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Month: October 2012

Pendopad Cover

Pendopad Cover

Comments 21 comments

Pendopad cover ( which is like an ipad)  I don’t really like it but they say there is no failures in felt, well not sure about that  🙂

Sorry if there’s to many photo’s but I wanted to show you want I meant

 Top layer I added some nice material that zed sent me awhile ago and I know now that I added way to much, very pokadotty and not what I wanted, but I kept going because you just never know 🙂

Back side layed out although this could now become the front, A layer of really sheer , shiny fabric that you cant see well here but it should have felted better

 

After wetting it out

and the back

Lots of rubbing, rolling and throwing and it still didn’t want to take very well , that really shiny fabric is obvious now lol  especially as a lot of it didnt want to felt in there !

not happy with the edge, and i couldnt get it felted more than that

 

Had to throw in my sexy nails, my daughter had her first nail art competition that they had to enter for assessment, she didn’t win anything but enjoyed it and now I have some bling on my fingers, orange sculptured acrylic covered with gold leaf and jewels  🙂

 

Anyway back to this  🙂   I added some beads and stitches to anchor the sheer, didn’t need much as I find it way to busy anyway so i wanted to keep it simple

 

Its hard to even see the stitches in most of it  but they are there

 

I don’t dislike it as much now but I will be making another one anyone because its not really doing anything for me !!!

 

I had to turn the top over to neaten and attach some fibres and to me it’s a bit better  BUT !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

So there you have it, my sort of failure, well it is to me but thoughts and advise would be appreciated

I’m going to work on my weather challenge piece next so im hoping that works out better than this one   🙂    i always enjoy it though

Happy Felting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding a Wholesale Show That’s Right for You

Finding a Wholesale Show That’s Right for You

Comments 5 comments

Previously, I discussed finding retail shows and doing research ahead of time before jumping right in and signing up. It is doubly important to investigate carefully before taking the plunge into wholesale markets. Wholesale shows are much more expensive than retail shows and finding the show that is a match for your merchandise is a must.

In the US, there are several major wholesale shows that focus on hand crafted products. The Buyers Market of American Craft is one of the longest running shows and is held in Philadelphia in February. The American Craft Council holds four shows throughout the US  in February, March, April and August. Wholesalecrafts.com holds two wholesale markets called ACRE, one in Orlando in January and one in Las Vegas in April. There are many more smaller wholesale shows that are put on at a state level. Most of these are run through the state governments so check to see if your state holds a wholesale market for hand crafted goods. Many of the wholesale markets have an emerging artist program. This allows artists just starting in the wholesale market to have a smaller booth space and a less expensive investment.

I did check to see what was available in the UK and Australia. I found several sites that listed many gift shows in both countries. I did not see a specific show just for hand crafted items but it did appear that there were categories for hand crafted work. The Wholesaler UK has a list of shows as well as an online venue for listing your business. Canada also has several craft wholesale markets that I’ve seen advertised. Canadian artists are also welcome at the US craft markets. If anyone knows of wholesale craft markets in other countries, I would appreciate you leaving the link to these in the comments.

Researching the show in advance is very important. See if it’s possible for you to visit the show and just observe. Some shows do allow interested vendors to check out the show in person before deciding to apply for the next year. If you know any gallery or shop owners in your area, check to see which shows they attend. Find out from the buyer as much about the show as possible. See if they know of a vendor who would be willing to talk to you about the show. If you get to speak to a vendor, tell them what you make/sell and ask if they think your work would be a good fit for the show. Ask about attendance, whether they do the show every year, their likes and dislikes and if they get re-orders from the show buyers. Also ask about any hidden costs associated with the show including things like shipping your work to the show, union rules for the venue, and what is included with the show package. Talk to as many vendors of the various shows that you are investigating as possible.

Contact the show sponsors and ask for an application. Get applications for all the shows that you might be interested in attending. Compare the pricing, what the package includes and also think about how far you will have to travel, the cost of staying in the area of the show and how much it will be to ship your booth to the show. Most of this information is now online so it is easy to compare costs. Figure out what the total cost for each show is going to be and what the resultant sales must be for you to break even. Does it seem reasonable?

Booths can often be shared. Do you have a fellow artist that might want to venture into the wholesale market with you? If so, consider sharing a booth space. This works best if the other artist has work that is complementary to yours but doesn’t compete directly with your products. Sharing a booth space will cut down on your costs, set up and gives you a ready assistant in the booth when you need to take a break.

Another avenue to follow is to try trade shows that are specific to the product that you are selling. Perhaps if you sell supplies or kits, you might sell more at a hobby and craft trade show. Or if you sell items designed for pets, there are pet supplies trade shows. Think about what type of shops might best sell your work and find out where they shop for merchandise. Finding the right wholesale show takes some work ahead of time but will save you a lot of pain in the long run if you try selling at the wrong show for your work.

Print to Stitch Homework

Print to Stitch Homework

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I’ve been busy stitching away on my homework for my stitch class. This session we worked on printing photos on fabric and then adding layers of sheer fabric and stitch to “enhance” the photo. I’ve still got a couple more to go and one hand stitch one that isn’t shown that I’ve been stitching on for almost 8 weeks and I’m still only halfway there.

Weather Challenge

Weather Challenge

Comments 13 comments

I’ve been trying to set aside a little time to work on Karen’s weather challenge. I usually start off with inspirational photos and I was thinking I would use autumn photos.

 

Perhaps I could use a photo like this for inspiration. This was taken in Glacier National Park which is about 45 minutes from where I live.

Or perhaps this photo would work. I love the colors of the leaves in autumn. We get a lot of yellow leaves from aspen, birch and tamarack trees.

 

But then I woke up on Tuesday morning to this! Snow, almost four inches of it. This photo is taken in front of my house.

 

And this is from the back of the house. You can see the edge of the picnic table at the bottom right hand corner that shows the snowfall amount fairly well. So perhaps I’ve already missed autumn and should concentrate on winter weather. I always liked white on white. Hopefully, I’ll get further forward on this challenge soon.

If you get a chance this weekend, check out Artistically Speaking Talk Show. I will be talking to Rebecca Parsons about my book and other fiber art stuff. The show will air on October 28th at 6:30 pm eastern time. If you can’t listen at the time of the show, you can always play the broadcast later. There are also some other great broadcasts with other artists available for listening as well. Wish me luck! 🙂

Hat Making Class

Hat Making Class

Comments 11 comments

I thought a hat making class last saturday. We had a great time and everyone had a wonderful hat at the end. I forgot to take pictures till the end. After a year of blogging you would think I would be used to taking pictures of everything I do. However I do have some pictures from the class I taught last winter. They were given to my by Jan who is in the class. I lost most of my pictures in a computer crash. The hard drive is off hopefully getting my pictures recovered.

Trolley for class materials.

This is my trolley that I use for class. My bins of wool for embellishment and my tub that has the little buckets, pool noodles, bubble wrap, resist material and other odds and sods.

Jan starting to layout of the wool.

Here is Jan starting to cover her resist with wool and the 2 halves of her hat finished and ready to put together.

Laying out the wool for a pill box hat

Here is another student who decided to do a pill box hat in cow print.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a red and white hat with a few embellishments to help it not look so Christmasy.

Red and white hat ready to wet.

Getting the wool wet using a ball browser. It is a bonsai watering tool that felters are using now. It sprinkles the water just where you need it.

 

 

 

Sorry no pictures of the felting everyone was to busy to take pictures. They did some rubbing and then some rolling then some kneading and throwing.

This is Jan’s hat ready to do some shaping.

 

 

 

 

 

The 2 pieces of the cow hat are ready to sew together once they are dry. The sides are a bit floppy with being wet.

Jan modeling her hat form 2 sides. She did more shaping and ended up twisting the tale and inserting inside the brim.

Jan’s hat finished

and now the red and white hat

Red and White hat finished

And last but not least is the picture of my student from last Saturday  wearing their hats

Hat Class Oct. 2012

Everyone had a good time and ended up with a hat that fit them in a style they wanted. Whenever I here someone saying their head is small or large of too round or flat or whatever I always say well come to a class and make a hat tat fits you. The best hat block you have is your own head. So give it a try on your own or in a class make the hat of your dreams.

Giveaway Winner

Giveaway Winner

Comments 15 comments

Thanks a lot to everyone who entered the Bits and Pieces Giveaway this week, it was really nice to see all the great comments 🙂  The lucky winner is …..

Congratulations, Isabell 🙂  Please can you leave a comment on this post so I can contact you for your postal address, thanks a lot 🙂

I’ve been having a clear out lately and have spent a lot of time going through smelly dusty bags and boxes from the loft. Most of them contain 20 years of birthday and Christmas cards, clothes I’ll never wear again but can’t bear to part with or cassette tapes from around 1983-1987 🙂  But I got a really nice surprise when I opened one of the bags and discovered 5 huge silk scarves, each about 43 inches square! I think I’ll be doing some nuno felting fairly soon!

I’ve been thinking about Karen’s 4th Quarter Studio Challenge about the Weather recently which isn’t hard being British, apart from tea it’s what we think about most 🙂  I saw this cloud this morning and thought I’d take a photo to add to my collection.

I haven’t quite decided what I’ll do yet, but we often have 4 seasons in a day here, so I’m spoilt for choice 🙂

Needle Felted Name Tags

Needle Felted Name Tags

Comments 8 comments

I was invited to teach a mini class at the local weaver’s and spinner’s guild meeting on Wednesday. I decided to try the needle felted name tag project that Ann had suggested to me. Thanks Ann! It was perfect for a guild meeting because the ladies could all use their name tags for meetings and conventions that they attend.

 

I didn’t do a very good job with the photo taking but you can see the partially finished results. We started with a base of felted wool blankets, scarves or sweaters cut into pieces about 3″x4″.

 

The base wool was covered with whatever color of wool the ladies chose. Each one ended up different colors and they were all pretty quick in needle felting the backgrounds down. The excess wool was wrapped around to the back and needled in to make a nice covered edge.

We then spent a bit of time figuring out what we wanted the lettering of the name to look like. Yarn was used to form the lettering.

 

The hardest part was fitting the name in and not running out of space.

 

As you can see, everyone had a good time using a variety of colors and yarn choices.

Tacking down the yarn with a single needle helps to get the layout. You can always pull it back up if it doesn’t work out. Tara used roving to make “fatter” letters. She was considering whether or not to outline the letters with thin yarn to give it a bit of “splash”.

 

Julie used a felted, fringed scarf and kept the fringe. Didn’t it turn out cool?? To finish off the name tag, you just glue or stitch a pin back on the back side about a third of the way down from the top.

 

And here is Shelley’s name tag. She was going to add a charm or button at the top. She hadn’t quite decided. We had a great time and hopefully they were all inspired to add a bit more felting into their repertoire!

 

 

 

Making Felted Soap

Making Felted Soap

Comments 7 comments

I have a show coming up soon and I am almost out of felted soap. They are always popular at Christmas time.

Here you can see some of my bins of small amounts of different colours, the pieces of nylon stocking I use for felting in and the first soap wrapped up in wool.

first a wrap a thin strip of wool around the edge of the soap then roll it up in a wider strip of roving. Next I pic a complementary or contrasting colour to wrap around the soap. I usually do a spiral from one side to the other.

I use small pieces of nylon stocking to put the wool in for felting. It’s the only thing I use nylons for these days. The reason I put the soap and wool bundle in a stocking is to keep it under control. the first thing that happens when you wet the wool is it gets bigger and its hard to keep it all in place.

Here is a soap with some silk added. this is silk roving that is teased apart. I also us pieces of silk hanky to give it a marble like appearance.

I managed to get this far yesterday but I didn’t manage to get them felted. so here is a picture of a different batch all finished. there are 2 with silk hanky on them.

That’ s the way I do it. If you have any questions or tales of soap making tell us about it.

Selling Both Wholesale and Retail

Selling Both Wholesale and Retail

Comments 6 comments

Many times artists choose between selling on a retail basis or on a wholesale basis. You can do both, but you need to avoid a few pitfalls when you sell both wholesale and retail.

 

Galleries often prefer to work with artists that only sell on a wholesale basis and don’t sell at any retail venues. That way, the gallery is assured that customers can only buy the products from them or another gallery. However, when you have been selling retail and then want to venture into the wholesale market, you may want to be able to sell both ways.  You will need to reassure galleries that buy wholesale from you, that your retail prices will not undercut their pricing structure and that any customers who approach you personally after seeing your work in a gallery will be sent back to the gallery for the sale.

I have said this before but it won’t hurt to repeat it. Your pricing needs to be consistent. You can’t sell at a retail show for a lower price then what the galleries can sell your work after buying at wholesale. Your prices at retail shows should be made by marking your wholesale price up by 2.3 – 2.5 or higher. Keystone (the amount that stores mark up a wholesale price) used to be 2.0 but it is really hard to make a living any more with that low a markup. Most galleries mark up around the 2.5 mark. So if you are going to sell your work wholesale, you should not be selling your work in any retail venue for less than 2.5 times your wholesale prices. This includes retail shows, online sales or any other retail venue where you sell your work.

Developing a good relationship with your galleries is important if you want to continue to receive orders and business from them. You need to check with customers who contact you directly where they first saw your work. If they saw your work at a gallery, that gallery needs to get the sale or a commission from you if you sell directly to the customer. Perhaps the gallery doesn’t have a specific piece that the customer wants to buy. You still need to have an understanding with the gallery that if you sell “their” customer a piece, you need to give them a commission or a portion of the sale. They are promoting you and your work and you need to be supportive of them. Work out in advance what their policies are about commissions and special orders. The selling percentages may be different from the normal pricing structure. Again, if you get to know the gallery representatives, this will be a big help when issues arise.

I know that some galleries refuse to work with artists that sell their work in online retail venues. Customers are computer savvy. They can get your name from a tag on work in a gallery, google it and find all the online venues where you sell your work. Many customers then attempt to get a better price from those venues or directly from you. If your work is priced the same or higher than it is in the galleries, these issues won’t be a problem for you. So as long as your pricing is consistent, selling retail and wholesale is a viable option.

 

Giveaway-Bits and Pieces

Giveaway-Bits and Pieces

Comments 41 comments

I thought it was time I did another Giveaway 🙂  I’ve gone through my stash of embellishment fabrics, fibres and scraps and put together a package that should give you plenty of choices for adding extras to your felt creations. These are some gorgeous metallic novelty yarns/fancy fibres. There are 5 different ones each about 3 metres long.

There are also some shorter lengths of novelty yarns in all different colours and types.

These gorgeous crinkly fibres are from another novelty yarn that I unravelled. I used a lot of them in this piece here.


There are some pieces and scraps of silk:

Organza

Gratuitous supermacro of organza 🙂

and synthetic fabrics

There is also some Cotton Noil

And some natural fibres and top, Top L-R Egyptian Cotton fibre, Crimped Viscose fibre, Bamboo Fibre. Bottom L-R: Flax, Ramie, Banana top.


If you’d like to win this fabric and fibre giveaway, simply comment on this post. I’ll announce the winner Next Sunday, 21st October. Please can the winner comment on the announcement post within 2 days so I can contact you for your postal address, thanks a lot 🙂

FORUM
Most of our readers know about our Forum, but if you don’t, it’s a community of felting and fibre artists from around the world who get together to chat and ask each other questions about anything felt, fabric or fibre related…or chat about the usual things like the weather 🙂  We love reading the comments here on the blog and visiting the blogs of anyone who posts and has a link to theirs, and it’d be nice to be able to keep in touch more and build more community links. We’re all interested in the fibre arts, so if your interests are felting, mixed media, spinning, weaving, freeform crochet or something else we need to know about, come and join us, share photos of what you’re working on, ask for advice, give help to fellow fibre artists, meet friends and have fun!