Show #3

Finally...the North Shore Bazaar.

I spent just about every free moment from Halloween to November 8th making inventory for this, my first ever craft show where I would be the main event of my own table. This past weekend, I kicked it into high gear. Jason and I were up until about 3:00 am on Friday night/Saturday morning felting pumpkins and acorns. Then I woke up at 8:00 on Saturday morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I started working.

I set up my display in the middle of my craft room and added to it bit by bit as the day progressed. Inventory, price tags, display pieces, business cards, signage, a tree branch, skeins of wool, and so on until I was finally satisfied enough to say I was ready. I put in 16 hours of work (which doesn't include breaks for food, talking to my mom about pricing, and watching a little Antiques Roadshow on PBS) before I finally fell into bed at 3:30 in the morning.

I knew I was going to have a round table at the bazaar, so I used a clothesline display for my aprons to visually break the table into two sections. This is my display as staged in my craft room:


You may notice the little pedestal mirror from blogs past, which has now become my logo and sign. I finally settled on the business name "A Happy Little Sparrow" with the tagline: Creations for Nest and Flight, because I felt like "Every Cool Thing" was just too broad and not picturesque enough. So I started an etsy seller's account at www.ahappylittlesparrow.etsy.com, a business email address at ahappylittlesparrow@gmail.com, printed up some business cards, and appliqued/embroidered myself a little business sign, which I am in love with and quite impressed by, if I do say so myself, especially considering that I stitched it well after midnight the night before my show. Way to go, Robin. Here's a close-up of the sign:

So Sunday morning finally came. I unintentionally slept right through church and woke up at 11:26 (34 minutes before I was supposed to be at the bazaar, which was 25 minutes away), because I foolishly forgot to set an alarm for myself. So I jumped out of bed, jumped in the shower, and feverishly started getting ready for the day. Thankfully, my late o'clock preparations included packing everything up, so I was able to get everything ready and loaded up and out the door by 12:17, and Jason and I got to the show with just enough time to set-up and finish creating a few pricing signs before it started at 1:00. Phew. It was quite the whirlwind morning.

Here is my display all set up at the bazaar (and me in my cute little rooster utility apron):

My total inventory included 4 wet-felted pincushions ($12/each), 73 acorns ($2/each or 3 for $5), 21 pumpkins ($8/each), 5 owls (ranging from $15-$25), 11 aprons ($25/each), 4 felting kits ($30-$45), and about 45 jars of apple butter, strawberry jam, and strawberry lemon marmalade ($3 for a small jar, $6 for a large jar).

There were about 20 vendors at the show selling all sorts of local and fair trade goodies ranging from pottery to produce and blankets to bags. It was pretty well-attended, and everyone seemed to have a really good time. And after only 3 hours of standing by my table, I brought in a total of 128 dollars!! I was so excited. On the way to the show, Jason asked me how much I wanted to sell. I told him that the show had really already fulfilled its purpose. I was ready. I had created a load of inventory. I knew now that I could do it. And that was worth all of the work I had put into it. I said it would be pretty demoralizing to not sell a single thing, but if all I sold was one acorn, I would feel adequately affirmed. So to sell that much at my very first show, I was over the moon. And on top of all that, I handed out a ton of business cards, received so many affirming comments, and even had a person sign up on my email list! So all in all, the North Shore Bazaar was a major success for A Happy Little Sparrow and made me quite a happy little Robin.

I did learn few things that I will take with me into future shows:
1) I only sold one jar of marmalade and one jar of apple butter, which was strange because my mom's jam is always such a guaranteed good seller. So next time, I'm going to try to elevate the jars to eye-level so people can see what it is and realize how much they would love some homemade preserves for themselves and to give away as gifts to everyone they know.

2) I need to wear sneakers to my next show. As adorable and comfortable as my boots are, they do not hold up to multiple hours on my feet, and my back did not thank me for my vanity.

3) My utility aprons are awesome. My rooster apron worked out SO well. It kept my money separated and organized by currency. My business cards were nice and handy in my cute little pocket. And it held a pen and notepad, with which I kept track of everything I sold. Check plus!

4) As much as I loved my display, I think I need to go with a simpler, solid table cloth next time so it allows my products to stand out more. I also need to type out my signs and use black ink so they don't blend into the colors of my products and display.

5) After Halloween, I need to gear my products more towards Christmas and less towards fall.

6) It is very helpful to have a second person along so I can check out other vendors, get something to eat, and have someone to talk to when things are slow. Jason was vital and instrumental to the whole process of preparing and helping me with every aspect of the show. He helped me with felting. He offered loads of helpful opinions. He helped me load and unload and set up and tear town, following my scattered instructions perfectly. He manned the table while I scoped out the other tables. He made sure I ate and drank something and sat down occasionally. He was so encouraging throughout the whole process. And he even felted a pumpkin during the show to demonstrate the technique:
7) And finally, one of the most important things I learned from the show was: I can do this! I can make enough stuff that people like and want to buy. I can create a visually appealing display. And I can talk to people about my products and sell them things that they like. And the crazy thing is: I enjoyed every single part of it, from design to production to display to interaction to taking their money to have a nice day. I really thoroughly enjoyed it all!

So there you have it. My 3rd 1st show. I have one more show lined up for this year: the Christmas Bazaar at the seminary on Saturday, December 5th from 9:00-2:00. If you live on the North Shore, you should definitely come. It's a show for students, spouses, faculty, and staff of the seminary to sell their wares, and I will be there with my aprons, preserves, acorns, owls, and lots of other little goodies that are yet to be made. So here we go again. Back to the ol' grind stone! :o)

The Hard Work of Treedom

After many hours of sulking in my stumpedness, after dozens of ideas touched down upon and just as quickly discarded, after much frustrating and philosophical pondering on the question "what is beauty?", I finally have my submission for Kalos. I don't know how well it answers the question. In the end, I decided to do something that I could do well and that meant something to me. But before we get to the the philosophical reasoning behind my creation, let's start with the process, shall we?

I chose to finish a wall-hanging of a sun, a tree, and a river that I started a few months ago. It's a collaboration of applique and embroidery...because my hand-sewing is so impeccable. Once I had the fabrics chosen and the pieces cut, I had to sew them together. Of course all the lovely curves meant I had to sew all of the fabric onto my muslin base by hand, turning under the edges as I went.

After many hours of tiny little stitches, it was time for...more tiny little stitches. I did the top of my tree with a stem stitch and finished off the rest of the tree with stitches I don't know the names for. At this point, I'd just like to brag a little. The mark of good embroidery is that the back looks just as good as the front. This is the back:

And the front:Pretty good, right? Yeah, I know. :o)

Here is the completed panel (on my pretty mosaic coffee table):

I felt like it needed a border, so I added brown fabric from a curtain I found in the "As-Is Bin" at Ikea. (Oh how I love Ikea!) Once the border was attached, I cut out a brown back panel and a layer of batting so the back wouldn't show through my white muslin front. I sewed the front, batting, and back together inside-out like a pillow because at that point I couldn't decide whether it would be a pillow or a wall-hanging. (That also saved me from adding a binding around the edges, which would have been...more tiny little stitching.) In the end, I decided on a wall-hanging, so I stitched a sleeve of fabric onto the back, fed a dowel through the sleeve, and hung it on my bedroom wall. So here, again, is [a not stellar picture of] the finished product:
And now for the deep metaphorical explanation:
I began this project with the intention of hanging it over the door of my apartment. It would symbolize the three words Jason and I have engraved in our wedding bands: grace, truth, warmth. We decided that those were the virtues we wanted our marriage to embody: to be gracious to each other always, quick to listen, quick to forgive; to be grounded in the Truth and to always be honest with each other; and to be warm, gentle, and comforting to each other as well as having a welcoming and hospitable home. So my little wall-hanging has a river for grace, a tree rooted by that river for truth, and a sun for warmth. In addition to being a scene of serenity and beauty, what it represents is a shared life of those three virtues, and I believe that that qualifies as beauty, too. But there are more layers to the imagery. In talking to Jason about my idea, he pointed out that the images I planned to make were also very Trinitarian: the Father is the sun, the Son is the tree, and the Spirit is the river.

The day I finally decided to go ahead with this idea, I was reading psalm 1, which talks about "a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither." That little phrase "in its season" stuck out to me. Normally, I instinctively discard the terminology of "seasons" when it is used in Christian circles. I throw it out with "this too shall pass" and "God is in control" and other such cliches. But when I read psalm 1 the other day, I was struck by this tree and its seasons. It is rooted by the stream. It's where it is supposed to be. And because of that, it stays alive. It goes through photosynthesis. It recycles the CO2 in the atmosphere into oxygen. It provides shade for a picnic or an afternoon of climbing to a child. But all that is not the glory of a tree. The Bible says, "You will know a tree by its fruit." A tree's glory and its identity, the full mark and celebration of what the tree is, is its fruit. But sometimes...the tree is just a tree. It isn't always yeilding fruit. More often than not, the tree is building up sugar, storing it until the time is right for the fruit to grow and ripen. And in the mean time, the tree does the more simple, mundane acts of treedom... stretching its branches towards the sun, digging its roots deeper into the soil, pulling at the current of the river for a drink. And in all this reaching and stretching and striving, the tree's reward is to gain a little growth for itself and see its shade enjoyed, it branches climbed, and its leaves thoughtlessly torn off or chewed up! But someday, in its season, sure enough, the tree will yield fruit. And on that day, there will be no doubt what kind of tree it is.

The tree in my wall-hanging is fruitless at the moment. It is doing the hard work of stretching and reaching and growing, with little visible results. But it's where it's meant to be. It's doing the work it was made to do. And someday, it will burst forth into color and produce a rich harvest that makes all the stretching and striving make sense. And maybe on that day, I'll make another wall-hanging that displays the tree in all its rich and fruitful glory. Both scenes, I think, have something to say about beauty, maybe even more so the simple than the ostentatious. Because the struggle, the mundane day-to-day, all the hours of work and anticipation, are what eventually yield the harvest.

My First Solo-Sew

I was going to Disney World in 3 days, and I didn't have a purse that was quite the right size. So I decided to make one out of some fabric that had been in the running for my bridesmaids' favors (purses filled with lots of little goodies). That means I've had this sweet canvas fabric just sitting around for over a year and a half, just waiting for the perfect little project to be brought to life. And here it is.
It's just a basic canvas messenger bag. I lined the inside with some muslin and used that fabric to add a little applique bird to the front, sewed on with my impeccable hand-stitching. For the strap, I bought some canvas webbing and wrapped it with my pretty little canvas fabric, folding the edge under and sewing a neat little line down the center of the strap.

If I made this bag again, there are a few things I would do differently. The proportions are a little off. And it definitely needs some interior pockets. But in the end, the bag was all I needed it to be and more.
Here is a picture of me and Jason and my little messenger bag in front of the Muppets fountain in Disney's MGM Studios, which has recently been renamed Disney's Hollywood Studios. (What's with that? I was somewhat comforted when all of the bus drivers still called it MGM.) Jason and I had a magical week in Disney World, as you would expect. It was so wonderful to be able to just enjoy spending some time together shirking responsibility, having fun, and remembering why we fell in love in the first place. My purse was just a small token in the context of such a grand and glorious week. But it was nice to have the little reminder that I would be coming home to more creativity and imagination at work. Just like Figment tells us, "Imagination, imagination...a dream can be a dream come true with just that spark from me and you." And yes, now that song will be in my head for the rest of the day.
So there you have my first Weekly Make. That was almost 4 weeks ago, and I've been going strong so far. But that means that I have a lot of catch-up posts to do. I figure I'll try to space them out a bit...just to keep you guessing. :o) In the mean time, happy making!!