Bound for Cleveland

I have been crafting my butt off, in what often seems like ten-second intervals, to get a ton of stuff and all my infrastructure prepped for Bazaar Bizarre Cleveland tomorrow. Ten-second intervals, of course, is what I get between helping make Rice Crispy Christmas trees, baking bread, setting up science experiments (and cleaning up after them), setting up art projects (and cleaning up after them), reading books out loud, setting up the telescope (and putting it away), chilling at the playground, chilling at the library, taking the girls Christmas shopping, taking the girls to playdates, taking the girls to ballet class and ice skating class, etc., etc., etc.

I never get nearly as much done as I want to, and not quite as much done as I need to, but here's what I did get done. I've got--

Rocket Pop Crayons 

Felted Wool Sweater Trees

--and travel felt playmats, six different felt playsets, comic book pinback buttons, dictionary cut-out pinback buttons, record bowls, coffee cup chia kits, colored pencil roll-ups, tutus, I Spy quilts, blue jean quilts, and T-shirt quilts.

Think I have enough? Well, it has to be enough, because we're leaving in two hours, and I still have to pack, pack the girls' stuff, pack the craft fair stuff, write another CAGW blog post, make lunch (and clean up after it), laminate some signs, find my favorite hoodie...

Etc., etc., etc.

2010 Holiday Market

My fingers and toes went numb, but at least it wasn't sleeting or anything, and it was a GREAT day to go holiday shopping in the freezing sunshine:

 
 
 
 
And I didn't even get pictures of the reindeer and the carolers and the TubaSantas and the chestnuts roasting over an open fire and the sock monkey hats...

Craft Fair Tutorial: Display on a Stick

Things sell better if you don't just throw a pile of them on a platter on a table.

This has been a huge struggle for me, as I have pretty much zero design sense. It has been a lot of work, and a lot of thinking, and a lot of doing stuff wrong, and a lot of willingness to toss bad displays and make new ones, and a lot more thinking, and a lot more willingness to toss those new displays when they didn't work either, blah, blah, blah, but slowly, like YEARS slowly, my craft fair displays are starting, and I mean just starting, to come together nicely.

My main hindrance has always been a fear of spending money. Every nice craft fair display that I've ever seen seems to have incorporated a lot of purchased elements, and I am not even willing to thrift stuff to use just for a display. A lot of my display mistakes over time have come from me trying to cobble together something from what I already own that ends up looking cobbled together, or me trying to put something together as cheaply as possible that ends up looking cheap.

Ironically, a lot of the stuff that I've done that I've liked the most--the record bowl shopping cart display, the spray-painted EZ-Up, have been cheaper than those cheap-o projects. They tend to use found elements that fit my needs perfectly, and supplies that have other purposes in my art, crafting, or homeschooling, etc.

This stand-up display for any craft on a stick--flags, pinwheels, or my rocket pop crayons--came together just the same way. It utilizes an old cardboard box lid for a base, some of the plaster of Paris that the girls and I do craft and homeschool projects with, more popsicle sticks from our thrifted supply, and our artist's acrylic paints.

The first step is to fill the box lid with plaster of Paris. I wasn't sure how much to make, so I mixed up one batch at a time and poured it on top of the previous batch. Alternately, you could fill the lid with water and pour it off into a measuring cup to ascertain the volume of plaster that you'll want to mix.

As the plaster sets, you'll need to supervise it in order to make the holes that your sticks will fit into. Use exactly the same sticks as you use in your craft, although these sticks will end up with plaster and paint on them, and so they won't be suitable for your crafting afterwards.

Watch the plaster as it hardens (I brought a book, and a four-year-old who wanted to chat), and as soon as it will hold your stick upright, place all your sticks upright in it, exactly where you want the holes to be. I made more holes and closer together than will actually fit my rocket pops, so that I can rearrange my display in a larger variety of ways.

Keep watching the plaster, and when it's relatively stiff, but not fully hard, try to pull one of your sticks out. It should come out cleanly, if a little wet. If it takes a bit of plaster with it as it comes, hurry and get the rest of the sticks out, because that means that you've let the plaster set a little too long, and the last thing you want is a display full of sticks that won't come out.

As soon as the plaster is fully hard, put the sticks back in, because otherwise the holes will shrink as the plaster contracts. Every little while, pull the sticks out and put them back in to keep the holes clean and perfectly sized. Be mindful as you do this to put the sticks in and pull them out perfectly straight--until the plaster is fully cured, you can damage the holes by wiggling the sticks in their holes or pulling them at an angle.

When the plaster is fully cured, you should be able to put the sticks in and out of their holes cleanly and easily, and they should fit snugly. If any holes are imperfect, then cover them up when you paint--customers often want to pick something up and look at it and then put it back, and they'll be frustrated or worried if they can't put your craft back the way it came (if they're the kind that care about that sort of thing, and not the kind that'll just toss it anywhere. Ugh).

After the plaster has cured the amount of time called for in the instructions, put all the sticks back in their holes and grab your acrylic paints for some prettying:

And yes, I'm sorry, you do have to paint in the nude. It's sorta required.

Strange Folk 2010: A Novel in Several Chapters

Set-Up

Because you can't have enough tinsel.

Rocket Pops

This is a newbie craft, developed after I figured out how to do layered melted crayon molds. I was all freaking out before Strange Folk, on account of I ran out of white crayons (still plenty of reds and blues) after making only four true-to-life rocket pop crayons, and you can't just bring FOUR of something to Strange Folk, unless it's four, like, four hundred dollar somethings. Anyway, I finally figured that I'd just make a ton of randomly-colored rocket pops, too, just to fill out the display.

By Sunday tear-down, wanna guess how many rocket pops I had left?

Four. Every one of them was red, white, and blue.

I Bet She'd Also Like a Record Bowl...

So Matt was sitting at the picnic benches over by the World's Largest Sandbox, watching the girls play, and some guy sitting near him commented to some other women that he'd bought the exact same journal that she was holding. The woman replied that she'd bought the journal for her niece, who liked to write songs. The guy told her that he'd bought his journal for his daughter, an anthropologist, because it was "kinda Indiana Jones-looking" (nota bene: Indiana Jones isn't an anthropologist).

The woman said that her niece travels around the country. "She has an album coming out this month," she added.

The guy said, "Oh, wow. That must be exciting for her."

The woman said, "You might have heard of her. Her name is Taylor Swift."

The guy said, "That doesn't sound familiar. I'll look her up tonight."

My own reply would have been: "Oh, yeah? My daughter's name is Temperance Brennan."

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia!

Or, as one customer squealed upon sighting them, "Look! It's a cup full of happiness!"

Go Away!

Do you know what hay means at an outdoor craft fair? Rain, that's what it means. Standing outside our tents in the rain, chatting (on account of there was nothing else to do, like, you know, wait on customers or anything of that nature), I told the guy who had the tent next to me that it had rained at every single craft fair that I have done this year. Because it has.

"What?!?" He shouted.

I was about to reply, "I know, right?", when he exclaimed, "Me, too!!! I thought it was just me!" And he's full-time--he does WAY more craft fairs than I do.

It used to never rain on me. I used to never even own a tent. And now, in the midwest at least, it only rains when I have a craft fair.

Future One-Car Family?

On the way home in the middle of the night, AGAIN in Effingham, something horrible happened to the van. Matt got us home by driving 45 mph the whole way, the maximum speed at which the car would travel before the horrible things happened, and fortunately the highway's minimum posted speed limit.

We can't afford to have any work done to that car, and I mean ANY work, no new tires, no oil changes, nothing, but fortunately I come from a people who know that a non-working vehicle is just four cinderblocks away from being yard art.

Stuff!

I plan to put all the proceeds from Strange Folk toward making Pumpkin+Bear an official biz, so I couldn't do much shopping there, but I did allow myself one spree, at Circa Ceramics across from my tent:

Say hello to my new most favorite coffee mug ever! It has a typewriter on it! Because I'm a writer! Although I don't use a typewriter! That would suck! I love my new mug!

On the last afternoon of the festival, the awesome folks at Rainbow Swirlz organized a little trade. I gave them a baby bag made from a vintage superheroes T-shirt for this great little four-month-old superhero that they happen to have birthed, and they gave me...

Can you see it? In the middle, next to Miss Island of the Blue Dolphins there? Here's a close-up:

It's my new most favorite bag ever. I love it so much that I was wearing it around yesterday before it even had anything in it. Not only is it super, but it reminds me of my family. Willow is the dinosaur. Sydney is the pink. Matt is the RAR.

Or should that be RAWR?

Strange Little Busy Bees

What have I been busy doing? Why, getting ready for Strange Folk! Many, many things have to be done before next weekend.

Have to put together the chia in a cup kits.
Have to water the cups o' chia already planted.
Have to water the dinosaur garden, as well:

Have to make signage.
Have to make record bowls.
Have to find the Pumpkin+Bear business card stamp.
Have to read some tongue twisters:

Have to sew colored pencil rolls.
Have to sew an I Spy quilt.
Have to tie, not sew, some tutus.
Have to tie some tutus for my two, too:

Have to put together an I Spy quilt kit.
Have to put together the clothespin doll kits.
Have to put together the color-your-own bunting kits.
Have to color an example, so everyone knows how cute they come:

Have to figure out a Barbie dress pattern.
Have to figure out a balancing butterfly pattern.
Have to get that toy fossil triceratops out of its slate prison!

Have to bake the crayon pops.

Have to go get some geodes.
Have to drill holes in colored pencils.

Have to take pictures on a sunny day.

Have to play Quirkle when it's cloudy:

At this rate, have to have a margarita tonight after the little pumpkinbears are sleeping.

Save the Date!

A Fair of the Arts in August

Dinosaurs!

More Dinosaurs!

New Signs!

More New Signs!

Rainbows! And Colored Pencils!

And Buttons!

And More Buttons! On My Favorite Find!

Good Company

And good times.

The next A Fair of the Arts craft fair is the second Saturday in September. Be there, or you know what you're gonna be.

A Fair of the Arts in June

An early thunderstorm made sure that Saturday's craft fair won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest craft fairs EVAH, but it still beat the hell out of the May fair, when it was inexplicably FREEZING.

And thus, a good-ish time was had by all:

Earlier in the day, this disaffected teen homeschool kid that I've chatted with at craft fairs for years slouched over with her disaffected teen homeschool buddies and bought up all my 1" comic book pinbacks that speak to the disaffected teen--"NO!" and "I hate you," and "You are nothing in my eyes," etc. So LATER in the day, this other bookish little teen homeschool kid that I have occasional bookish conversations with at the craft fair comes by and asks me if I can help her find any comic book pinbacks that have comebacks on them.

"Well," I say, "your buddies were by earlier and bought up just about anything that might help reflect their negative worldview."

"I know!" she said. "They were buying them about me!"

So I said, "Don't worry, kiddo. I always have a plan." The kiddo paid for five buttons, and then I gave her some Strathmore paper, a pen, and the one-inch hole punch, and instructed her to write her own comebacks and we'd make them into buttons for her.

While we were working, this other woman came up to get the 411 about being in the craft fair, on account of her group sells calendars. I told her that it's a juried fair, and apps for the season go out the previous winter, and the emphasis is on handicraft, prob not Kinko's calendars. So then, and this is a TOTAL pet peeve  since it happens all the time, most recently with a woman who wanted to rent half my booth from me to sell bellydancing swag, she goes ahead and gives me her entire spiel about why her group should totally be able to sell its calendars in the fair, like next month, and it's totally a handicraft. Fine by me, only I'm not, you know, actually in charge of anything, and when people get that frenzied look in their eyes while they're trying to make their case, it really creeps me out. Thank gawd Matt was there and smoothly segued a convo hand-off to himself, so I could devote all my attention to my VIP client there.

My kiddo made herself some AWESOME comeback buttons. Among the comebacks were "You went to LIE school," "I don't care," and "The feeling is mutual." She told me that she was especially proud of that latter button because when you say it, people don't know what it means and so they don't know if you're complimenting them or insulting them. So true, right?

So, low sales but high drama:

Good day, overall.

Spray Paint and Felt Cake: Craft Fair WIPs

Don't even ask me about my foot. I'm clearly going to have to go back to Promptcare tomorrow and have it amputated or something. Did I mention that the girls were playing with my sewing stuff yesterday and made a mess and therefore I stepped on a hand-sewing needle with my bare foot? Blunt end first? And I had to pull it out with my own two hands, although I thought for a minute that I was going to have to get some pliers?

SAME FOOT!!!!

So no, we're not talking about that foot anymore.

In other news, I've been hobbling around getting my butt in gear for the start of craft fair season on Saturday. The beginning of the season is always so panicky--so many signs to make! Change to aquire! Where's the duct tape? The last-minute panic hasn't yet set in, so today was mostly spent making felt cake--

--in large numbers:

Pimping the EZ-UP:

And no, we're also not talking about the sudden rainstorm that's occuring right now on said EZ-Up before the paint can cure. Just swear a few times inside your head for me.

And, of course, if I'M going to spray paint, then so must the child:

The other child was napping, after having screamed the entire walk home from Chocolate Moose about her skinned side. The second that we got home and I put a Band-aid on the skinned side, it was miraculously all better and she stopped screaming. I did not smack her.

And when Matt got home from work and saw that I was NOT lying down with my foot elevated, but instead SPRAY-PAINTING THE EZ-UP and LETTING THE CHILD SPRAY-PAINT and LETTING THE OTHER CHILD NAP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SO THAT SHE WON'T GO TO SLEEP TONIGHT he didn't smack me, either. In fact, he brought home pizza (such act is entitled "Cooking Dinner on the Nights When Julie Doesn't Cook") AND helped me finish spray-painting AND took a photo of me looking all happy and relaxed:

Wait until he sees how many craft fair signs I need him to design for me tomorrow...

Our Second Year at Strange Folk

Oh, how I heart St. Louis! It's so funny, because when I was a kid I HATED St. Louis. It was the place we'd get up before dawn to drive six hours to every now and then, straight to an old lady apartment (belonging to my Great-aunt Della), sit there for a reeeeeeaaaalllllllllyyyyyy long time (if I was lucky, she'd bring out her Norman Rockweller coffee table book for me to look at--barf), and then drive six hours back home again. That SAME day.

I couldn't believe it when I grew up and realized that there's stuff TO DO in St. Louis. Awesome stuff. Stuff like sliding down the free-fall slide at the City Museum:
And witnessing there the extent to which a little sister will go to not be bested by a big sister:
Stuff like discovering what my husband thinks is the very best way to deal with the fact that the eggs he's attempting to cook in the hotel kitchenette have just set off our room's smoke alarm: That's a PILLOW he's waving, friends. Not a blanket or a towel, but a pillow. Note that he has not even called down to the front desk yet to say, "Hey, I know the smoke alarm is blaring and maybe people are evacuating, but it's just me, I'm just cooking some eggs." And notice how, even though the smoke alarm is screaming in their faces, the girls are so focused on this thing they've just discovered called the Disney Channel that it doesn't even faze them.

Oh, right, and stuff like the Strange Folk Festival. Which, thank you for asking, was AWESOME! Last year at Strange Folk was good, but this year was awesome. The record bowls are nearly gone, the pinbacks I had to keep replenishing as fast as I could make them-- --and the bathroom breaks were as few and far between as I could make them, and accomplished at a dead run. It was THAT kind of craft fair. The good kind.

I also think that Strange Folk has the best atmosphere of any craft fair I've been to, big or small, conventional or indie. It's in a huge park, with plenty of green, empty space for children to play in, a huge playground, and some activities (sandbox, handmade hula hoops, milk jug igloo) imported in by Strange Folk just for the kids. That makes it a much more restful place for someone with kids to shop or sell--Will and Sydney played in the grass and under the trees, and walked together to the sandbox, and befriended random kids like they wouldn't be able to do at a fair on a city street or in a convention center.

And the music is good, and the trees are shady, and the people are just plain nice. One customer gave me the last two cookies that he'd bought from the gourmet cookie vendor across the way. Another customer said, "Your stuff rocks!" and then high-fived me! And you know how I feel about high-fives.

Willow made her entrepreneurial debut at Strange Folk. She wrapped hunks of grass in duct tape and sold them for 25 cents each (she actually sold four), and my shy girl was officially in charge of giving each customer, after the transaction, a business card, saying "Here's a business card for you." It was terrific for honing her awareness of social cues, because she had to figure out just the right time to hand over the card so as not to interrupt the sale but not to let the customer walk away, either, and she had to interact with each person, and she got tons of positive reinforcement, because you know that all adults do really like to be addressed nicely by a little child. Take that, socialization!

But for the customers with children, Willow prepared a special treat. She made Artist Trading Cards, wrote her name on the back, and let me write my web info, as well, and then gave one to each customer's child:
Animals was the theme, can't you tell?

Whew! Three days in St. Louis makes for three long days, but if it takes some long, long days of hard work and play to make sisters be this nice to each other on purpose--

Count me in.