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 :)