Craft Fair Prep

As I mentioned last week, I am signed up to participate in a craft fair for El Paso County.  This means that I need to have a goodly supply of ready made items for sale.  This also suggests to me that armor may not be the best selection for the people who will be coming to this fair.

Instead I have been working a whole passel of hair trinkets and other leather "stuff".  I plan to do Leather Hair clips, slides, trivets for the kitchen, maybe some books, and a passel of whatever hits my fancy for leather cuffs and bracers. 

Which means I need to be working! WORKING!And I have been.  You can see what I pulled together on Saturday in a few hours. This week I hope to do some detail tooling, edge beveling, shaping, and possibly some dye depending on the level of crazy this week happens to have.

Thursday is the awesome-monsters birthday, so I am not sure how much work will happen as I am trying to spend extra times with her...and the weekend is jam-packed and crazy. 

My goal for the fair is to have 40 items to sell and to make $200 or more. We will see what all I end up with, and what the prices end up being.  I never really know how to price things, so I may make Kelley (who is also doing the fair) price all my stuff for me, or Ray.  They love me enough to do the hard stuff for me.

I love how different each of these leaves ended up! I can't wait to see how they look as hair slides.

September Craft Day - AKA Actually working!

So, my dearest crafter from Hickory Lane Creations inspired me to get off my arse and get to work! 

Today we met and did a few hours of get together.  I made country loaf bread, some delicious chocolate-chocolate cookies and then worked with pony beads with my little one for a bit. Once the crowd left I lazed on facebook until finally the shame forced me to get to work.

I was able to size down the helmet base, repunch the holes and then I traced, cut out, and smoothed the faceplate/mask for the helmet.  In the process I also decided to use the scrap leather to make a mask for the little one.  There may also be a crown coming too!

To the right is the pile of today's accomplishments - a kiddo mask, a helmet mask/faceplate, 1/2 of the cookies I made, what's left of the loaf of bread, the resized helmet base and what will be the edges...and a messy kitchen.

Tomorrow I will be working on tooling the face and edges, resewing the base, and hopefully reaching out to determine the color patterns for the helmet.  I would love to have this done by Friday...it needs to get out of my house! :)

Below is the kiddo trying on the mask. I can't wait to see what we decide to do with tooling, color, and accessories. Ignore the messy house behind her cuteness :)

December Craft Day and Holiday Fun!

So - Today was another awesome craft day! Today's projects for me was wrapping up the idea I had with Kasha of creating some Leather ornaments.

Here is the initial cut out

And today, with color and finish!


I really enjoyed this project and posted it up to Etsy :) Maybe I will get a few actual sales. And if not, I will have a few beautiful new ornaments for my collection! These are a fairly simple design, cut out my base pattern, tool the letters that we need and then (let dry) and color as wanted.



What do you think?

November Craft Day

Sorry dears for taking so long to work on the next project. I am still waiting on new leather projects since I am almost out of leather - so instead I did a few simple projects from stuff mom had stashed in her downstairs office. This is also part of my answer to the "Oh-GOD I FORGOT About the Craft Chain" that I had earlier this week. :)

Let's start with the books. Four white square books filled with graph paper - cute little cut out in the center front and two easily removable pages that said where they came from.



This summer I ended up with some amazing pictures of Kasha as a fairy at our local Renaissance Festival - so I took some of the tissue paper I had around the house and cut out different sizes, shapes and colors of leaf which would match the forest in the picture (I hope).

Kasha and I decoupaged them in several layers across the books covers and left the hole in the center open to put in the picture of her to send this book to one of her Aunty's. Hopefully the book comes in handy and the picture makes her smile (we'll have to see) We are waiting to insert the picture, but the book is done!

Took the same idea of "Forest" and added some red, orange and almost purple leaves to make one for another friend who loves leaves and added a beautiful copper leaf that I found on the ground a while ago and tossed in my jewelry box. I am looking at adding pretty clasps to the books but here is my Autumn Leaf book.




Mom also had the fabric and instructions for a pretty little fleece tie blanket (tiny little lap blanket size) which I put together and cut out and tied together. It was stupid easy but pretty and hopefully will make a good Solstice Present for someone else who is awesome...I in fact have a brilliant person in mind thinking of it now :)




Didn't take pictures of books 3 and 4 because I am not done yet...I just don't know what colors or Idea's to do and feel like the leaf thing is done. What do I do next? Any suggestions for a book with a hole in it to make it something useful and fun? They have graph paper which I have always loved! I am tempted to make one or both all jeweled and give it to a niece for Solstice....Any other suggestions?

Try, Try, Try Again

I am, perhaps, a little bit obsessive. And Neurotic. And occasionally, just a teeny tiny bit of a perfectionist. My evil voice in my head came out this weekend.

I made a list of possible projects on Friday night. If I don't keep having things to do, I will end up going back to watching movies, and I would prefer to craft :) This list is fairly extensive, and some of the projects require things I do not currently own and may not be able to afford for some while.

Now, as a side-note, Ray and I have decided that we make enough things and enjoy making things enough that we should open an Etsy Shop to sell some of the incidental things that are neat, but not what we wanted/intended/will use - Plus, like everyone we could use some extra money for crafting supplies. So, part of my list is projects intended for said shop :) Already finished adjusting one thing to work for sale on Etsy as Pirate/Steampunk knife & sheath set and will be posting up the Tree-of-life Waist Cinch as well.

Back to Topic - After making the list Ray and I went over it and decided that this weekend, I should finish designing and making Shanti and Walin's bracer's that I have been wanting to do. This is a for-me craft and a tiny way to show some of my beloved ones how I feel about them (in general - that would be love them beyond words).

I had gotten Walin's approval for the panther design for his, but hadn't laid it out on the bracers so when I had it soaked and ready to tool, I decided to wing it. This was a bad idea - the point where I would later pinpoint it all went wrong. I knew in my head that I wanted to do Walin's bracers with the panther near the bottom, on top of a celtic knotwork of green below a moon cycle. If it were smaller, or the panther were more delicate it might look chick-ish, but with Walin I really think he can pull it off. But...Since I was winging it (stupid-head me) I just looked and guessed and put it near the top. *sigh*

I tooled both bracers and looked at them with my mental image in my head screaming fire alarms of NO NO BAD WRONG and finally after all the tooling was complete suddenly realized, this wouldn't work with anything I was picturing. So, I wandered off during the girls craft day on Sunday with my sketchbook and drew what I was thinking. After asking Walin to ignore what he knew I had already done, what he thought about the new design.

Of course, well, it's awesome - and .... Well, redo time! So, I will be re-cutting the leather, retooling, and then dying new bracers. The tooled panther I simply mirrored another panther on on Monday and dyed black and silver, I think it will end up on Etsy as well by default. I do hope I can manage to learn from this lesson.

But here is the Mirror-tooled Panther in black with silver panther's. There will be silver grommets and then I will reshape and get some better pictures for sale. I just wish I didn't feel quite so stupid.

Fail me