Headbands!

There are few fashions that remain in the spotlight year after year... jeans, duster style coats, and faux fur are a few of those... all of those are in my winter repertoire, along with a good warm cozy headband, or two.

I picked up a big pile of beautiful, lucious, colorful warmth to make into headbands and hats... can't wait to work with all the pretty.

New Toys - A Lesson on Black Friday

I am posting this from my New Acer Iconia Tab!

I pre-ordered it pre-Black Friday, but was able to get Black Friday deals by waiting to pay for it this morning,

Research this little tool sometime. Before I was carrying around a 14 lbs computer that was too big for my backpack, now I can carry around this little gem, and don't need to worry too much a out damaging weight poorly distributed on my back!

Winter begins and I miss the Flowers!

There is this wonderful trend that has been getting stronger every winter in my area, those lovely headbands that keep your ears warm and cozy, and are super cute to boot! Every pattern I have found that made me happy, but none of them were the "right" one... so I designed my own, and I worked up several and tried to sell them at the market I mentioned in my last post. The one thing I couldn't get right was the flower...this one was too flat, that one takes too long to make, the next one is look large and poofy, it's unstable on the headband... so I finally figured it out... I'll make my own pattern.

Chain 25, dbl in 4th from hook (counts as dbl and ch 1) chain 1, dbl in next chain, chain 1 repeat to end. chain 1 turn,

dbl in ch space, chain 1 2 dbl in same chain space, v made, *2dbl, ch 1, 2 dbl* in next ch space. repeat to end.

chain 1, 3 dbl in chain sp, ch 1, 3dbl in same space (petal made), *3dbl, ch1, 3dbl* in next chain space, and in each across. chain 1, fasten off, leaving about 10-12 in tail.

Use tail to weave in and out of base chain. your flower should curl up, pull tail tight, and use to tack the spiral in place how you like it, start the curl super tight int he middle, and loosen the flow as you work to the outside. tie off once you have it steady how you want it. Stitch this to your hat, headband, purse, or blanket. Or glue it to a hair clip for interchangability on your hairstyle or hats and such.

Pattern is untested, let me know if you are confused, or I made a mistake.

First Craft Show of the Season

I was invited to do a craft show last weekend. It was a last minute choice, and I worked my butt off to get enough product, fearing that I wouldn't even be able to fill the table.....I had a box of product that I was not able to show, I didn't have the room!

I guess I was prepping for a larger space!

I learned several things from this show... first, don't freak out, asses your space requirements, and duplicate your set up. If I had taken my product up to the studio, and laid it all out on my table, I would have seen that I had plenty of product.

This was the left side of my booth, I had a record bowl full of candy, a second record bowel full of page corner bookmarks. These were a product of great confusion, even though I had a book displaying how they worked, they seemed to confound my customers.

I also had several headband ear warmers, a twig tree full of key fobs, and 2 record stands holding my giant paperclip bookmarks.

I taught my husband how to sew, and he made up 20 3-6 in rice and lavender heat packs, in 5 different fabrics.

I also had some small candy tubes, made from crystal Light containers. I will take photos of each of these projects with a short written tutorial over the course of the next week or so.

This is the right side of the booth. The shelf was a super find at my mom's 2nd hand shop, she was going to throw it away, and I snagged it up. the paint is rough, but it adds character. the top 2 shelves are filled with handmade holiday cards, I will show these individually in the blog posts from the next few days. I filled the bottom shelf with coaster sets, made from recycled flooring tiles and scrapbook paper! These make great hostess gifts, and are water resistant.

I also had a couple of hats, the pattern for 1 of the three hats here is listed in the blog as the Tundra. The other two I need to write up patterns for. On the side of the shelf is a couple of Pom Pom scarves made with Pomp-a-doodle, and the hats on top are some basic beanies, with some decorative stitch experimentation.

The stand on the second shelf is made from a water goblet glued between 2 melted records, it is full of flower hair clips, and hair pins. These work great for accenting headbands.

The top of the first shelf has a couple of wristie-earwarmer sets, you can find the pattern for those here.

The second lesson I learned was straight from the pages of my marketing texts... people in the US shop from right to left, they go in the direction they drive, and they have to cross less traffic if they start at the right. I was int he left corner of the room in the show... people would circle the the right, and move around, hitting some of the corporate consultant style businesses before they got to me, therefore, they'd see the mass produced "cute" winter-wear, buy it, and have already spent their money by the time they found my booth, with handcrafted, higher quality, but less expensive headbands and hats.

Also, because the previous booth had their god mass produced, they were ALL EXACTLY THE SAME... no variance in design or pattern, only color. Guess I need to work on my consistency, and my color choices. Most people apparently prefer solid colors to mixed or gradient colors.

I did get some great networking done though. Get set up for another show on Dec 9, and got asked to consign some of my things at Roller Doll Skates, a store that caters to roller derby girls.

 

Busy Busy Busy!

Lots to do, lots going on! I am prepping for a craft show in Nov. 20!

Lots of new and interesting projects!

These are tile coasters, created using upcycled flooring tiles from the local Habitat for Humanity, mod podge and scrap book paper. There are 4 coasters in each set, and they are made waterproof by the liberal addition of the mod podge.

This is a simple card using a mat sheet of scrapbook pattern pack, one of the DCWV Mat Stacks from last winter, got it in an exchange. I threaded red embroidery thread along the way, and hot glued buttons on the ends.

This is sideways..... whoops, I'll try to fix that. I used 3 different tones of green paper, heat embossing silver and transparent onto the surface of one of them, I cut 1.5-2 in strips of a 12x12 sheet of each, and then cut a zig zag along the strip to create random triangles. I adheared the 1st two trees to the card surface with a glue roller, and used a demensional for the 3rd tree to give it some pop. The base and accent strips are from the same papers as the trees.

This is a Santa card... made really quite simply. a 5 in x 3.75 in red mat, a .5 in strip of black, and a 1 in strip of white. I used a bit of felt and a needle to punch holes for the brads, hand wrote the sentiment (my handwriting is quite childish), and finished it all off by glueing it in place... if you had any white flocking, you could do the edges of the white strip with that, or a silver, brass, or copper buckle along the belt would be nice... Or using ribbon for the belt.. I just didn't have those things available.

Hope these inspire you! I will be working on more projects over the next week for the show, and I'll post here when I can.
 

Wristwarmers and Earwarmers

Pattern is up! Need to sell this one, sorry I can't give it away for free, but I gotta pay my bills somehow.

Check it out! And help a Poor College kid pay for her Ramen!

Etsy:http://www.etsy.com/listing/85124977/pattern-crochet-pattern-for-earwarmer
Ravelry:http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/perfect-fit-earwarmer-and-wristies