Busy Times! - Craft Fairs, Paperwork and Other Stuff

I can't believe it's a week since I updated my blog! Where does time go to? 

Well, there's been lots of form filling in going on around here. Insurance forms, craft fair applications, phone calls to book stall spaces.

And I've been on a needle felting course which was great fun. I'm playing around with different techniques to see how I can incorporate it into the work that I already do. I've got some great samples which I'll share when they have a bit more work done on them.

My next Craft fair is on April 14th and 15th at the Derby Eco centre. It's their Spring fair and wool festival which sounds like it could be a great weekend. With all this bad weather over the last couple of days, I'm glad I paid extra money to be indoors!

But with craft fair imminent, I'm doing all of those getting ready for a craft fair jobs. All my jewellery needs boxing up whether I've listed it on Etsy or not, I need to made a few extra pieces of stock where there are gaps in my product lines, and a few extra pieces which will hopefully appeal to my audience at the fair I'm going to. I'm going to make a few more heavily recycled jewellery pieces, and some yarn inspired earrings. Maybe even some of my new needle felted items will make an appearance.

And I'm also waiting for a couple of shipments to come in. A box of recycled cabochons from vintage jewellery, and a secret surprise parcel for a magazine project. I hoe they arrive today so I can play with them over the bank holiday weekend!

Front Cover - And Stash Storage Solutions

 What a week! Finally this week I got to find out whether my jewellery design made the front cover of this weeks Creative Beads and Jewellery magazine. And it did! How exciting!

These style of pendants take me ages to make but I do love making them. I keep all my "lonely" beads in containers with other beads of the same colour. I also add anything else that might be useful such as odd sequins, buttons, broken jewellery.

And that is how my storage system has ended up how it is today.

These are my great Really Useful boxes. With nice clippy lids so that when they fall on the floor I don't have a bead-a-lanche.

I used to buy cheaper boxes from various shops buy found out to my cost that not all boxes stack on top of each other properly and when a shop discontinued a range, the next range they stocked didn't stack on top of the old range




My full strings of beads and bags of beads go in a separate storage system. more Clip lids boxes once again, but nice and stackable so I can take one box at a time downstairs to do a project (That's the aim anyway. I'm not very good at bringing them back upstairs until the living room where I do most of my work reaches a critical mass)

 As you can see, I have a  bookshelf for my craft  books too to separate from from my fiction which are downstairs. The tray to the left of the stack is my stash of choker wires, ready made necklace chains, hair barrette findings and fascinator clips.
 










Then we have the fabric stash. I have boxes of large pieces in  an area which would be far too embarrassing to take a  photo of, as with my yarn stash, but for smaller pieces I have a office filing system. The top set of boxes are fabric sort by one colour per drawer. This is for pieces of materials that are fat quarters and smaller.

The bottom set of drawers is for my ATC and collage supplies. Anything I could collage with really. Magazine cuttings, scrapbooking paper,card, tissue paper.

And of course my overlocker is on the top smiling down at me.

All Change!

I was feeling like the blue was a little depressing so had a very quick change over to red and I think I like it. I might change again when I get bored though!

I'm off  to London on Saturday to see some Bookcrossers. I love making friends and meeting people I've chatted with on the internet. I've done it loads and they are always so lovely.

I'm feeling quite disallusioned with my Etsy shop at the moment. I think it needs a set style to give it a bit of oomph. I like the items that I make, but I'd love the shop itself to look better. Haven't figured it out yet. I might just retake all of the photos. Any suggestions welcome of course! I want to get it just so.

And in good news, I've got an article in Creative Crafting magazine this month! I'm quite pleased with myself over that one They'd even used my photo as well as my tutorial.It's free to read online