My Handmade Holidays

The holidays are fast approaching and for most families money is tight, very tight. When my girls were young I was a single mom, we had very little money. So a handmade Christmas was what we had back then. One year my children and I made picture frames with cardboard, left over material and poly stuffing. Imagine an 8 year old and 2 year old with glue and fabric...messy to say the least.  Have you ever made Christmas tree ornament out of pine cones, ribbon and glitter? We made gifts and decorations from found objects. Found objects..little did we know we where green even back then! Oh no wait we also did that when I was little too. I can remember making stars and snowflakes out of aluminum tv dinner trays.
Fast forward to 2010...handmade has taken on a whole new look. There is all kinds of handmade venues on the internet, ArtFire is just one of many. You can find jewelry made from old pieces, journals and books made from old cereal boxes. You can find clothes knit with yarn reclaimed from discarded sweaters. Baskets made with yarn made from plastic grocery bags and old VCR tapes.
As artisans we can make anything old new again. On ArtFire you can find anything from vintage clothes and jewelry to cool guitar straps to pencils cups made from old computer discs. Stop by ArtFire and browse by trends, color, location or holiday to name just a few.
Stop and pour yourself a cup of tea and shop from your comfy chair.

December where did it go....

Well... here it is the middle of January and no posts since November. I have good excuses really! December was spent trying to get ready for the holiday both in my ArtFire shop and with my family. The Artfire shop needed more inventory and some exposure. You know twittering and all that. Figuring out family Christmas gifts proved to be a challenge as well.

I had my first custom order from one of my customers for Christmas gifts for her three sisters. That proceeded to be a little daunting at first. My customer had a general idea what she would like but when i asked for specifics she said "I like everything you do, so you pick the colors and stones" Yikes! So... I had the bright idea I would give her 4 necklace sets to choose from when she wanted something for each of her 3 sisters. She works at one of my doctors and we where going there early in December, so naturally I wanted to have them done by then. NO problem right...well that proved to be more of an issue than I dreamed. I got three necklaces done and realized that two of them were too long. l So let the restringing begin. Then discovered I did not have the right findings to finish off the necklaces, so more internet shopping ensued. I was working with copper and realized that I needed to use crimp covers....of course I had to find some and order them. That was not so simple. Everyone seemed to be sold out of copper!

Well, I manage to get all of them completed, packaged for gift giving and notes on the stones that they were used. When I took them into the office to deliver them, I am thinking well I was hoping at least three of the necklace sets she would like. But surprise... I could have sold 2 more necklace sets to another lady there...and my custom order for 3 necklace sets turned into a sale of all 4 sets.

Lesson learned....never under estimate yourself nor the power of great sale prices!