A learning Experience....

So recently I did my very first show! I rented a 15'x15' spot at field days of the past in Rockville, Va.  I was excited and terribly nervous for this new experience. I worked every day for 3 months to make up plenty of product to take to the show. I also collected things to decorate and design my booth. Here is the finished product at the day of the show....

I really had no idea what to expect going into this. I didn't know if I would sell anything at all or sell out completely.  I ended up only making about $300 profit but it was better than nothing.  I also had no idea what the customers and environment would be like... this is where I learned the most.  I chose to do this event to start with because the entry fee was only $75.... I should have expected to get what I paid for. Before I go into the experience with the customers, let me explain something. Almost everyone here was wearing camouflage and there were tractor pulls all day for the 3 days of the festival. Most of the customers were nice enough, coming up to me saying hi and examining my wares. But then there were all the people who would see something on my table from afar, run up exclaiming how they love love love the item and then see the price and say "oh this is way to expensive" and walk off. One piece in particular to be exact. 

I was selling this piece for $50. Personally I didn't think it was that expensive.... I guess I was wrong. But the most disheartening experience for me was when a lady came up to me and asked to buy this necklace.

The price tag was clearly marked $20. So the lady rummages through her purse and hands me a quarter. I stand there patiently waiting, thinking she maybe has a lot of change and wants to use that. She sees the curious look on my face and asks "What's wrong?" I calmly and sweetly reply, "It is 20 dollars ma'am". She promptly takes the quarter back, exclaiming how that is much too expensive and she is saving for a computer as she walks off. I stood there dumbfounded.... she thought the piece was worth only .20 cents!!!! My husband immediately came over and consoled me, telling me she must have been an idiot. I just wanted to cry.... 

People mainly ended up buying my random blown glass beads that I had in a bowl for $5 a piece. Obviously if I choose to do one of these kind of events again, I need to only bring cheap items because these people can't tell the different between my best products and my not so good ones. In order to sell my more upscale pieces, I need to go where there are more upscale clientele.

The other problems with this show..... everything got covered in a fine clay dust from the tractor pulls, including my lungs. I was sick for a week afterwards because of it and ended up having to take oral steroids to remove the inflammation in my lungs. And last but not least, the terribly mannered children!!!!! Parents would just watch idly by as their kids came up to my table and grabbed a handful of my blown glass pendants, smashing them together. Then they would just walk off. What the hell! The worst was this "honey boo-boo" looking child came up with her mother and examined a necklace I had made from a single star similar to this...

The star was hollow, 3-D and constructed of seed beads. The child turned the pendant over in her fingers, looking at it carefully while her mom did something else at the other end of the table.  Then the child looks up at me (i was of course watching her like a hawk) and smashes the pendant in her hand. Smiling an evil grin afterwards and then runs off to her father who was at one of the other booths.... 

I didn't say anything... but I wanted to scream. Please if anyone out there does shows and has experienced some of these things, I could really use some advice on how to handle this kind of stuff.

Recent works... finished and in progress

Sooo.... recently I have finished two rather nice pieces. I had come across some amazing Lucite flowers at my local bead store a few weeks back and I had to make something with them. I bought them in orange and fuschia colors for summer. I created a pair of earrings first..

 

I loved how they turned out so I decided to make a matching necklace. I adapted and changed a necklace pattern that I found in Beadwork magazine by Julie Antonucci and this is what I came up with....

 

Both of these are now up for sale on my etsy site and hopefully I will sell them. I think they are pretty awesome and perfect for summer outfits...

I have also still been working on the green necklace that I had previously posted about. I decided that I would adapt a pattern I found called "Romantic Rendezvous" by Sandra Lamoureux to go along with the pendant that I created. I will be using the same components of the necklace, just arranging them differently around my bead embroidered pendant. this is what I have so far...

 So thats about it for now.... back to work!

Soutache Musings...

So lately I have seen a lot of examples of something called soutache in all the beading magazines and blogs. I must say I am very intrigued but am not totally sure if I will attempt it just yet. Let me give you some picture to explain what I mean by soutache.

This amazing bracelet was made by Anneta Valious.

 And these are by Amee McNamara. You can see her work here. She is also featured in the latest issue of bead and button magazine. And she also offers tutorials and kits for sale on her website.

As you can seen it is a combination of beads and some sort of silk trim. Luckily I found a pretty nice tutorial on how to do it. Unfortunately it's in French.... But that's okay, the photos are more than enough :D You can see the tutorial here.  Seems like this may be my next project venture.....

More progress

I have made some decent progress on this particular pendant.... It seems to be taking on a vintage type look with the olive and cream colors. Since I am going with the vintage look I think some nice cream colored pearls would be a good addition.... and maybe finish the necklace off with some olivine rivolis... not totally sure yet but I like where this is going

Progress Update

Okay, so here's everything I have been working on for the past couple of days. I have about 5 different projects going on at once :P 

I just started this piece of bead embroidery today. It's sort of an olivey selection of colors to go with this stone. I got the cabochon a while bad at a bead show in Richmond. It's called apatite and apparently comes from Russia. It's kind of hard to tell from the photo but the stone has a really amazing sparkle / luster to it. I think it should turn out pretty nice, a decent summer color that could easily transfer into fall........ Next up, CRYSTALS!

As you can see here I have done all the bezels for each stone. I am really loving the crystal one, am thinking it will be an ice queen inspired necklace.

This one here has a peacock colored stone to it. This picture really doesn't do the colors justice but Oh well. When it's finished the whole stone will be surrounded with 2 layers of these petals, creating a really cool flower type pendant. 

I have started to do the cubic right angle weave cord to go with this one, which is coming along nicely I think. Am still not totally sure which direction this necklace is going yet. Maybe a more modern look?

 

And here are a few other shots of these two individually......

Ocean Breeze

Lots of people claim to be "Self taught" artists, but in reality almost everybody learns things from somewhere.  Because of this I am not ashamed to say that I love to purchase good tutorials from other artists. I think it's one of the best ways to learn new techniques for beadwork. Some other artists act like it's a taboo to learn things from other people, but that's not me. I accept the fact that I can't know everything right off the bat so in order to evolve, I have to learn from others.
    Anyways, I recently bought a lovely tutorial  from Christina Neit at http://goodquillhunting.com, on how to do a fringed V-necklace (you can purchase the pattern here ). I love this lady's work and really wanted to learn how to do a nice fringe necklace for summer. This is what I came up with.

The lovely photographs were taken by my friend Katie Hart on the beach in Norfolk, Virginia.

New crystals to play with

I recently purchased some vintage Swarovski crystals to turn into necklaces. Receiving them in the mail was like Christmas :) I love to work with the larger swarovski elements like these. I was so happy when I found out they started making some of the larger fancy stones again. They add so much sparkle and glitz to any piece of beadwork. Check them out for yourself at www.firemountaingems.com. I have made a few pieces with these before and I was very pleased with the outcome.

 

I like to use a cubic right angle weave rope to go around the stones and I embellished this one with some extra swarovski crystal bicones. I learned how to do this from the October 2011 issue of Bead & Button magazine in a tutorial called "Putting on the Glitz" by Ludmila Raitzin. You can get the basics on Cubic right-angle weave here for free, but if you want to learn the whole composition and how to bezel the crystal, I recommend purchasing that issue. 

For these new crystals I am going to try some other variations on the necklace design, maybe add some different embellishments. I will post progress updates of each necklace as they come along :)