Quick words of WOW, for some gorgeous knitwear:
http://folksy.com/items/1648897-Hippy-Chic-Top
Whoever knew knitwear could look so sexy?
Flickr photostream
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Tramlines Music Festival
As I’m sure you’ll know due to my extensive facebooking and tweeting of the fact, I attended Tramlines to sell my handmade jewellery.
The fee was more than most markets on that street are, and when I discussed it with Phil from Exposed magazine, who was organising the market stalls for the event, he stated that due to the high footfall (150,000+ people) it was reasonable to charge a higher fee. Fair enough…
Comes the day, I find the car park where the even is at about 8am, set up my stall beside a lovely friendly lady selling mostly handmade bags, as well as some other fabric/textiley things. And I wait. And wait. And wait. As do all of the other stallholders in the carpark. We can hear the music, we can see the people walking down the street, just over there…. but they’re all walking down Eldon Street and not bothering with Eldon Street carpark.
3pm, once we’d been there for about 7 hours, some Tramlines staff come along, and say we’ve been authorised to move the market on to the street (it was blocked off, so cars couldn’t use it) but only until 9pm, rather than 11pm as originally promised. It took nearly an hour to move and set everything back up again – the stalls had to be dismantled, merchandise packed away, then I had to rope some staff into moving the stall, since I was on my own and couldn’t carry a 3×1 meter steel and wooden stall on my own! Then there’s trying to set everything back up in the horrid wind…. argh.
The stallholder beside me didn’t bother to even move her stall, she just went home.
Once I’d gotten set up on the street, sales started to pour in! well, not quite pouring, but I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t have made a yucky smelly loss, if only I’d not been mis-sold the footfall and lost the larger portion of the first day. I’ve tried to add Dave Healy, the Tramlines Director as a contact on LinkedIn in hopes I’ll be able to discuss the messup. I’ll give him a day or two and then try other avenues if need be.
On the positive note: I bought up lots of beads before the festival, specifically to make some of these necklaces, in leads of different colours. On the second day I was making them as fast as I could between customers, which admittedly wasn’t terribly fast – but I ran out of beads and nearly sold out of the necklaces. Niiiiiice. Bulk order of those beads coming up, kthx!
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Excellent crafty day!
I went to my very firstest craft fair today (as a seller), courtesy of curiousity.haus, and had a great time. Unfortunately it was a bit too sunny for excellent sales – how rarely do we get nice warm days in the UK, after all? But I still sold enough to confidently say I made an ickle wee bit of profit as well as covering my costs, and more importantly I enjoyed myself 
I had two crafty neighbouring stalls – Ticking Stripes selling vintage fabric, china, and bric-a-brac, and a couple of lovely guys called Jon and Andrew, with a business name that I think was snowy red? red snow? Sounds kinda morbid now I think of it.
I felt pretty well prepared, with the exception of completely forgetting to bring any carrier bags (not such a problem as I have some velvet and organza pouches for the jewellery anyway) and forgetting my jacket. Fortunately due to the aforementioned awesome weather the lack of a jacket wasn’t a problem. Next time I’ll know to bring some food, rather than survive on cookies from the supermarket across the road… 
I loved people stopping by, asking me if I’d made everything, how it was made, telling me how nice things looked, asking how long it takes me, and best of all, how much an item would cost them. One guy even got me to put a necklace and earrings to the side, saying he’d come back… and he did! I sold two of that style of necklace and had a LOT of interest in the others of the same style:
After the fun and excitement of this fair I hope I get into a few more this year
See the pretty earring / necklace set? You know you wanna vote for me, right? *wink*
I’ve been thinking of changing the name of the jewellery biz to catwithnoname jewellery (as I have catwithnoname.com…. I’d have to move the blog elsewhere). There are simply way too many lazy namers out there like me with blah’s handmade jewellery as their business name. Any thoughts?
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I can’t believe it took me so long to stumble across http://www.craft-candy.org/, a Sheffield crafty group. I’ve applied for the March craft fair they’ll be hosting at the Millennium Gallery, but I’m aware that jewellery is often in oversupply in craft markets, so I may not get in. We’ll seeee…..
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Wire Wrapping Beads
Wire wrapping beads is actually pretty simple, but you may find you need to try it a few times before you get the knack down, so make sure you have plenty of wire (it’s worth keeping some cheaper plated wires for practising on even if you intend to use more expensive metals later on like Sterling Silver or Gold Fill. I use Silver Plated 0.6mm wire from Beads Unlimited.
First of all, cut a length of wire about 20 or 30 cm long. This is longer than you need, but it’s easier to work with wire that’s too long than to work with wire that’s too short. You’ll be able to use the left over bit for the next bead.
Insert the wire into the bead so one end is sticking 2-3 cm out of the bead.
Using your fingers (the wire should be soft enough for this) bend the wire on both sides of the bead up so they cross each other.
Grab your round nosed pliers and use them to grasp the short end of wire just above where the wires cross, and using your fingers (or a second pair of pliers if it’s easier) wrap the short end of the wire around the pliers to make a complete loop.
Now all you have left is to wrap the wire around the metal stem and top of the bead.
The first turn may be the most tricky. Again, with long enough wire it should be easy to bend with your fingers – but if not, grasp the loop at the top with some pliers (but try not to mar the metal with the pliers by gripping too hard!) and carefully twist the wire round.
Work in half turns, and then get a new grip on the bead before wrapping some more – this helps keep the wire tight and neat. When you reach the amount of wrap you want, use the flush cutters to trim the remaining wire off.
If the edges of the wire are too rough you may want to file them down so they don’t snag on things.
View the Make cross posted on Folksy or view the completed items
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Craft Nations
Calling All Designer Makers: CraftNation.com Launches the World’s First Online Portal Offering Crowd-sourced Designer Crafts
London based CraftNation.com launches to the public this week, it’s the first online ecommerce portal in the world to offer crowd-sourced designer crafts and over 100 designers have signed up in their first week.
The vision behind CraftNation.com is to challenge traditional supply chain methodology. Products which have the potential to be future-vintage artisan crafts, can be pre-ordered. CraftNation.com drastically reduce manufacturing waste and enhance an ethically supported supply chain, by producing desired artisan crafts.
“CraftNation.com’s vision is to use crowdsourcing and purchasing power to challenge traditional supply chain methodology, that shake up manufacturing industries.”
Louise Campbell – Founder
Crowd-sourcing creativity is a hot topic at the moment and Craftnation.com are on a mission to take advantage of its benefits to help change the way handmade goods get sold, cheekily they describe themselves as like “hot or not for handmade artisan crafts…”
CraftNation.com combines feedback, group buying, pre-ordering and a map showing designer’s locations to encourage sourcing locally. They hope to shake-up traditional manufacturing methodology.
How different are they from competitor Etsy.com?
CraftNation.com describe themselves as the “un-marketplace”. Tired of wading through thousands of items a week on etsy, amazon and other marketplaces to find the perfect gift, CraftNation.com feature one product on their homepage daily, this product is available to buy for 24hrs only. To be featured on the homepage this product is voted on by the community in their weekly showcase, only the most desirable get sold.
How?
“Making products that are un-desired and do not sell is un-sustainable from a financial as well as an ecological point of view, they become instant waste.”
Louise Campbell founder of CraftNation.com
By saving designers time and money by transforming the way products get made CraftNation.com will deliver a one stop ecommerce solution for designers to gain valuable votes and feedback on their designs before they get produced. Submitting your bestseller to the showcase is easy it only takes a few seconds.
Describing themselves as the “un-marketplace” targeting desirable designers goods to local buyers and taking advantage of mobile social shopping and location features. It promises to change the way we sell designer goods.
Who?
Brainchild of Louise Campbell: graphic designer and ex-Liberty of London employee with her technical co-founder lead developer, Alice Elizabeth Still. Together with experienced online Marketing Strategist Ameer Sameer Khan, and key advisor: the queen of crowd-sourced creativity Katarina Skoberene (founder and ex CEO of the OpenAd Network, the worlds 1st crowd sourced advertising platform) hope to shake-up the current commercial designer accessories industry, whom Louise describes as wasteful and complacent.
Louise spent years looking at way products were manufactured, and was shocked at the amount of accessories that get produced which do not necessarily have a buyer. Undesired products end up in landfill.
“CraftNation.com have capitalised on a valuable trend, we are first to market to combine handmade designs, feedback, group buying and geolocation features.”
Ameer Khan, Chief Marketing Officer
What?
CraftNation.com is a showcase for artisan craft designers to show and feedback their designs to a worldwide audience. The CraftNation.com community choose which designs get produced. The most desirable based on votes are sold daily through its online boutique.
CraftNation.com are currently inviting designers to list their bestselling products in their showcase and buyers to sign-up for our one amazing 24hr time-lined ‘crafty deal’ sent to your inbox daily but be quick they are limiting the buyers list!
Contact: Louise@CraftNation.com | T: +44 7985606047 | Twitter: @Craft_Nation | Blog: CraftNationsUnite | Facebook: CraftNationsUnite
(Cross-posted from Craft Nations Press Release)
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Are you Artsy? Join Artrise
A new Art social network. http://www.artrise.com/ and friend me of course
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Eugh, please treat your jewellery better than this!
I’m glad I’ve never come across anything this nasty:
“It was a pearl ring: A single white pearl glued onto a post and placed on a gold band. Simple, elegant and beautiful. The stench that emanated from this ring would kill a vulture.”
Read the full report at Jezebel
Fitting button
I love this badge! I need one that says “go away, I’m crafting”, another for coding, another for photography, and one for studying.
Literary brooch
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