craft show catch-up (lots of pictures)

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! And that Santa brought you whatever you wanted!! For the last month or so, I was a busy elf myself, working on inventory for two craft shows, and thought I'd show you some of what I made. This was pre-craft show chaos-- trying to sort out what I had already, and what I had to make more of. I set up my display out in the garage, to test it out, which was helpful!

This is my display at the first show, Superstition Farms, a working dairy farm. The event was "Moo-ey Christmas" and featured Santa, hayrides, smores, and a vendor fair on a Friday and Saturday evening. Unfortunately, I did horrible at this show, but it was good practice setting up my booth display. (I don't think any of the vendors did too good; the hayride, petting zoo, and Santa were the main attraction, not us vendors.) The next week, I did a show in downtown Phoenix, the first annual "Phoestivus Market" on a Wednesday evening from about 5 pm to 8:30 pm, and did tons better. This event had a lot of great sponsors to bring people to downtown Phoenix, and it was a beautiful evening for shopping.

Decoupage votive candleholders, made using some of my vintage and found papers-- these look great when they're lit! (they're all sold- yay!- except the Asian newspaper one, second from left).

more decoupage candleholders. The polka-dots on the left were punched from colorwashed vintage sheet music, and the tan paper on the right is actually vintage sewing pattern tissue paper.

I've gotten into sewing felt this holiday season, and I love the way this log cabin stocking turned out!! I'm not sure why no one bought it; don't people hang stockings anymore?? If not, I don't know why- the stocking stuffer presents were always the most fun part of Christmas morning at our house, and it didn't even matter that we didn't have a fireplace. Mom hung the stockings from a bookcase.

another cute decoupage candleholder... I love the way this little guy turned out! Snowmen seem "wrong" to me now that I live in Arizona, but I still love them!

I went kinda overboard making Christmas tree ornaments. I made a number of paper and glitter ornaments, and made a huge mess in the kitchen while I did it. But they do look good hanging on the tree when they sparkle in the tree lights, and thank goodness the Dyson does a good job of cleaning up glitter, among other things!

I've also been making some altered bottle vases; I found a stash of bottles (and other junk) out in the desert, and love the already "aged" finish on them. I can't put out flowers (the cats love to mess with things!), so I like the idea of a vase that can hang on the wall. This one I decorated with vintage music, heat embossing in copper, and a paper vintage-look butterfly, along with some vintage novel text. I love selling things in person, because that way, I can talk to the person looking at things- the woman who bought this said her husband had recently passed away, and ever since, she's been having visions of butterflies, so this piece was "speaking to her" and she had to buy it. I love stories like this, when I get to hear the personal reason behind the purchase!

I also made a number of collages using the 3/4 inch birch plywood I have stashed away. These two pics are horrible lighting (sorry about that!), but I love the way they turned out! They're both 6x6 inch collages with vintage sheet music as the base. The one above features a paper-cut swan, so the "Seven Swans a Swimming" theme was a no brainer to me. I set off the blue shades with some gold accents.

This one is a hand-cut papercut tree, decorated with sparkle glaze, sequins, and glitter candle flames. Again, the focal image was set off with gold acrylic stamping, and I found the perfect quote on the internet. I love Christmas (although it definitely snuck up on us quick this year) and I love crafting, so thanks for peeking at my Christmas crafting!

weekend photo round up

usually weekends are reserved for relaxing, but the last couple, we've been busy. This past weekend we worked on our patio ---> screened porch conversion. The framing is all up, and needed to be painted before we can install the screen. Turns out there was a lot more wood there than we thought! Tom stayed up all night (!!) on Friday, getting most of it primed... I started on the finish coat when I got up Saturday morning. The two of us worked most of the weekend on it, till it got too hot to work, and finally finished the painting around lunchtime on Sunday. Whew!! Now, we just need to put up the screen. And cut the trim to length. And paint the trim. And install the trim.... okay, so it's not as far along as we'd like to think, but it will definitely be done by fall, which is okay, since it won't be cool enough to sit out there till then, anyway.

After working outside in the heat all weekend long, THIS is how we both felt!! Ariel is so funny- she has that kitten energy, tearing around and bouncing off walls, then konking out all the sudden...

The pic above was taken this afternoon; Tom grabbed the camera and snapped it quick, before anything happened to upset the status quo-- Butters and Ariel, sitting next to each other, with no hissing or swatting of paws!! It's amazing what hunger can do, hmmm?? Really, it's been going pretty well, all things considered; I've actually seen Butters playing chase with Ariel a few times, till she gets overwhelmed, hisses, and stalks off to sulk. I don't know whether they'll ever snuggle together like Pandora and Butters used to, but getting along together is a good start, after only a few weeks.

These last two photos are some of my latest art/craft projects. The pic above shows two 8x10 inch mixed media canvases that I've made recently. The top one features a Buddha-patterned napkin, layered acrylic paint, gold details, and an inspirational quote. The bottom one features rubber stamping with heat embossing, acrylic paint, hand-dyed cheesecloth for texture, glitter, beads, and another quote (this one from Willa Cather). They're both currently for sale in my Etsy shop, and the net proceeds from the sales will benefit my 3-Day for the Cure Walk fundraising efforts.

These pendants are also currently for sale in my Etsy shop. All proceeds from these will also go towards my 3Day fundraising, and even better, all these have FREE shipping! These pendants are lots of fun to make; the dominos are a fun shape, and not quite as small as the scrabble tiles. I've found it a bit difficult to find patterned paper on a smaller scale that looks good when trimmed to these sizes (1x2 inches and 3/4 inch), but that's what makes it a challenge!

Christmas comes to Crimson Cat on Etsy

I've added some holiday items to my Etsy shop; it was looking a bit bare after a summer of neglecting it, and I love Christmas!! (and I love paper... all the tags and ornaments that I make are paper-based, with an added twist of some sort!) This Victorian angel ornament is highlighted with metallic pen, gold leafing pen, and glitter. It was made to mimic the antique German scrap ornaments made with batting, paper, and glitter; I love them, but they're certainly hard to find nowadays! The edging is ruffled tissue paper that I basted and gathered into a ruffle before gluing to the ornament. I like how this turned out, although the basting was a bit tedious- tissue paper is fragile! I also have another angel (pink and dark blue, with silver accents) in my shop.

This Victorian girl is definitely full of sparkle! She started out life as the lid from an orange juice can, if you can believe that! It was covered in glue, then glittered with extra-fine art glitter. The sequins were glued onto the edge one by one with E6000 adhesive, which was definitely a time-consuming job, also, but I think the edging definitely makes the ornament. The back is decorated with scrapbook paper and a punched-paper pointsettia, so it looks good from all angles. I also have a glittery Santa Claus ornament in my shop, decorated with real mica snow. (Showing these is making me get antsy to pull out all of our decorations, but I think we'll wait till at least the day after Thanksgiving... not much longer than that, though!)

I always like decorating gift tags, even for my own gift-giving. (It also makes the gift-wrapping a lot simpler; wrap the gift with plain brown kraft paper, or plain white tissue, tie on a decorated tag, and you're done!! These two pictures show two sets of tags- the first uses cancelled postage stamp snowflakes to strike a wintry theme, and the second is decorated with antique gold embossing powder Christmas trees in a non-traditional color scheme.

This preview of Christmas also makes me think that I haven't designed my Christmas cards yet... I think I'd better get to work!! (I'll show you what they look like when I get them done, which better be soon, hmmm??)

I'm back...

to Etsy! check out my shop here. ...after taking the summer off, to deal with 10-hour days at work (lots of overtime), a new puppy, and too much to do in not enough time, generally, I finally decided to get back into it. On-line selling definitely takes some varied skills, from photography to copy-writing to marketing, and I hope to keep the shop updated more regularly this winter. I'm also going to be de-stashing some of my (gently) used art books and back issues of magazines, once I figure out media-mail postage rates.