See Some Stuff (ssssss)

Note: originally posted here on August 12, 2019. Some links have been updated to reflect current information but all post text is still the original text and reflects the writer’s thoughts and experiences to that date.

[Once again, I have some links to outside sites. Once again, with the exception of my own Etsy shop, I do not get anything for linking to any of those sites. And with my shop, I only get something if someone decides to actually buy something since, like, I'm not paying myself for mentions. I just want to make sure the people or companies I mention get proper recognition.]

So, I may have mentioned I do a lot of crafts. In the original sense (and the Minecraft sense, for that matter) a craft is anything being created by hand. But in the modern vernacular, "craft" tends to bring to mind (at least for me) cheap and easy DIY things that you can find in magazines and involve a lot of burlap and paint and never come out looking like the pictures; and the spicey smell of craft stores with tons of tempting supplies that you may or may not ever use; and little local craft fairs populated by any combination of incredibly gifted artisans who, depending on the fair, may or may not sell much depending on the mindset of the crowd; and little old ladies with tables overflowing with afghans in garish colors and entire equally-garish little girl's dresses and bonnets made entirely of worsted-weight acrylic yarn.

(Red Heart yarn. I'm taking about Red Heart Super Saver yarn, which is a wonderful yarn for many purposes, but doesn't tend to give a great sense of professional quality to clothes. Especially when the most garish color combinations are chosen.)

Believe it or not (after that description) I absolutely love craft fairs. I enjoy attending them, but I love running a table or booth at them. Especially if I have someone with me to watch the table so I can get a chance to check out the other crafts too, and if I make beyond my table fee so I feel justified spending some of that hard-earned money on someone else's crafts.

I grew up going to craft fairs. My father made an incredible array of various crafts, including myriad types of candles, jewelry, and ornaments of sundry and unique materials.

(A lot of the photos of his stuff have been destroyed, but if I can find some good ones I'll share some of his stuff in a later post sometimes, if you all are interested.)

My siblings and I loved to sit behind the table, making our own crafts as we tried to mimic his, wander the fair and drool over the favorite table du jour, and eat as much corn chowder (I don't know why almost every craft fair had corn chowder, but they did) as we could convince our parents to let us get.

But as an adult, as much as I love to run a table at a craft fair, it's just not enough for me anymore. For one thing, I have literally sat at a craft fair watching almost every attendee looking at my crochet critters and saying, "I wonder if I can figure out how to make that," or, "Grandma, do you think you can make that for me?" (Critters crocheted with worsted weight acrylic yarn. See? There IS a purpose for it.)

Critters like this guy. Pattern courtesy of Sharon Ojala of Amigurumi To Go. Side note: if you're interested in learning to crochet, I HIGHLY recommend her videos, as she shows you what to do very clearly, but also has the pattern written on the screen so you can learn how to read the pattern as well. If you already know how to crochet, her patterns are still amazing.
Also, whew, that lighting is bad! I just said this on my Pixie Elegance Facebook page yesterday, but wow, I really need to get my SLR camera fixed so I can have proper lighting in quality photos again!

My other issue with craft fairs is that people seem to get into this mindset of going to a yard sale (tag sale, garage sale, whatever you call it in your area) and think that everything is too expensive, entirely ignoring the amount of hours of work and the cost of materials that go into crafting the items.

There are so many other factors that go into my business endeavors. I swear it's NOT just "I'm disenchanted with craft fairs," because if that was all there was, well, I could just put more into maximizing my efforts on my Etsy shop and move on from there. And because I'm not disenchanted with craft fairs as they are, I just don't find them to be the best place to build a whole artisan business. But there are a lot of other things I want to do. I want to create a sense of community. I want to provide artisan items - artisan gifts, really - and provide a way for people to see how the things they're buying are being made, too. I really like natural ingredients in things whenever possible. I like people being able to customize things. There's a LOT I want to make happen!

The start, however, relies on being able to make the items. Right now my primary focuses (outside of crochet, which I actually don't intend to include in Pixie Elegance) are soaps, jewelry, and candles. Candles is one I'm still working on, and though my father knows a lot about candle making, I don't know enough. I tried one test candle based on some of his recommendations, and I already know why it didn't work out with the artisan effect I was aiming for, but I have to get a new tool before I can make it work right. (I'll explain all of that in more detail some day, when I get what I need to try again. Hopefully that will be sometime this autumn, but we'll see!)

So! Soap. My sister-in-law and I make soap together. At least, that's the theory. Between a huge variety of factors, we've had some difficulty getting together to make it very often, and practice soaps can get expensive without a ready market to sell them to, so we've so far only been able to make soap twice. When our latest batch sells to friends and family interested, we'll use the proceeds to buy more oils to make more soaps.

I kept telling her, "We're making it two by two with hands of blue." But she doesn't know that reference. 10 billion pixie points to anyone who does! (Pixie Points are worth nothing, unless they're a boost to your self-esteem. Then they're worth everything. Also, TOTALLY got photo-bombed by Batman. Which is just as well, since SIL wouldn't get in the picture. :P)

Our first soap was very simple. Our second soap included some tea leaves and a bit of blue mica to create a colorful swirl, so I'll show you that one since it's much prettier. I look forward to our next soaping endeavor, with plans to get into more swirling techniques as we work toward eventually making true artisan soaps, not just basic homemade soaps.

Green tea leaves in the soap, blue swirl because blue mica is what I had, and we textured the top with a spoon for fun. SIL keeps saying she wishes we could have done it in green, for the green tea, and I get that, but aesthetically, I just LOVE the way this soap came out! Also, check out her awesome photography skills, huh? Lovely! I love how she put a tea ball into the photo.

One more, just because I love how she was framing these shots. Also, we're kind of low-key selling these soaps right now, just to fund experimenting with more soap, but I do love how they've come out so far, so if you're interested in a bar, contact me here or through my Facebook page!

As for jewelry, I've made a good many, but I'll show you just a couple of my more recent ones.

This one is from this past winter, when I started learning to chainmaille. The bracelet is from a kit from Weave Got Maille, which is one of my all-time favorite company names ever. The necklace pendant and earrings were based on this tutorial that I found, though I slightly modified ring and bead sizes to adjust the size from necklace pendant to earrings.

(Fun fact: I like big earrings, as a style, but I can't stand to wear them. Anything that ends up tapping or tickling my neck when I move is a no-go. So when I design earrings for other people sometimes I create a bigger drop if I think it fits the style, but when it's for me, I literally will change an entire design just so it won't touch my neck. I've also been known to buy earrings that are border-line too big and change them to a smaller hook just so I can stand to wear them. I have one favorite necklace and earrings set that actually started just as earrings, with autumn leaves and acorns. I took them apart and kept just the tiny acorns on the earrings, and put one leaf on a necklace chain and another on an anklet. Unfortunately, the anklet broke and the pieces got lost before I could repair them.)

Anyway! Another, which is honestly bigger than most jewelry I do but was a lot of fun to make:

(And if you look really closely in the background, that's the desk of someone who's constantly creating and really bad at putting supplies away again because she always wants them right at hand. See that toothpick jutting into the right edge of the picture? That was used for applying E6000 glue to another project. By someone. Some random person whose desk is always messy. No telling who, really.)

I made this set for a dear friend who was indescribably helpful to my family this past school year, with transportation help every day when a cascade of reasons made getting my son to school each day difficult. I wanted to give her a thank you gift, so I designed this necklace for her. It's a 3-tier necklace with each chain removable to function as a single necklace too. She and I often joke about how much I love autumn and winter (and detest hot weather) and she loves summer (and detests cold weather) so when I saw the fish and shell charms I just had to get them to make something for her, even though at the time I hadn't decided what yet. I rummaged through my jewelry-making supplies and found the other stones and discs and such, all collected from various projects or various previously-broken jewelry over the years, and the colors worked so well together! I was very pleased with how it came out. (She seemed pretty pleased with it as well, thankfully!)

I really debated for quite a while about the earrings. I wanted to include one of each fish/shell type in the necklace tiers somewhere, but the card came with only two of each, which meant the earrings couldn't possibly be identical. Personally, I love matching-but-not-identical earrings, and do it on purpose even when I do have the option of making them actually match. But I wanted to design for what she would like, not what I prefer, so I kept questioning whether I should make the earrings identical but not technically match any given charm in the necklace, or make them matching-but-mismatched and each earring matches a necklace charm. I finally decided on the latter, and again, thankfully, she seemed pleased with it as well.

So! Those are just a few things I've made. As I continue forward and keep practicing and learning new techniques, I'll keep you updated on how those go. And this week is my final week of my second MBA class, so next week I'll try to let you know some things that I've learned in that, as well. Have a great week!