Silverlake Craft Fair

Sunday was the Silverlake Craft Fair and Kate and I exhibited for the first time. It was a lot of fun! According to the other vendors, who are regulars there, the traffic was much lighter than usual and sales were pretty slow. I did ok and it was a decent investment for me. The craft fair will have a new location soon and I might be back to check it out.

There were lots of neat things for sale and lots of handmade jewelry -- if you're looking for some great etsy artists to meet in person, this is a great show. I was proud of myself for not spending all of my earnings, although I did buy one thing (just one is allowed!). Roscata had a booth where the designer was selling her polymer clay charms that were all DELICIOUSLY adorable. I ended up taking home a pair of snow cone earrings. Look how cute these are!!

If you're in the market for snow cone (or Hostess cupcakes!) charms, I now have an official recommendation (for a snack attack, flip through her images on Flickr).

It was an overall great day. An excuse to chit chat with Kate for 8 hours PLUS we had a bunch of surprise guests! I felt so popular! Adam and his mom came by and stayed for a while, then Lori and Mickey showed up for a bit, I also randomly ran into my cousin Laila and her husband and baby, plus Kate's friend Joe (who is super awesome) came by. It made the time just fly by!

One of the vendors near us watched me set up and suggested that I raise my prices. I understand that everyone wants a certain price-level for these types of events, but the person who suggested it (and many others) were selling more intricate items, like hand-cast silver and hand-beaded jewelry, that are more time- and cost- and labor-intensive. My overhead for my paintings and embroidery pieces are very low and I charge commisserate to the time I spend on them. Which means that some things will sell for $10 or $15 and others for $25. Which I don't feel undermines anyone else selling in the fair (especially since there isn't anyone else selling dot paintings, so I'm not funking up the market for dots!), but instead allows people with a smaller budget to take home a little something, which makes me feel good and the buyer too. I feel bad for anyone else who had a less than awesome day, because we had a great time. I even took home a free sunburn! Cruise Director Kate* suggested that we put on sunblock and I was all 'pfft, I'm ok' and then HEY! Guess who has a lobster nose?

Afterward, I went and collected Ryan and we met up with Adam and Kate for a gluttonous dinner at Cheesecake Factory. Kate had to come down thisaway because she was hand-delivering a custom purse order to someone at Disneyland (she met them while they were in line for a ride for cripes sake! THAT is service, my friend!).

In a nutshell: it was an awesome day. I'd do it again, only maybe take the sunblock advice. And also maybe remember to eat lunch so that I don't have to eat the whole dinner menu afterward.


*For the record, she gave herself this nickname, but she lives up to it in every (good) way! Example: we asked about what she did while her mom was visiting and she pulled out an itinerary of all the places they visited. :)

Ghettogloss Craft Fair in Silverlake

Come see me and Kate this Sunday at the Ghettogloss Craft Fair in Silverlake! We'll be selling our crafty wares and also just being awesome in general. Don't miss it!

Sunday, March 29, 2009
9am - 5pm

Silver Lake Art Craft & Vintage is located at
2450 Glendale Blvd LA CA 90039 (map)
in the CITI BANK parking lot.

geek moment of the day

Yes, I did start the conversation by sending them an email, but still!! I got a reply from Jemaine (or at least someone signing his name. I prefer to pretend that it is really, truly him and if you know differently please keep it to yourself, thankyouverymuch) that was short and sweet and signed 'Fanks' which... you know... made my heart skip a beat.

In other news, soon you will be able to see my Flight of the Conchords embroidery piece up on their MySpace page, in the Fan Art gallery.

HHG featured on MrXStitch.com!

I couldn't be more excited to have been noticed by Mr. X Stitch, which is one of the best cross-stitching sites around and an endless source of inspiration!

My hitchhiking ghosts were deemed worthy of a Stitchgasm (*swoon*) and a little write-up! Check it out!

Country Fair

If you've ever heard of the small canyon where my family lives, it's because it catches on fire every year and last year's fire grew into an enormous beast that ate a good chunk of southern California. Otherwise, if you live more than 7 miles away, you most likely don't know the place exists. It's a rural spot on the edge of the forest that began as a silver mining town and is a haven admist the city life found everywhere else in Orange County for those people who don't take kindly to "city life." Which is to say, there are a bunch of bikers and weirdoes and the occassional city slicker who "wants to get away from it all." I have a whole bucket full of opinions on the place, but my family claims to love it there, and so they are involved with the community there and my mom in particular likes to do the social gathering stuff like the annual Country Fair.

So. We again got a booth at the Fair and set out our crafty wares. It was fun and pretty profitable (although, any craft seller will tell you that Fairs are dangerous because you spend 50% of your profits on roasted corn and bake sale brownies). I had a fan, which was super cool. I made some finger puppets and some needle felted animals and this little guy (who later told me he's 4 and a half) had all kinds of suggestions for what I should make next and how I should give them to him for free, since he thought of it. He was so cute and cracked me up with all his encouragement. I made a special SpongeBob finger puppet for him, at his request, and he kept leaning on my arm and cooing "you're REALLY good at this. You're doing a super good job." and when I said Thank You, he instructed me "No, you should say Super Thank You." So funny, this guy. He even let it slide when I made SpongeBob's pants blue instead of brown. "You know what? That's ok. I like blue. It's my favorite color even! So I'll just tell people that I asked you for blue pants."

The newspaper assigned a new beat reporter and the guy was a little overenthusisatic about his job. He was having such a sporting time gawking at the hillbillies and eating fried Oreos and he kept pestering me for a picture for his article. I paused for one second and he sprung into action.



So here's me, with all my chins, wearing an itsy-bitsy cowboy hat. I pray that it didn't make the print edition. (There are 185 pictures posted for the online version. Read here.)

The number one draw for kids to our booth was this little cardboard house that I used to display the needle felted animals.



I needed some way to set them out and Ryan found this box in the garage and turned it inside out and it formed itself into a 2 story house. I laid down some felt carpet and viola! Every kid in the place stopped by once, or twice, or thrice, to look at it. I had more inquiries about the house than the inhabitants and everyone wanted to know how much it cost. My mom was infatuated with my little Fan and kept egging me to give it to him. Which I wouldn't have minded giving it away for free (it says PETMEDS inside, for criminy's sake!) except it was slapped together haphazardly and was actually kind of delicate. The little toothpick window frames were just set in there (no glue or tape) and the roof had two simple pieces of masking tape holding it on. I was mostly worried that some poor kiddie would be majorly disappointed. Lay hands on the cardboard house of his/her dreams and then it would crumble. Or, worse, stab somebody with errant toothpicks.

On Sunday, I left the fair just before closing because I was bushed and my stepdad had already shown up to start help disassembling (I wasn't needed anymore) and my mom held on to the house "in case someone wants to buy something at the last minute" which I assume is code for "in case your fan comes by again, I can give it to him." I just hope it held up so that SpongeBob had someplace to live until he can get back to his underwater pineapple fortress.

Needle Felted Presidents on Craft Magazine blog!

The folks over at Craft Magazine have posted my needle felted presidents on their blog today- so cool! Seems that everyone loves Van Buren's muttonchops! :)

needle felting madness

I made the hippo from it's a small world tonight. Because I have always loved that hippo. And I am a dork.

with a penny for scale