Sunday, October 17, 2010

My first crafty sale event!

Whew! No more burning the midnight oil, my debut craft event is finished! It was at a fall festival at my kids school, so a pretty small potatoes event, but it went really well. This is an overall view of my table. I wish you could see the cool fall colored fabric a little better. I topped it with chocolate colored felt.

I sold prints of my fall watercolors on chocolate cardstock, and fall fabric pin cushions.

This is my bookmark tree, with the original watercolor below it. You'll see a close up of that in a minute.

Skeletons and mummies. The mummies have cheesecloth bandages. Both were a big hit. I was only making skeletons but my daughter Hannah said I needed to make mummies too. Of course she was right.

Closer in on the pin cushions. I embroidered each leaf and made the mushrooms and snails from fimo clay. Those are seed beads around each felt flower.

I had people who don't even sew buy pin cushions because they thought they were so cute.

Each tree is made from seed beads, the berries are crystals, and the branches are done with silver and gold metallic pens. Instead of tagging each item I had acorn cards for each item group tucked into fall leaf placecard holders. The idea for pricing by group came from the lovely Jenni Horne at Mattie's Social Circle, be sure to check out her AMAZING blog. For business cards I watercolored and salted sheets of paper and punched large maple leaves. The picture doesn't do them justice, they turned out very pretty even if I do say so myself.


This is the original for my bookmarks. I had it in my head that I wanted to hang something from branches, and then thought of bookmarks. This is one night prior to the show, so of course I was up way past midnight painting this. It wasn't my intention, but I loved it as a whole (and it works as such), so I just erased the dividing pencil lines and matted it. Now if I can ever find a way to make decent prints you may buy them some day from the vision of an ETSY shop that is dancing in my head.

4 comments:

The Muse of The Day said...

I didn't realize that the painting of the butterfly was so big... and I never saw the mushroom painting before- it is beautiful. I was able to enlarge the pictures by clicking on them and got to see a lot more - like the fabric on the table (stunning). The bookmark tree was very clever, it makes it so that everybody could leave with a little something if their budget was tight. I have to say that Hanna is a genius. Those mummies were PURE genius. All of them (skeletons & mummies) in a black bowl - with their button eyes eyes staring back - I can see why they stole the show.
THE PINCUSHIONS !!!! made me PROUD to have you as my BFF. They also made me wish I lived in the same town as you. We could go very,very far together.
It is hard to end this comment and not mention the seed bead cards, your business cards, or the super clever place card price tag holders. Instead I will spend my last few lines discussing the prototype for the book marks & your future store. I, too, think it works well as a whole piece. Did you just make more individual ones for the bookmarks? There must be a way to make copies without going the expensive route, albeit perfect, of glyceés. With all the printing advances there must be something out there. It is too bad that an etsy store is virtual, I think you would enjoy getting all the live, in person, feedback from people when they see all your "stock". It would be great to have a "little studio" shop. One were you could sell your things and other people's things too. During any lulls you could work in the little studio part of the store. I can just see you going to the Atlanta Gift Mart convention to stock up. You could open up the studio for classes at certain times. Of course the word "vacation" would be banished from your vocabulary, but I think the store would reenergize you. The etsy store will be a good place for you to test the waters and see what works best. I also wonder if there is a way to make linens from your work. I think if your "bookmark" paintings were on linen kitchen towels, they would be a hit on etsy. There are people printing these at home, but I don't know how they do it. Check out the True Up blog for the digital-print-of-the-week segment.
WOW, Alicia. You are very talented.
Carolina

Unknown said...

I am SO proud of you!! Your display looks great. A nice assortment of items and prices. And totally themed is a great idea. I hope you did well. I want a pincusion....going to etsy now to see if they are there. If not tell me how to buy one!

Alicia said...

Wow ladies, thank you both for your kind comments! My heart is full! Carolina, you know where to find my response. And Jenni, my etsy shop is currently just in my dreams but I will get you a pin cushion. I have to make another batch of pins so I will get back to you on that soon.

Anonymous said...

Wow, it looks and sounds like your craft stall was a big success!! I love the fall watercolours, you have a real talent. I painted autumn leaves for the table names for our wedding and wish I had had the skill you have for catching the colours so beautifully... I think mine will be making their way to parents and grandparents as mementos as family will appreciate them. Yours, however, would look splendid anywhere!