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The Handmade in Canada Party
The TransCanada Etsy Team and the Alberta Etsy Team are joining forces for a Canada Day Party! The TransCanada team has organized a treasure hunt and two seriously awesome prizes as part of the whole deal. There are a ton of details in the post about it, so check that out.
I’ll be offering my crowd favourite FREE SHIPPING in my Etsy shops until July 4th (may as well celebrate the south of the border folks too!). You can see what the rest of the Alberta Team is up to as well!
The Bead Show Saga
This one gets a long post because I’ve spent the bulk of the last few months getting ready for the Oasis Bead Show and the Lilac Festival and now they’re done! I have one more decent sized show left in two weeks but it’s just across the road from me so none of the 500km of travel thing!
This is my booth and the Dragonfire Studio (aka. Fran Davis) booth. She makes beautiful lampwork beads in whimsical designs. Chloe picked out another kitty bead this year so we now have a collection of cat beads. Looking at the booth, I think I need some sort of standing signage like hers. I couldn’t attach my banner to the wall due to the hall regulations and didn’t bring enough clips to hang it on my table front. Learning experience!
Part of the fun of the show is seeing customers and friends again. I played dueling camera with Christine Bennett of Purple Pony Art. Her and her mom have often done the same shows as me over the years. And the booth with lots of goodies is Bedrock Supplies of Edmonton who will actually be carrying quite a stack of my beads now (insert “YAY”)
As usual, I love to see what people do with my beads so when a customer from Saturday came back on Sunday to get more beads and show me what she’d put together so far I asked if I could take a few pics. (name) will be at the Calgary Folk Festival selling her pieces so do stop by.
Marilyn Gardiner was an instructor and vendor at the show and stopped by to show me a few of her beautiful chainmaille pieces made with Ontario-based polymer clay artist beads by Helen Breil and Barbara Colautti (I think! Correct me if I’ve got it wrong!). Since I rarely get to see other finished polymer clay art beads than my own offline, I really appreciated this!
To add to the drama of doing my Very First Bead Show was the fact that behind me on the highway the week of rain at home had caused flooding in the surrounding communities. A part of the largest Canadian highway had washed out almost immediately behind the bus I took, stranding several of the rural communities. My family took a northern detour to get to Calgary after me and Monday we drove back via the rural roads. While the storm was ominous looking and we drove by quite a few washed out fields, our house was safe and dry when we got in. The second pic is the bike path along the usually shallow creek in front of our house though! This is about 4 feet up from normal.
Send me dry thoughts!
Canada, eh
I made another Canada Flag cane – it’s been a few years since the last try! – and this one came out somewhat more random and creative than I intended. It’s obvious what it’s supposed to be but the maple leaf looks more like a splat than a leaf in a lot of them!
However, the little sliced beads are going to be my bowl of giveaways at my show this weekend. If you slide it on a safety pin with a couple seed beads, they make cute little Canada Day pins.
Teaching Classes
Something I never thought I would enjoy – right up there with selling – is teaching classes. It has been one of those rare pleasures finding out that I was wrong about something in a good way. Teaching is now up there with one of the more fun parts of making and selling arts and crafts.
I had my first class since my move this weekend and it was a bit of an introduction to polymer clay, caning and beadmaking all in one. I limited it to black and white so that I didn’t overwhelm everyone that first class (I’ll save that for next time) and we just stuck to how to make simple, fast canes.
The class was open to everyone from tweens on up – my line to the coordinator was: old enough not to eat clay or stab themselves with blades deliberately – and everyone cranked out beads, little covered tins and switchplates. Black and white jellyrolls, checkerboards, strips and flowers abounded. Some people made little hypnotized eyes.
Here’s a little of what the class made. I’m privileged to have worked with such a great group!
We’ll be running more classes – on colours and canes and small objects covered in clay – in June. If you’re interested, give Laurie a shout at the gallery.
Pinch Me
As if the fabulous birthday weekend were not enough! I gathered my courage and went and spoke to the education coordinator at the Art Gallery in town a few weeks ago. What did I have to lose right? They have interesting classes and perhaps they’d be interested in some polymer clay related classes.
Long story short: they were happy to meet me and yes, clay class would indeed be interesting. I’ll start by demoing beads one afternoon and then teach classes for the older kids and adults. And if I was interested, there are shows at the gallery that even take complete newbies.
So if you happen to be in the small town of Swift Current, Saskatchewan on March 21st, I’ll be demoing caned clay beads at the Art Gallery. Until then you’ll probably find me hovering around cloud 9.
Of course, life would be TRULY grand if this were not still the view outside my window.
Great Big Mushy Thanks
The Alberta Street Team is a pretty awesome street team and one of the very awesome things it does, week in, week out, is to do a thorough critique of member shops. Yesterday was my turn. Most of the critiques are of newer members but we managed to find a nice little stack of polishing tasks for my bead shop on Etsy.
So my great big mushy thanks of the week has to go out to Joan of ASecondTime who is the host and ringmaster of the weekly circus.
What sort of items did I get suggested? Add a little bit of personality to my shop announcement, a bit about my years of experience to my profile, more navigation links in my descriptions and to include additional photos, perhaps using completed pieces to show scale and examples. We discussed advertising, promotions and how to market better. It really is easier with a little help from your friends.
Canada Post and the Slot of Doom
One of the challenges of selling online for Canadian vendors is the Slot of Doom, the term of endearment given to Canada Post’s requirement that packages be 2cm or thinner in order to get the best rates to destinations. If you can fit it through the slot of doom, you can get your small, light item to the US for $2.11, to Canadian destinations for $1.18.
If it doesn’t fit, you are looking at $6.50 or more to the US for the next best air mail option and a similar price for Canadian mail! Bit of a jump there.
Most of my items happily go through the slot of doom. My beads generally get tucked in a poly bag, several layers of tissue paper and an envelope. The canes were more of an issue.
Canes SQUISH. So I needed boxes that fit. At the time that I originally bought boxes no one I found had small, jewelry sized boxes under 2cm(13/16″ or so) at a price even in the ballpark of standard boxes. And so I bought a couple cartons of jewelry boxes and my boyfriend trimmed them down to 5/8″ (15-16mm) for me.
Voila! It works. And I use it for sending jewelry or more delicate beads as well. It only chafes a bit that I have to gear what I offer online to Canada Post’s restrictions in order to remain competitive with an international market.
Pomomama: a Feature
I’ve seen Ebb & Flo pretty much since I joined Etsy – I made a particular effort to look up and keep an eye on Canadian sellers – and she’s a pretty familiar face for forum lurkers like me! So when I found out that I had the perfect chance to dig a little bit more as a result of the Blog-a-Day Giveaway, I was happy. Here’s a little more about the artist who sells as both Ebb and Flo (unique, handcrafted jewelry) and Pomomama (handmade supplies, papercrafts and patterns).
Tell us a little about yourself!
I’m a SAHM who crafts in, around and in spite of her family in an effort to stay sane.
What inspires or influences your work? What themes or motifs do you notice most often?
Quirky shapes and unusual presentations influence my work. I’m also noticing colour a lot more than I used to. Blue/green is my comfort zone but I’m trying to break free. Glass is a favourite medium.
Do you have a favourite piece or series? If so, do you have links to them?
I really like my flotsam pieces as I think these are very unusual, combining wire, metal and fibre with felting. Here are some examples.
Have you done any work specifically for the winter holiday season?
I produced a Fall range in copper wire crochet and metal and have been working on winter ‘bling’ for the party season. These will be available at the craft fairs I attend soon.
What lead you to sell online? What’s the best part? The most challenging?
I had a hobby which made me happy but due to household budgeting I needed to make it self sufficient. ….. and it is now but not solely from selling online.
What are your favourite materials to work with?
Wire, metal, fibre and I love setting pieces of art glass from the amazing Etsy glass makers eg. Willowglass, Lis Kidder and Shoozles
Where can we find you online?
At Pomomama Design – www.pomomamadesign.com
Do you have any specials, promos, or upcoming events you’d like to tell us about?
Ebb & Flo goodies will be at Devil May Wear in Vancouver, BC
If YOU are interested in entering the Blog-a-Day Giveaway, all you need to do is check out the goodies on the site, pick one (or several, you can enter multiple times), and write a post about the person’s shop, pieces, blog or some other related item. Once you have done that, return to the Giveaway page and leave a comment with a link to the post. Voila! You have an entry. You have one entry per comment and the giveaways continue till December 4th.
Year of Clay – O Canada
This is a week early I suppose – Canada Day isn’t until July 1st – but I was pretty happy with the cane! You can see that cane here on my Flickr. I used it to make some very simple slice beads and pendants, strung on satin-type cord with sliding knots. This was probably my first ‘cookie cutter’ cane though I didn’t make it with a cookie cutter. I cut around a drawn design. The process is the same though. Now I have a head full of ideas for other similar canes!
Year of Clay – Infinite Ideas
One of the upsides of even the slowest of shows is you meet the very best people. Mid-April I had the luck of a show that got snowed out. Very few of the vendors appeared to set up and even fewer customers! So as happens at slow shows, the vendors sort of chatted and hung out. As I tend to do, I went and got the jewelrymakers to come take a peek at my beads.
One of those vendors was Nadine of Miyaw Designs. She was interested in some of the simple logo beads I had and asked if I’d be able to do something with a symbol they use (mother-daughter team) often in their work. So I agreed to give it a whirl, and here’s the prototype:
The infinity symbol is used as one of the symbols or logos of the Metis nation, most often on a background of navy or red. Armed with that I tried it in navy, making the rectangle first then making a segment of that into a round cane. Next, I’m working with some embellishment ideas to make more ‘interesting’ slice beads. Here’s one:
