Craft Sale October

Well I did a craft sale in October with my friend Ann. She sold fairy cakes and ghost/bat decorated biscuits. I took all my little handmade trinkets including loads of pumpkin photo/card holders that no-one bought!

Its the Maker's Market, Seaburn. Its run by a lovely lady called fiona. Ann's biccies sold quite well but there was another stall doing fancy pants cupcakes so we lost quite a lot of trade to them (despite the fact they were "assembed" rather than "home made" but never mind. I got a lot of interest in my things but no buyers.

I was hoping with the halloween theme someone would buy a pumpkin. My hubby loved them (and to be honest I was quite chuffed with them too). I got some orange FIMO and formed it into little balls then squashed 6 or 8 a thin lines of darker orange (mixed with a bit of red) across it in an asterisk * style. (So that the lines crossed at the top and bottom of the ball). Then I used some craft wire to press the darker colour into the round to make grooves, and make it look into a pumpkin shape. Then I added the black faces and little brown stalks on the top. I used some round nosed plyers to bend some 1.8mm craft wire into a swirl (to hold the card) and stabbed it into the top of the pumpkin.

I also put some of my claycraft teddies....fimo bears cut out using a little push cutter I got from hobbycraft.

Here are the mobile phone ones. I just baked the teddies, punched a hole in their ear with a cocktail stick before they were cooked and then attached a jump ring once they were hard. (right picture)

I made some into handbag/keyring charms (left picture) using some trace chain and little catches. I've since invested in proper keyrings so they're easier to attach onto bags with wide handles or thick zips/rings. I've also donated a batch of these to Pawz for Thought who are the charity I re-homed my bunnies from. They regularly have table top sales and book fairs where they sell goodies and they have a charity shop too so anything to help.

I also made a couple of beaded charms for mobiles/handbags while I was crafting. The handbag ones sold quite well at the January Makers Market, I sold them for £1.50 each and had lots of "lookers" I think next time i'll take an actual handbag so I can attach them ....like a display model. I invested in some more exciting charms like little glass shaped beads, mushrooms, ducks, from an ebay seller called Bead Addicts. They have some fab silver charms too, I got some lucky cats, handbags, rainbow enamel charms and allsorts. I went a bit mad, but they do discount the postage when you order a batch of stuff. I've not been dissapointed with anything i've got from them so far and its always really fast delivery.

Of course I had to make some beaded mobile phone charms. These I sold some at my later craft sale in Jan but none at the October one. I think girly things like handbags, hearts and things seem to be the most popular ones. Also animals, so i'll be keeping an eye out for more animal beads in the future.

I took a full display board (A4 sized) of about 24 pairs of earrings again for £1.50 each. No-one bought these either, but there are a few stalls of people already selling jewellery, and solely jewellery so there was a lot of competition. I've mainly been giving out my jewellery as xmas presents and putting some on ebay. I have a sellers page here. I usually sell stuff i've made for 84p - a bizzare amount I know, but the postage is 66p (although i'm sure it SHOULD be 42p but I can't be bothered to argue with the expertly trained grumps at the post office). So that totals £1.50 per pair of earrings which I dont think is bad priced really. I've paid much more for some that last 2 minutes before they break or tarnish that aren't as nice.

This one I made with gold crackle beads and these lovely big square buckle type beads were given to me by my friend with a bunch of her other broken necklaces. Recycling took over and I turned them into a few new ones....this being one of them. This was was actually an ebay success story.

This one also sold on ebay. I made it with these red glass beads that had a black swirl running through them. They had a lovely smoke pattern to them. They were in a bag of mixed beads that I got from a shop in their little "specials" bins. I also used some black cube beads, faux black pearls, faux burgundy pearls, clear silver-lined bugle beads and some silver spacer beads. I always use silver-plated fixings and findings.

These are my bunches of cherry earrings. I got the leaf shapes from my favourite ebay shopBeadaddicts. They look & feel like glass but they're actually really good quality acrylic. I then attached two short lengths of trace chain to a fish-hook ear-wire. I then put a frosty red glass round bead onto a headpin and held the headpin with the bead at the bottom and my thumb holding the headpin in place. I then cut it just above where my thumb was so it was nice and short, then using some round nosed plyers curled it round into a hoop and bent this hoop closed around one of the links in the chain. You continue repeating this with about 2 beads on each link in the chain, then repeat the same short cut, loop and attach to the trace chain with the leaf beads, but placing these at the top of the chain. I made these with "antique copper" fixings, which are actually that gothic black colour. I think they look quite funky.



These I call "waterfall" earrings...because well that's what I think they look like. For these I threaded a crimp bead onto some clear beading fibre, its kind of like fishing wire, but you can use beading thread or tigertail depending on how rigid you want each strand to be. Anyway, I'm waffling away from the point. Thread on your crimp bead and squash it with a crimping tool or some flat nosed plyers, then thread on 3, 4 or 5 bugle beads. Thread another crimp bead onto the end then push loose end through the loop at the bottom of the fish hook earwire. Now tuck the thread back through the crimp bead so its done a full loop and gone back to where it started (but pointing the opposite direction). Squash the crimp bead and this will attach your first strand. Repeat this about 10 times, each time using a different number of bugle beads creating strands of varying lengths.

This was another recyling project. These are acutally brown and orange wooden beads. The chain was originally one made with the large cube beads and one with the smaller links. I just repaired it by adding gold plated jump rings to connect the pieces and put it into more of a pattern. The earrings were made up of stray beads that I threaded onto some beading wire, then once I had enough to make a loop, I threaded 3 or 4 more beads through both ends of the wire so that the beads were falling on top of the loop i'd just made. I then popped a gold crimp bead on after the last wooden bead, fed the two strands through the crimp bead, through the earwire and back through the crimp bead....and SQUAAAAASH. All done.

 These I listed on ebay as firey because I think the amber & red makes it look like the colour of fire. I got the disc beads from sale in Hobbycraft in one of the "sump bins" near the till for 50p....bargain! I used antique copper fixings for these as I didn't think silver or gold would look nice against the amber. I took some earwires, 3 short headpins and one eyepin. Put the big disc bead onto the eyepin and place a smaller round glass amber bead ontop. Then using round nosed plyers bend the top end of the eyepin into a loop and connect it to the fish-hook earwire. Then take the smaller red beads and thread one each onto each of the short headpins (if you dont have short ones just cut yours to size). Then thread these through the "eye" at the bottom of the eyepin and use your plyers to loop them and connect up. Repeat 3 times throught the eye part of the eyepin so you have a little cluster going on!

I've always seen these loop earrings with things dangling from them and wondered how you do them. So I bought the ear-wires and had a go. Basically you prize apart the loop from the top where it meets the fish-hook and thread on your beads. I then adorned some headpins with various mixed of blue beads and created a loop at the end, I had loads of spare headpin left so just continued to loop it round on itself like a coiled spring. I then threaded one bead, one of the springy headpins, one bead, one headpin etc along the "loop" part of these earrings then snapped them shut at the opening. The coiled ends of the headpin act as nice spacer beads between the long chains of beads on the headpin and the blue beads on the main part of the earring.

These are long oblong glass beads that are silver lined but also had some glittery lustre running through them. These I still have (as of Feb 11) they're lovely but are quite large beads (about 1.5") which I think puts people off. I call them frosty earrings because the long flat pillow type beads look well...like they've been left out in the frost. I've added a small silver spacer bead at the top just to try bring out the colour. I cant remember where I got these beads.

 These are "ladybird" earrings. The glass ladybird beads are from my favourite Bead Addicts. They're quite small but I just think they're so cute. I added a black glass faux pearl to look like a head, as the existing "head" part of the bead wasn't very prominant.

 These are the same beads as the "firey" earrings from above, but these are pink & white disks and the white colour is not translucent so looks more cloudy. I used a frosted pink bead on top of it to set off the cloudy effect of the white in the disc bead. I did these in silver to match the white and bring out the cloudy frost colour. Well that's the waffley arty excuse i'm using.

These ones are just a dark purple round bead (from a mixed bag of czech glass beads) two matching preferably but you can get away with slightly different patterns or colours because of the cage. I bought the cages from Rosarama which is a local bead shop, they also have a web-page. Basically you use your plyers to prize apart the gap between the spirals and pop the bead in. They usually just close back up themselves keyring style and spring back into shape BUT if not you can always give them a bit of a squeeze with some flat-nosed plyers.