Okay, I’ve sold stuff before. But this is pretty and I almost couldn’t part with it.

Our booth from the craft fair in Des Plaines, Illinois last year. We didn’t sell much, but hey it was our first show.

Hola, ’tis Dubious here. I took a hiatus from jewelrymaking after I got sucked into schoolwork and then got sucked back into knitting. After I fought my way free from the skeins of yarn trying to tie me up and have their wicked way with me, I decided to unearth my old creations and figure out where to go from there.

It was The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly.

I’ve never actually seen the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but I’m guessing it had good things, bad things, and ugly things. Just like my pile o’ FOs.

Oy!

Some things were good as is, some things needed work, and some things made me scratch my head and go, “What the /hell/ was I smoking when I made that?”

So over the next few weeks, I will post before-and-after pictures so all can point and laugh at my previous ineptitude and/or marvel at my current prowess.

I’m also working on a birthday pressie for my birthmonth buddy Lizzie. I don’t know if she reads this (if she does: Hi, Lizzie! if she doesn’t: Why aren’t you reading this, you lame-o?), so no pictures for the moment.

Tags: jewelry, Lizzie, Redux

Minami and I had a craft fair a few weekends ago, down in Des Plaines, IL. It was Minami’s first but my second (maybe I’ll talk about my first craft fair some other time, but now it’s merely incidental). We were all excited, making jewelry until the cows came home, all ready to sell some good handmade jewelry.

So we get there early Saturday morning, we set up, and the first sign of any trouble is when I go take a look around. I notice that about half of the other booths are jewelry (bad sign #1), that they’re almost exclusively selling stuff that I call ‘Crap On a String,’ (bad sign #2), and that their prices are almost obscenely low. I mean, pearl necklaces for $20 (bad sign #3)? What the hell?

I get back to our booth and tell all this to Minami, who decides to take a look for herself. She gets back ten minutes later and announces that all that stuff is pre-manufactured. I don’t understand, so she tells me that it’s all made in China. I’m astounded. “They can do that?” “Apparently.”

That pretty much summed up the whole experience of that craft fair. There weren’t as many people buying this year (according to other crafters who have done this fair for years), and the Crap on a String was the stuff that did sell. Out of our booth, the stuff that sold was Minami’s version of Crap on a String, the things she made when she was first learning how to make jewelry, and she ended up selling them at a price where she couldn’t even recoup the cost of the beads. I sold a pair of earrings for $5. Yeah. It was not a happy experience.

So what did we learn? Start applying to shows that have a jurying process to get in (this one didn’t). Apply to shows that explicitly say ‘handmade products only.’ And probably a fair called a ‘Country Fair’ won’t be a prime place to sell nice stuff…

I could get all up on a soapbox and rant about how people should buy more handmade products that aren’t made in a factory in China or India by ten-year-olds who get paid like three cents a day, but I won’t (I will, however, post some links by someone a lot more articulate than I). I’ll just say that if you want to buy some crap on a string that looks like it came from Wal-Mart, just go to Wal-Mart. It’s air-conditioned.

A Savvy Field Guide to Craft Shows

Why Artists Hate Buy/Sell

Why Artists Hate Buy/Sell…Update

Tags: buy/sell, craft fair, des plaines

And, what we’ve all been waiting for!

Tags: beading, beads, Crochet, earrings, erin

Tags: beading, bracelets, chain mail, jen

This isn’t so much as post as the promise of a post soonishly. If I don’t post by, say, the weekend, I authorize Fred to come down and beat me about the neck and shoulders.

Tags: erin

Tags: beading, bracelets, jen

Hey! So, there isn’t much here yet, as Erin and I are still figuring things out, and of course she doesn’t have much internet access at the moment. So I will start off by telling you a little about our organization. We make handmade crafts, such as bags and jewelry. Erin works more with knitting and crocheting, while I am a beader. We are starting to sell our works on Etsy and (hopefully) at craft shows, and I am in the process of finding local stores to sell my jewelry at.

This site will be for posting pictures of our creations, and for informing the public (you) of where you can purchase our doings.

Tags: introduction