Craft Fairs and the Economy....

I am not going to cry or complain. I will put this out there though - are the craft fairs going to suffer because of the economy? Just last week I did a small yet busy craft fair. Certainly I did not make the same as last year at the same fair. But I covered my cost and made a little extra. Next week I have another craft fair. I am wondering how this one will go.

Vintage inspired ornaments...

I love vintage handcrafted items. So much that I wanted to get vintage holiday postcards and sandwich them inbetween glass and use them as ornaments. I searched for inexpensive postcards, but the cheapest I found was $8 per card. Honestly, no one is going to buy an ornament for $12-$15. So after a bit of searching, I found a site that has stickers and other scrapbook items for great prices (and the send you candy with every order - how could I not use them?!) http://www.addictedtoscrapbooking.com/ has wonderful holiday vintage inspired stickers. All I did was stick them to acid free paper and sandwich it between extremely thin glass (think it is the same size as they use for medical slides). I foiled it and soldered using mirror flux so there wouldn't be any seepage. Solder on a small ring, wash off the flux and there you have it - a pretty ornament.

These will hopefully sell for $6 a piece.

Mini panels, suncatchers, ornaments....

I am not too sure what to call these. Mini panels? Ornaments? Suncatchers? Anyway....

I visited my scrap glass bin which consists of 4+ years of stained glass. I made a 4 x 4 glass frame, soldered, added jump rings, and zinc came. In the center I attached a metal casting I purchased at http://www.warner-criv.com/ (more on them in a moment). These are so cute in person. I hope they sell well at the craft fairs.

The casting is lead free which makes me happy. They have oodles of casting and filagrees for terrific prices. In fact all their items are priced well and they ship very quickly and even that is priced fairly. I recently did a few ornaments with their brass filagrees. They came out lovely.

One day soon, I will make a list of all the companies I buy from. I am a picky shopper. To make my list you have to be good.

South Beach Pattern Sans Fixture

My latest pride and joy. A couple of months ago I won a door prize at my local stained glass shop. It was the South Beach pattern book and fixture. I have been wanting to try this for the longest time but I couldn't afford to buy both. I picked the palm pattern, but I wasn't too keen on using green. I wanted COLOR! So I searched (for about 2 hours) until I found the perfect color. It matches the sumac trees in my backyard so well, so I renamed the piece Sumac.

I used Youghiogheny glass for everything (It is now on my list of favorite glass to use). They have beautiful colors and the texture is wonderful. I am already eyeing a piece with yellows and greens for the pineapple pattern. Hopefully I will be able to save up before it is sold.

I bought a 12 x 12 piece and prayed that it would cut easy and not break. Thankfully it didn't and it was plenty for the panel. From start to finish it took about 3 hours and that includes, cutting, cleaning, foiling, soldering, patina, and polishing.

Pendants....

Pendants are all finished. I try to keep my jewelry all one COE. Less confusion that way. I designed a few myself and the rest are dichroic coated icons/celtic/pinwheels/ holiday images by CBS. Most backgrounds are black - seems to sell better. The ones I designed are on iridized black glass. Gives them a nice shimmer and looks great with the silver bails. I also etched a few myself. Easy enough to do, and once again I used the CBS dichroic glass. However, there are a few in there that are not dichroic. The red pendant in the middle - has a 22kt gold dragonfly on it. One towards the top is a slide pendant with pink black accents. And I made a tear drop shaped milifiori pendant with silver pinch bail.

Prices on these will vary also. Something like the smaller dichroic pendants will go for about $15 and the larger pendants (dragonfly and milifiori) will be around $20. I am still thinking about how I will display these. I have about 40 made - so yes, displaying them will be a challenge.

Earrings....

Wow! I have been busy with the postings lately. Here are my latest group.....earrings. This year I tried many differant styles. All are dichroic, but some are two layers of glass, and some are one layer fire polished. I did a few posts, mostly french wires with the bails, and a couple of hoops with czech glass beads. The one layer glass earring are a whole lot easier when it comes to designing. They are just a bit harder to drill. Maybe I need a new bit on the dremel. I am still working out the pricing on these. They will probably fall somewhere between $6 to $15.

Beads.....

A while ago a received a package of lovely glass rods (104 coe and in amazing colors), mandrels, raku frit, silver leaf and flux (the flux was for my stained glass) from a lovely woman on a message board I frequent. I was expecting the flux, but not that other items. So I was excited because that meant I would have an excuse to go make beads. The last time I did any bead work was about a year and a half ago in the bead making class I took at my local glass shop.

So I got started and turned out four lovely beads with the raku frit, I have two others that will never every see the light of day because they are UGLY. These took me about 2 hours to finish and I still have to anneal them - most likely will be done tonight. Because I had such a nice time with the torch and glass, I will be doing more beads in the future. I just have to make time...