Visual Merchandising

With the festive season approaching there are craft fairs on the horizon. Following a discussion at the recent UK Handmade Surrey meet-up I have been doing some online research on display or "Visual Merchandising" for crafts and fairs, I found these articles quite interesting and Im going to use some of the advice in my new displays -

Back to Basics Visual Merchandising

Display your Craft to Sell

Meylah's Tips for great booth displays

(There are also a number of other articles on display in the Meylah learning centre)

I am currently building my new display set up so I have no pictures to share at the moment but I will pop some pictures up as I get my display sorted for my upcoming fairs.

If you are looking for table eye candy thought, have a look at the Show Me Your Booths group on Flickr !

Bead Soup - Reveal day

Yes, it's that time, its reveal day !!! You can see the ingredients I was sent by my partner Jana on this post here. 

Jana said that she sent me these pieces to challenge me to push my boundaries (one of the main points of the party) and I'm sure you'll have noticed that the stunningly bright green focal she sent is certainly different from my usual colour palette. I wanted to do something a little different with the focal and have made it up and taken it apart again a couple of times, trying echoing the shape in beads, and also making a rather complex net type idea (which it should be said may have been interesting in principle but was a complete disaster in actuality lol) then out of the corner of my eye I saw it lying about on my desk with some of the other pieces and the little dragonfly was sat almost on top of it ....

As a result, may I present to you the "Flight of the Dragonfly Necklace" 

I decided to work with some wire and try to create "flight pattern" shapes, random flitting about type trails and I was quite pleased with them but decided I needed something else to bring a bit more colour and the jade beads Jana sent seemed perfect so I strung them separately to sit just under the focal. I liked the two elements together but I thought they needed something to make them a little less disparate so I redid my flight pattern links including a little jade bead on each link.

I didnt want the flight pattern links all the way round the necklace as I though they might be a bit uncomfortable on the back of the neck so I continued with sections of jade beads and linked all of them together with the little square links Jana sent, finishing it off with the little flower clasp that was also in my ingredients from Jana.

I have also made these dinky little earring with the swarovski butterflies Jana sent, very simple but cute !

Once again I have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Bead soup party, thanks for visiting and looking at my bead soup creations, please do check out the other participants creations, you can find the full list on Lori's blog here.

Keys to my heart

I made these earlier in the week, Ive been wanting a pendant that was a bit special to show off my Dinky Sari Hearts and this is what I came up with. Simple & pretty.

Most of the rest of this week has been commissions and sculptural work, none of which are currently ready to share, but watch this space, there'll be more soon :)

Soup ingredients

The soup I sent to Jana has arrived so I can share pictures of what I sent her and what I received.

Jana sent me -
A zingy bright green Jasper focal, Jasper, Jade, Pearl and Mother of Pearl coordinating beads, a sterling clasp and lots of silver plate findings and two cute little swarovski butterflies ! Im really looking forward to getting started on making with these !

I sent Jana -

Flat square wooden beads, freshwater pearls, swarovski crystals, lampwork twist beads and spacers, a vintaj clasp, and a choice of things to use as a focal  - a vintage button, a lampwork cabochon and a lampwork focal bead. Cant wait to see what she makes :)

The Road Less Travelled

Very exciting news this morning, following a series of chats with the lovely Kirsten Miller (who incidentally makes the most adorable miniature creatures from Polymer Clay, do take a look at her website) I have been featured this morning on UK Handmade's "INSPIRE: The Road Less Travelled" spot.

For anyone who hasn't come across it yet, UK Handmade is a fantastic website full of useful and informative articles from profiles on types of crafts and makers, helpful business articles looking at marketing, accounts and legal aspects to a lifestyle section with tutorials, recipes and reviews. All this plus the beautiful UK Handmade online magazine which is published quarterly and a great forum !

Time for some soup

Yes its that time again, Lori Anderson is running another Bead Soup Blog Party !

I loved being involved with this last time so I couldn't wait to sign up again, and this time I have been partnered with the very talented Jana Tarhala of Helmitarha, as soon as I found out I rushed over to have a look at her work (of course) which is absolutely stunning, seed beading always amazes me, so much patience needed but such beautiful intricate designs.

I cant share a picture of exactly what I have sent Jana (that would spoil the surprise !) but I can show a teaser so here goes.

As a bit of fun, the first person to guess correctly what one of the ingredients are I will send a little surprise to. (You need to be specific though, just saying beads isnt going to cut it, oh-no. Material and colour please :) )

Working it out

Do you ever get that feeling, you know you have an idea, but its hiding from you, and you cant quite get it out of your head and into life ?

I have been having that itchy feeling for a little while and so I thought I would share how I have been working it out.

I wanted to "draw" flowers on my beads. but not just any old flowers, special flowers. With details. And fine stringers (because we know I have a fine stringer addiction right ?).

So, I started doodling in glass.

The first one I did is at the bottom, working through to the top one. Grotty arent they !! 

They were intended as quick "sketches" in glass, checking how things look, how the glass behaves, how much it moves / distorts as you layer up the details, practising skills that will be needed to make this work. Althogh for quick sketches some of them took rather a lot of time to do !

By the time I got to that top one I was getting grumpy. I could see in my mind clearer now what I was wanting to achieve but it just didnt seem to be working in the glass. And then the brainwave hit.

I sat down with a piece of paper and drew what I wanted. Then I drew it again. and again. Messing with spacing, numbers of elements, fiddling around until, on paper, it looked how I wanted. 

From a design point of view, this is called doing things back to front !!! But for me, I needed that technical information and feedback from working with the glass to get my idea out in the first place. The drawing allowed me to refine the details of that idea much quicker than I could have in glass. 

And this is one of my new flowers on a cabochon

Im looking forward to making many more and seeing where the idea takes me !