Craft Fair Number 3

I had another Craft fair last Sunday. On the Wednesday the Treasurer from Crafts Unlimited Association that I am a member of phoned to ask me something about another fair I was doing and happened to mention that there had been a cancellation at East Kilbride and would I be interested. I jumped at the chance because it was a venue I hadnt done before and had heard that it was good.

Unfortunately though I had to go myself as my mum was visiting my sister and my other sister was away to the good food show to perve on James Martin and Gordon Ramsey. It was fine though cos I knew I would be placed next to the people I seem to get on with cos one of the people I get on really with does the table layouts for the fairs.

The venue was really really nice. It was in East Kilbride Arts centre and the room we had was beautiful. Plus it was right next to the cafe which helps bring people through too.

I sold two bags, a table runner set and a peg bag. In the grand scheme of things not a lot but better than I have ever done and I had a lot of positive comments. I also gave a few people my card as they were interested in getting commission pieces done for christmas presents. I havent heard from them yet but fingers crossed.

I also spent the afternoon getting to know Lizanne, Sharon and Anne a bit better, which is really good for me because I really dont have a lot of friends. Lizanne and I are pretty much on exactly the same page and last night spent nearly an hour on the fone after she called to confirm some info about a fair she has booked me into.

As always I have pictures of the table:

Yet another Christmas present

I dont know if I have mentioned it in another post but the reason you see soooo many posts here regarding christmas presents is that I have made a personal pledge to make or buy as many presents handmade from now on. It isnt always viable but the more I can get or make myself the happier I will be.

Anyway, ages ago I bought a stack of material off a girl on LJ. There was 5 pieces all 2 metres or more for a tenner. I didnt realise, however, that they were dressmaking materials but this has been a blessing in disguise as it has made me branch out a bit. When I opened the package Craig, my partner saw a material and instantly demanded I make him a shirt out of it. Having never made clothes, never mind clothes for him I was a bit scared but I agreed. I decided to make it as part of his christmas present.

I bought a Simplicity pattern to do this with, but I am absolutely RUBBISH at reading patterns so I kinda had to improvise a wee bit when I couldnt understand something. Now that it is finished I can see problems with it and mistakes but hopefully he doesnt notice them. If I ever have to make one again in the future though I will know how to do it properly.

I have to be honest though. I did find making this slightly fun which I never thought I would. Here is the item of clothing in question:

Halloween Cake

Some of you might know that I am a (pre warrant) Brownie Leader. On thursday we had a HallowFox party. A combination of both Halloween and Guy Fox Night. We had talked about how it would be impossible to get a Halloween cake for the party because it would be 6 days after the event, so I offered to bake one. Originally I was maybe just going to make a cake with ready to roll icing and drawing on a pumpkin or something like that but then I saw this on one of my baking communities on Livejournal.

So I decided to make one. Definately not a patch on the original but it worked out alright.



And the Brownies seemed to like it :)

More Christmas Presents done

Whilst trawling the internet a good few months ago I found a tutorial for something called Easy Breezy Wrap Pants. I bookmarked it because it looked really easy to do but that produced beautiful results. I have always said that I would never make clothes because I dont have the precision or patience to make them right or to sit right. This tutorial was so easy that it changed my view on that.

So I decided I would try it out and make a pair of these for my sisters christmas present. She is very tall and has big hips so I figured these would be a good tryout for her as things wouldnt need to be exact. I think these will look beautiful on her.

At the moment they are not finished as I am going to wait until she comes up for christmas to hem them at the bottom so they are nice and exact. When she puts them on and I have finished them I will get a picture of them on her but for now here is a picture of them folded up so you can see the material.

WIP's

Ive been quite a bad crafter lately. I've been cutting projects out but not actually managing to sew them. I think Ive been focusing on getting a whack of christmas presents finished first. Ive also been focusing on getting the bulk of a cardigan knitted for my dad so the sewing has been neglected.

Here is a couple of pictures of my WIP pile.




After my fair on Sunday I had two consecutive days off so decided this was an opportunity to get the WIP pile demolished. In there I had 2 patchwork blankets, 2 bags and 2 table runner/placemat sets (for those of you who are new I have mild OCD and have to make things in even numbers. Its only on a very special occassion that I will make an odd number of something, ie. one if I only have one set of handles).

I got a fair bit through the pile. Finished the table sets (14 placemats and two table runners!), sewn the blanket fronts, just need to back them and almost finished the bags ( just need to sew around the top and then topstitch).

Here are some pictures:






All in all Im quite pleased with my acheivements over two days. Back to work tomorrow. :(

Apologies for no post last night. Im not going to explain myself but I do have my reasons. Will attempt to make a belter of a post today.

REDUCTIONS in store

Had my craft fair today. Was ok, hopefully got a few commissions but will post about that tomorrow.

I have reduced a few bags in both my stores. The bags are now ridiculously low in price but they are clearance as I just want them out of my stock box to make room for more things!

These are the items in question:

Folksy

Star and Moon Tote
Alien Tote

Etsy

Alien Tote
Star and Moon Tote
Diamante Lippy Bag

Hope you are all well

NaBloPoMo

Ok so I are the fail with my last 30 days of posts pledge. I am useless. Feel free to kneecap me for this failure I am truly disgusted at myself.

In fairness I found out about NaBloPoMo about 10 days ago, so I thought, "dont beat yourself up about not posting just do it properly for NaBloPoMo".

NaBloPoMo runs in conjunction with NaNoWriMo and encourages Bloggers to post once a day throughout the month. So along with Lady In Training im determined to do this.

Bring it on.

Also, for anyone that reads this that is in the area I will be having a stall at East Kilbride Arts Centre Craft Fair tomorrow from 12 til 4. I will as always take pics of my stall all made up and will post about how it went.

Baby Blankets

I never thought Id have patience to do patchwork. I dont think Ill ever do it in the sense of quilting, but I really do enjoy piecing together the patches, so Ive adapted the technique to my own uses.

I started out making a patchwork baby blanket for a girl in my work who was due to go off on maternity leave. I had picked up some Ikea fabric a while ago and decided that would be really sweet. Then I decided I wanted to keep making them and so made 4 for my first craft fair back in August.

I bought a great big huge box of pre-cut patches from someone on Livejournal as Id used her patches before and liked the colours. The alternating fabric I had gotten for 99p for about a metre of each and cut it into patches.

I made two blue blankets and two red/orange blankets. 3 had white soft chenille type fleece backing and the 4th I used fuschia pink fleece backing.

First two craft fairs

I had my second craft fair on Saturday there, which I feel in order to tell you about it I should talk about my first fair also.

My first fair was about 6 weeks ago in August and was held in Clarkston. I was intending to use this fair as a learning tool, e.g how to set up my table correctly, meeting other members of the association and in general to know how my things are received.

Well all I can say is that it is good that I went in with that optimistic view as it was a complete washout. We thought it might be fairly busy as the Farmers market was on that day also and hoped that would send the people in but it didnt have as much an affect as that. There were people coming in, but not a great deal. We should one thing at a £1. Oh well.

The upside was that the woman who was across from us was exceptionally helpful. She gave me a lot of tips for the table but also an idea for something I hadnt thought of. She suggested putting bubble wrap in one of the bags to let people see the size of it, which I was astounded I hadnt thought of before because it will make photographing my bags a ton easier. Here are the pictures from the first day:




The second fair was held in Hamilton. I was hoping for a slightly better turnout as the centre it was being held in is at the top of a fairly busy shopping precinct but it was a bit set back from the road. It was certainly busier this time than it was in Clarkston and I at least covered my table with 2 sales. I would probably be quite disheartened but at the same time I think it wont get any better if I dont try to help out.

Ive suggested some venues to the committee for them to look into for next year. The more I think about one of the venues the more I think it could work out well, at least for exposure. Will need to think some more.

As usual I took some pics of my table which I thought looked a ton better this time, thanks to Jacqueline for all the tips (and the people over at Crafteroo!)








Kat xx

The Thursday Night Project

Ok so a couple of people have blogged about the Thursday Night Project already.

Created by the wonderful PennyDog, the project is run on Crafteroo and there is also a group on Flikr to post completed pictures. Every Thursday we all talk about what projects we are going to start or finish or work on that night.

Last Thursday I decided to partipate and wanted to start making a batch of plastic bag dispensers for my fair today. I got 4 (out of 7 done and ran out of machine needles. I had broken through 5 needles. There appeared to be something wrong with my back stitch but its working fine now so dont know what it was.

Anyway here are the finished dispensers.




This Thursday I also worked on things for my fair, this time Peg bags. Again I got 6 done (for those who dont know me particularly well, I have a mild version of OCD and prefer to make things in even numbers). Here they are:






None of them sold but I think they are the kind of thing that could sell so Ill give it some time.

I gots new banners and logos!

Ok as you all might know I am completely inept when it comes to graphic design and things like that.

So I put out a plea on Crafteroo for some help as the banner I had on my stores was very very basic and I wanted an avatar for use on forums and such like. I gave very little instruction and asked for someones interpretation and thought to go into the items.

Then PennyDog of PennyDog Accessories (http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5628507) stepped forward.

She made these little beauties for me:





I absolutely love them! We both agree that the cream bag on the banner looks out of place so we are going to replace it with another bag but otherwise I am exceptionally happy.

Thanks Kerry!

Kat

Amy Butler Clutch

As mentioned in my previous post, for my next craft fair I decided I needed to stock up on clutch bags.

I slightly modified this pattern from Amy Butler's In Stitches book. I have to say Amy Butler patterns are a lot of words for not a lot of actions. I felt as if it just went on and on when 5 sentences could have been said in one. Regardless I got there with it. And really like the end result.

Here are some different ones Ive made :