Shhh...it's an affaire!

A CRAFTY AFFAIRE!!!

My mommy and I are taking the trip out to the West Coast in a couple of weeks to help my sister out with her booth at the holiday market!

If you don't know, my sister is the wonderful mastermind over at Try to Keep Up!  She's been putting a whole bunch of news up on her facebook page, so follow along there for the most up to date news!

She's been working hard crocheting her fingers to the bone to get ready for this show, and set up some online shops! Wanna see what kind of goodies she has?

Lots and lots of combinations of infinity scarves and headbands, as well as beautiful snowflake Christmas tree ornaments! Click here to check out more of her goodies!  Here's a secret - I totally made some of those scarves for her! (Sisterly slave labour!!!) So you should definitely buy one because I might have made it :P

If you are in the BC lower main land area, come stop by and visit us!! Look for the West Coast Leslie Designs booth ... we'll look something like this:

If you say you stopped by because you saw this on Envirocraftiness, you'll get a free gift...and by free gift, I mean a high five. 

Not in the lower mainland area? 

If you're in the Edmonton area, check out Modern Sole in Sherwood Park for some of the sweet boot cuffs made by Leslie!

Alright, not in either of those places?! I have good news for you too!  Leslie just opened up an online store at StoreEnvy!! Check out all her goodies here!

Thanks for checking it out! Hope to see you in December for your free high fives!!

Adorable Indie Craft Sale

This year my sister-in-law-ish (she's really my sister's SIL, but because our families are close, she's like my SIL too)  was a vendor at this awesome craft sale called Mix and Match Marketplace. 

It was pretty small, but the quality of the merchandise was really good.  There was a variety of clothing, jewelry, buttons, accessories, crocheted items, and more!

My super awesome SIL was selling French macarons.

Don't those look perfect?!?!?!

And isn't she adorable?!

Craft Sale

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who came out (and a bigger thanks to those of you who made purchases!)

Overall, I do have to say I was a little disappointed with my first craft sale.  It's not like I was planning on making a lot of money, but at the same time, I expected to sell a lot more.  Luckily I did make enough to cover the cost of the table, and then a little on top of that.

It was quite interesting because it really looked like nobody sold much.  The show had a lot of people come through, but there didn't seem to be much money being exchanged at all.

I would have been particularly disappointed if everyone was selling stuff but me, but that didn't seem to be the case.  It didn't seem to be an issue of price, because some of my items that were probably under-priced that people looked at and said "this is really cool" didn't sell.

Anyway, it was a good experience, and I talked to some very nice people.  AND I got to spend the whole day with Amy. :)  

Craft sale - branding!

Part of creating a successful shop whether it's online or in person is the idea of branding.  For me, things have progressed fairly organically from my blog.  

Name - for some people like myself, a logical name for your shop comes from your blog's name.  I like the consistency.  It's the name of my shop, my blog, my twitter, and I have a gmail address that's the same too. For other people their blog name might not be appropriate for their shop.  For example, Robin from the T-Shirt Diaries decided that naming her Etsy store after her blog wasn't the right fit. 

Whatever it is, make sure it represents what you're selling.  For myself, I'd like to eventually transition into completely green items, using thrifted materials and green adhesives, etc.  Right now while I'm starting out it's 100% realistic for me to do.  I'm working with my craft stash and using a lot of items I've had donated to me by others looking to get rid of stuff, which is eco-friendly in it's own way.

Create your BRAND

Creating a brand is creating an image, attitude and feeling about your shop and what you sell.  For myself I'm creating my brand visually through the font, colors, and images I use.  

With that said... on to my craft project.  

I made a banner for my booth.  

(unfortunately not a great pic of it!)

Interested in making your own??

Here's what I did (I apologize for forgetting to photograph a couple steps along the way...)

1.  I created what I wanted in picnik.  I would have just done it in word if my font was available.  Whatever works for you.  Then I put each letter into word, 1 letter filling one page.   Then I printed and  cut these letters out to make giant paper stencils.

2.  Find a piece of fabric that's the right size for your banner.  Then, get a piece of freezer paper long enough for your entire word.  Trace each letter (using your stencil) onto the freezer paper.  

(I didn't do the tree, but I left space for it and just used the stencil pinned to the fabric...I wasn't cutting that out twice!!)

3.  Cut out all the letters once you like the spacing, etc.  

4.  Center your freezer paper on your fabric.

5.  Iron your freezer paper to the fabric on medium heat without any steam.

6.  Next, paint in your freezer paper stencil with fabric paint.  Be careful not to push paint under the edged (I tried to paint "inward" from the stencil to avoid this as much as possible)

(note that if you do this on your ironing board like I did, you should put newspaper or cardboard under the fabric to in case the paint bleeds through)

7.  Carefully remove your stencil, and follow any other directions from the fabric paint (ie. washing, ironing, etc.)

8.  I then folded the edges in twice so that the raw edges were contained and sewed them in place!

Voila!  You have your very own banner!

Craft sale this Saturday...yikes!!

Craft Sales - Part 1

This year I'm participating in my very first craft sale.  I have no idea what to expect, but I'm going to do my best to keep you all updated (and to keep a bit of a record of it for myself too)

Step 1:  Find your shows.

Here's what I've found works for me so far:

Search on Kijiji - I found 2 like this, one of which I'm doing

Try Craigslist - our community isn't huge into Craigslist, and Kijiji usually offers better results, so do what works for you

Talk to people you know!  I found out about a sale from someone asking me if I was going to be at it, just because she knows I'm crafty!

Check local papers - one of our local free papers has a "happenings" section, and I've found a couple shows here too.  

Facebook!  A lot of groups create events here because it's free and seen by a lot of people!  

Craftster.org - in some of the City-specific forums people discuss this, or you could even ask what events are in your city

Google search - this one's kind of a given, but doesn't necessarily provide the best results

Local Community Associations - my boyfriend lives in a lovely little neighborhood that has an annual spring event Art in the Park, stuff like this is all over, but relatively quiet.  Again, stuff like this can often be found on facebook.

Step 2:  Pick your shows

Not all of the shows you find will be the right fit for you.  Things to consider are:

Audience: are they looking to buy what you're selling?

Location:  Will your travel and accommodation costs outweigh what you will make?

Table Price: Again, will you make enough to cover your costs?

How many shows do you think you can do?  How close/far apart can you do shows? 

It's good to communicate with the organizers, figure out who the audience is, how big the show is, and anything else you can find.

Step 3:  Keep records

Image from Geekware

You've just done a fair bit of research, and it's a good idea to record your findings.  Keep either a notebook, or a computer document that contains information on the shows you've found.  I have spreadsheet that I enter the name of the show, where it is, what the date is, how to contact them, how much tables cost, and how I found out about it.

It's a good idea to make note of what you're attending and which ones you're not, and the reasons you're not (ie.  Too expensive, same weekend as my grandpa's 80th birthday and would have liked to go, didn't look like my type of show, etc)


Keep building on this each year!  After the show it's a good idea to make notes about how the show was, what you'd do differently next time, and if you'd be interested in going again.  

I'll be adding new Craft Sale Posts as I continue on and learn new things, but for now, here's a couple links that I've been checking out.

One Pretty Thing - Craft Sales

eHow - How to do well at craft shows (beginners)

Also, I'd love to hear any experiences you'd had with craft sales or any words of wisdom you'd like to pass along!  

Craft Sale Goodness

I feel like I've been a little blog-neglectful lately!  I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm feeling it.  Last weekend was super busy, and if you're Canadian, it's Thanksgiving THIS weekend!  And of course, what happens when you have a very busy couple of days? You get sick.  That's right, so now I'm fighting off a cold too!

Oh well. I really can't complain.  For an unemployed person I'm really quite busy lately!  

In case you're wondering what's keeping me so busy, it's 2 major things. 

1) Fitness Classes.  For those of you who don't know, I'm a contract fitness instructor.  I teach an intermediate step class one night a week, and for the month of October, I've picked up a bunch of classes to sub (another instructor is away due to surgery).  

On top of that, I have practices for the training I just took last weekend.  The YWCA here is launching the BTS program Group Power on November 15 and there's a lot of work that needs to be done before that happens.  (side note:  the guys working out in the video you see is a clip from the training video that is part of the package instructors get.  They take turns instructing, and the guy that's on the left in the first part (squats) is sooooo attractive!!  Definitely makes learning some of it much easier...at least easier on the eyes!)

2) My craft sale that's coming up on Nov. 20.  I'll periodically be posting what I'm making here on my blog of all of you to see! 

The first things I've made are these cute little hair flowers.

So far I've made 5 different colors.

Red with gold beads

White with a cluster of seed beads

Blue with a cluster of seed beads

Teal with white beads, I also did some with the gold beads!

Burgundy with white beads

I have an idea of what I'd like to charge for these, but I'm curious as to what other people would.  The community that I'm selling my stuff at is a small-ish town, just outside a major centre, and it's a bit of a mennonite community (think cheap) and I've never been to their sale before, so I'm really not sure what the other venders will be selling and what the show's like.  

Linking to: