Alright folks, let's see if I can get this blog on a roll. I have MOSTLY completely moved into the new place (minus a few household projects that will someday get done). These last few weeks have been full of multi-tasking projects, having lots of nice gatherings between celebrating my birthday and Thanksgiving, and I just successfully participated in my first craft show!
I’ve been steadily in the process of trying to start a pet sitting and dog walking business in hopes of once again having something that resembles an income, and have had to put much of my crafting on the back burner during my move and trying get my business going. Luckily for me, I recently moved back into the area where a former roommate reached out to me about a small craft bizarre going on at the local theater. This was such a fun opportunity for my first craft fair - very small with not a ton of foot traffic, but I received a lot of positive feedback and got some business cards out there (even made a handful of sales!).
It also gave me an excuse to take a break from other things and get my crafting fix in. I made a giant new batch of journals with my original designs printed on both fabric and paper covers. For this most recent batch of fabric covered journals I tried something new - hand dyed muslin. There is definitely a learning curve to it, learning how much dye to use and how long to soak it, and judging how much the color fades in the rinsing process. Because of this, many of the colors I made are quite similar, but all usable and I think I know how to improve on it for next time. There is another craft show on Sunday, but I will post all of the remaining items over in my shop as soon as it is over!
I also had a fun time coming up with a display table. I did not have time (or resources) to get or make anything specific for a display, so I multipurposed a lot of things from around the house. I pulled together a cute sign which I mounted using painted bottles I once built a bookshelf with. Our house has an abundance of crates used to store most things and even make a lot of my furniture, so I dismantled the kitchen cat feeding station to make use of those crates. Then I haphazardly dumped small containers of my clothes into a pile on my bed and grabbed my desk organizer to finish up the table display. If I end up doing craft fairs more regularly in the future, perhaps I’ll take the time to create containers better suited to display my items, but I think this worked out just fine for now.
Overall, it was a great first craft fair experience - low pressure and relaxed. I also really enjoyed seeing the handful of other craft vendors there. There were lots of great products ranging from knit and sewn pieces to jewelry and art pieces. It was nice to be back amongst such a small community packed full of creative people and those who appreciate the arts. What a nice reinforcement that moving back was a good choice.