Vertical or Horizontal?

I made a bow board for our craft fair display to try to get some of our work higher off the table.

To do so, I bought a 22x34 inch frame at Michael's, covered the plexiglass with a dark purple crushed velvet and used black grosgrain ribbon to have something to attach my brooches and clips to. (I firmly believe that purple is as much a neutral as beige, black and white. :)

But I can't decide if I prefer the look of the bow board vertical or horizontal. What do you think?

 

I had intended to use it vertically, both for the additional height and to use the minimal amount of table space for it. But I think I prefer the horizontal look of the bottom photo.

Meanwhile, Scott is working on a spinning display tower for my dragonfly magnets!

Working Wednesday: Busy, Busy, Busy!

Somehow, I've been in denial that Winter Is Coming.

And with winter, comes all the holiday shopping and the largest percentage of revenue retailers make all year round. And with an Etsy store stocked and open, Foster's Beauties is a retailer facing its first holiday season. Yikes!

Time to ratchet up production so we have merchandise to sell!

I wrote a couple weeks ago about launching production of a batch of fanciful flower brooches and hair pretties.

Since then, I managed to turn this

into this

I've stitched layers of petals together, and then glued on felt bases, which will later get attached to hair clips, brooch pins, ponytail holders and headbands.

Here, the flowers on the left are getting their felt backs, while the ones on the right with the colorful plastic clamps, have moved to the next step, which is adding a pretty center.

This one has a very sparkly resin center. I also use flatback rhinestones, buttons and beads for flower centers.

And eventually, they're done (completed the batch today!):

The ginormous pile of petals turned into three dozen flowers of various sizes. I'm donating about half of them to my inlaws' church's holiday bazaar, where they will hopefully sell well and raise some money for their church. The other half will go into stock for the two or three holiday craft fairs we hope to participate in, ideally joined by many, many more products ready for sale between now and then.

Meanwhile, I'm getting back to folding some dragonfly wings. I figure if I alternate which products I work on, I won't get burnt out on making them. Right? :)

Now to hope that autumn brings us customers!

What are you working on this week?

Not Even Close To A Wordless Wednesday

I'm having trouble finding fabric-covered headbands at a price that will let me adorn them with flowers and sell at a reasonable but profitable price, so I decided I needed to master the fine art of covering my own headbands.

The advantage of being married to a woodworker is that I know the many benefits of clamps! :)

Ellie tells me you can't go wrong with sparkly stuff. :)

This one is about 7mm wide. I prefer wider headbands as bases for my flowers, but this is what I had on hand to experiment with. I'm letting Ellie (who declined to be photographed) do quality assurance by wearing it so I can see if it can hold up to a kid's wearing.

I'm fairly happy with how this one (and the ones that followed) turned out, but the ends are tricky to get/keep covered with ribbon. I'd love some tips from other crafters!

Making Donations

So one of these days, I'll actually sell my work in addition to donating to good causes!

But a friend made a personal appeal for items for our synagogue's annual auction, so I buckled down a bit and finished a few pieces just for them. 

Please forgive the poor photography -- I needed to get them dropped off in a hurry so I took quickie photos:

They'll be a low-price item for the silent auction, but I know I appreciate having some affordable items when I go to fund-raising auctions; often the ticket price alone means I can't afford to buy anything. So I like to think people like me will be happy to see something they can actually afford to bid on!

I also donated a gift box with a set of four of my dragonfly magnets. I didn't take a photo of the four I donated, but for those who haven't seen them, here's a sample:

And of course we donated one of Scott's bowls too, a solid-wood bowl made of Oregon black walnut, although that won't exactly be a low price point (but I'm sure it will be far lower than the big ticket items!):