a regular scarf in pretty much every colour you can imagine.
A Week Into Spring
Up here, in Canada, we’re not known for the kind weather. Spring is rarely here by the calendar date and we always get soggy snow well into April or May. It’s just part of the appeal.
My corner neighbour has a little border around her house which is on the way to the bus stop. Chloe and I watch that strip of garden for signs of spring and fall every year. We took friendly wagers as to which week the first tulips would break through and I win: spotted this one today! Chloe, wagered on the week after next.
Perhaps it’s because it’s spring and maybe it’s due to having pretty much the best week ever in my bead shop but I’m going to take the leap and extend my ‘made to order’ status to my Etsy and Artfire shops beginning next week.
In addition to that, I’m going to reorganize by colour in the bead shops since I seem to get customers buying several shapes in one colour way at a time. This would make it easier to shop that way.
Far away from here – well about 300 miles – a nice guy is working on my studio space. It’s coming along just lovely. There is a neat faux oak floor, some bright aqua walls and crisp white panels and little pot lights already. I’ll blog about it a bit more, closer to the move in date, so I can string it together into a more coherent narrative.
Tomorrow from 6 to 10pm the Market Collective is holding a craft fair as a part of a larger fundraiser for Doctors without Border’s efforts in Sudan. I’ll be there as will at least one other of my Etsy Alberta teamies: CheekyNado
The Shop: Etsy Updates
This week I had quite the stack of stuff to list on Etsy (and Artfire and my own web shop)! Most of the work on Etsy is new or new batches of favourite work. Here’s the cute group shot from the bead shop:
And the new in the cane shop pic:
Terry inspired me to try making up some red base beads after seeing her burgundy ones.
In other Etsy news, an enterprising soul went out and made a much needed tool: a treasury searcher. You can now find out if you appear in Etsy’s treasuries (or gift guides) by simply entering your id.
Bowl Goals: Happy St. Patricks
There’s nothing green in that bowl of beads except a few leaves on some of the caned pieces. St. Patrick’s here meant that my daughter made sure her tshirt had some green bits on it and she put a green skin on her Shuffle (which made me think, can I make a clay Shuffle sock? Anyone done that?).
I cheerfully went greenless today, I’m sorry. Here’s the bowl of beadies for my weekly checkin:
They’re off to join the other friends they just came out of the tumbler with to get holes, layers of glossy goo, photo sessions and generally fondled and appreciated as all beads should be. Expect to see them up on Etsy and environs soon.
Combining Interests
In the fuzzy and distant world outside of my clay and bead obsession I am a freelance web developer and computer geek. By the time I was in middle school I was doing not bad in school and had that decidedly geeky bent. While math was never my best subject it was still an interest.
I do love clay for the fact that I can mix and match my interests. Today is ‘Pi Day’ – March 14 – and the little pi cane was the proper celebration. Fellow clayer and inverterate geek, Julie, of Polymer Clay @ Craftgossip has a couple items devoted to the day as well!
Playing with Shells
I live in Calgary which is just about as landlocked as you can get. Seriously. Very far from the ocean. I have happy childhood memories of the summers I spent on the east coast and of the shells I collected. For my summer pieces I decided on some sea inspired charms and cane designs. The second of these is a Nautilus shell design (the first was a sea turtle cane):
Since it’s a cane that’s new to me I’m still tweaking it with the clay blends I have on hand but I’m pretty happy with it. Slices off the first made some cute beads and the next two canes are ‘regular’ canes with sparkly bits in them. Yes, I know they don’t come in glittery blue in real life.
Chloe, my daughter, has asked for pearl oyster shells for the next installment. Terry would like a starfish. I’d like a seahorse and some fish.
Those UFOs
And by UFO I mean the (in)famous Unfinished Objects of the crafting world. My current one is more of an unfinished project. See, last year I scored a nice big chunk of clay from someone who was selling off her supplies. What’s in the picture is just a small portion of it. The rest is partially used, so in plastic baggies and less pretty to pose.
The problem is that this is all old Fimo. By old, I mean mid 1990s. It predates the company making ‘Fimo Classic’ and ‘Fimo Soft’. Every single pretty ounce of it is rock hard.
So I am writing about it to goad me into finally get processing it. I don’t have a food processor and I haven’t found an old, second hand one in my price range that didn’t break two minutes in. So I have to do this the old fashioned way. Dice it up, toss with mineral oil and softer clays and let sit. Blend. Repeat. Eventually I will have about 30 lbs of good clay but it is going to be a while.
Anyone else have some tedious craft projects waiting for them?
Bowl Goals: A Common Theme
This weeks lot of stuff was diverse – little teeny clay heishi, regular cane covered beads, cane slice flower beads and slightly fancier, larger, slice shell beads. There is an underlying theme though: I’m thinking spring and summer stuff. Spring green heishi for stringing. Pastel flower slices. Pink roses on pink beads for mom’s day. Shell beads for summer designs.
With weeks like that I am going to fly past my bead making goal. With the lil’ heishi beads in there, there are around 2000 beads in that bowl. Even without the 20 feet of heishi, there are around 400 beads. Phew! Hope your weeks are similarly productive.
The Shop: Dust Myself Off
My daughter has a Nintendo DS and a Brain Age game for it. When your score on an activity is lower one day, the talking head tells you to dust yourself off tomorrow and get back on track. So here goes!
As you can see, there’s nifty springy stuff in there and some of the little slice beads I like so much. I have a boatload of stuff to add to the site here and my ArtFire in the coming days – Etsy’s per item fees makes it difficult to justify adding 30 or 40 things at a time – and I’ll make sure and post then.
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Bowl Goals: Mayhem
Life is getting back into the swing of things around here so here’s the weeks bowl o’ beads – and production is on track for my end of May show which is good – that happens to be 45 heart pendants. These are off dancing in the tumbler right now, so we’ll see them later in the week!
My ‘office’ is in the corner of my living room and is still in the process of ordering, packing and unpacking after February’s chaos in the apartment. I’m taking the opportunity to sort all my show and inventory totes while they’re out and floating. The mayhem is slowly clearing up but my little corner is still buried it seems!
