Harvest Days!

This weekend is Harvest Days out in Battle Ground where I participate in the market. That means longer hours, more days, and hopefully a lot more customers! Which probably means absent Ruthie yet again :P *rolls eyes* But hey, if I make lots of sales it'll be worth it right? Here's hoping! I need to go get stuff ready....

Market Yesterday!

Yesterday I was back at the Battle Ground Saturday Market. It was good to be back! I missed the last day that I was supposed to work because of migraines, which is the same reason I've been missing so much on-line. Good news is that we're starting a new therapy for the migraines so hopefully I'll be back in the swing of things soon! I'll post about it on my other blog and leave you guys the link :)

Anyway, it was a slow day yesterday. We've been having terrible weather around here and it was the first sunny day in awhile! Lisa (another vendor) and I are guessing that people were too excited to finally be able to work outside to want to go shopping. It's also the weekend of the Rose Festival down in Portland, so we probably lost a lot of customers to the parade and the festivities down there.

Having said that, it was still a decent enough day. I was definitely hoping to do better, but I did good enough that I'm not going to complain. The thing that saved me was that I had a commission that I got paid for! It was a lot of fun to work on and I'll be posting about it in the next day or two.

This was the first time the hubby has ever spent the day at the market with me. He ended up pretty bored, but he handled it a lot better than I thought he would! (go baby!) and he even came up with several ideas to help me improve my display which was great :)

Market Day and Renewed Focus

Yesterday was market day again - and I had a lot of fun! Normally I'm going to be doing the Markets every other week, but for the opening of the market I did two weeks in a row.

I made some small changes to my booth this week. The first is that I found the tray that you see above at Ross. I love it! The wood is perfect for displaying hemp and it looks better than when I had the bracelets just loosely displayed. I'm going to be moving the hemp necklaces at some point .... but I'm not sure how it'll work out just yet so I'll tell you about it somewhere down the road.

My hubby found this on top of the fridge when spring cleaning the other day and I realized it was perfect for displaying my charms! I used to have enough counter space that I could display my coffee mugs on the counter. I haven't been able to do that in a long time so I kinda forgot I had it. I may eventually get another one when I have more inventory :)

This is the featured booth of the week! It's one of my nearest neighbors. Doesn't he do beautiful work? He has a gorgeous accent too ( I need to ask him where he's from). And don't worry, it's not like I have a crush or anything, he's an older guy :P I just love voices!

Do you SEE the temptation I'm faced with every week? And to make it worse ... their fudge is delicious! So far I've been a good girl and only had one sample a week. I'll probably buy my hubby some if I have a really good week. Bringing home sweets is a great way to keep the hubby happy :P

I did pretty decent this week. I didn't make my sales goal, but I made enough to make me happy and consider it a pretty decent today. I also met a lady that I might start teaching to bead weave! I really hope it happens because I've been thinking for awhile that it would be great to teach, and this would give me a great chance to get some experience.

I'm feeling really psyched about business stuff right now. I mean, I enjoy doing my jewelry no matter what, but having the regular venue is really renewing and channeling my focus again. I have a lot of ideas, but I'll talk about those in a different post.

Crafty ADD #32

Boy it's been a long time since I've posted one of these! The last month has just been weird. First I spent about two weeks at the hospital every spare moment I could with my brother, his wife, and their kids (she had two lovely twin boys and they are now doing wonderfully!). Then I got really sick for a bout a week. Then, not long after recovering from that, I ended up with major oral surgery! Wow. No wonder I feel like I've been absentee from the on-line world lately.

I haven't done any crocheting. Which is bad, cuz the boys are born and it isn't done, but I figure as long as I get it to them in the first few months we're good right? I've done some cross-stitch, but I forgot to take a picture and I don't want to go take one :P I'll show you where I'm at with the next update!

My major focus has been jewelry the last two weeks because I started the Saturday Market season and I've been working hard on display's and inventory!

This is a custom order I did for a friends mom. It was really neat, her daughter bought the necklace for her birthday, and then the mom decided she wanted a full set! Sweet eh? I had fun designing the earrings. I wanted something that would compliment the design of the bracelet and necklace (which match). It took three tries, but I found something I fell in love with and I will be making more for my shop!

Charms tend to be a big seller for me. $3-5 depending on what they are made of, so it's a cheap and easy item to pick up. Doesn't hurt the wallet. I knew I needed to make more but I got extra incentive when I picked up a coffee cup holder to hang them from! I'm not sure I have what I'd consider a "full inventory" (ie, what makes the holder look nice and full) yet, but that's enough for this week! Especially since I made most of those today...and there are other projects to work on!
3 of these sets of earrings were for specific people, and the rest are just to keep the stock up in my shop :) I'm kinda in the habit of making multiple pairs of earrings whenever I sit down to make one specific pair. They don't take long to make up and it's a good way to keep up inventory! Especially since these also tend to be good sellers :)

Opening Day at the Market

I had a lot of fun at the Market on Saturday! I definitely have some things I want to work on with my display, but that's ok, I have all summer to keep getting better and better right?

Here's my Necklace Table

Earrings, Bracelets, and Everything else...

The above table is the one that I want to do the most work on. I am going to change up my earring display and I want to have something neater than just having things laid out on the table. Don't know exactly what I'm going to do for that part yet though!

Cute Doggy that visited us!

I got my face painted!

With a rose of course :)

Isn't she sweet?

Isn't that shirt screaming for a necklace? My mother in law bought it for me a couple of weeks ago and I have a necklace 2/3rds done for it. But I ran out of beads :P So I wasn't able to complete it in time for this week. Ah well, there will be future weeks!

Over all it was a good day. I didn't make a ton of direct sales, but I have two commissions and a repair I'm doing, so that's bringing a bunch more money in and over all makes for a good day!

Markets, Paper, and Parrots....oh my!

Do you see this lovely space with a small park and great retail shops? That's where I'm going to be doing a Saturday Market this summer! I'm VERY excited! We had a meeting this morning to talk over details and it went very well. We voted on making a couple changes that make me really happy, and we got to pick our booth spaces. I've got a primo space and I'm very happy about that!

I'm also happy that it's SUNNY out today and I think I may even have gotten a wee bit of color as we sat outside and talked. Which, after two years of being sick, is nice.

Paper...I stopped at a Garage sale on the way home today and picked up four pieces of scrapping paper for a good price. I'm going to use them in making paper beads - and the money was going to charity! Oh, and the promised post about the paper making bead process should come along some time next week... I still have to buy the stuff for the very final step. It's been a busy week!

And yes, my blog title does say "Parrots!" It would be more accurate to say Parrot. As I was driving through town today I saw a man walking on the side of the road with a full sized macaw parrot. It was gorgeous and it was VERY distracting.