Well, life has been busy, but when is it not? I have been extremely blessed to be able to stay at home with my babies for the last 9 months! I always had these feelings of being a lazy little lout, but looking over the past little while, I have to say that my negative opinion is slowly changing. I am a hard worker. Even when I am not "working" I am often doing something practical with my hands even while trying to "relax". The esteemed woman of Proverbs 31 is an ideal for me, and I try to uphold those values. My favourite line is "She looks for wool and flax, and works with her hands in delight." That part I have down pretty good! And hopefully the rest will come along.
I may not be the best cook(trying to think up original meals, and figure out new recipes makes me nervous), or the best housekeeper(in an effort to become more diligent in my house keeping responsibilities I have created an excel spread sheet. I am a spread sheet geek) but I really DO want to be better.
Butterfly Garage brings me SO much satisfaction! My favourite part is when I am not working under pressure, and creating. I REALLY love coming up with new ideas, and then generating them!
Looking at my Tupperware's heaped with wool sweaters, I decided that I had to figure out what to do; what to make them into. Through trial and error, I have started discovering which types(colors and patterns) of wool sweaters seem to work best for owls and teddy bears. And not all the wool I had was really fitting into those categories. I thought of doing throw pillow covers(still might if I figure out an original enough way to do it) but felt a little uninspired, but it got me thinking... I honestly don't know where I came up with the idea, but I thought "wouldn't it be neat if you could cover you hot water bottles with this warm cozy wool, instead of having to wrap and rewrap it in an old scratchy towel!" So I decided to use up most of my sweaters, making them into hot H2O bottle cozies! I was so inspired! This was a great chance to use up my stash AND get artistically creative! I whipped out my wool roving(thanks Larissa for the amazing birthday present!) and my felting needles and started stabbing away! Click on the etsy links on the right hand side to see the ones I have for sale!
My sisters are always on the look out for wool sweaters when they are walking their thrift store beat, and have brought me some gems. One little brown zip up hooded number in particular was SO cute I just couldn't cut it up! I felted it anyways, and thought it would be SO charming on my 2 year old daughter. To anyone who felts though, you know that doing so can throw the proportion off- so my sweater ended up a good length for the torso, but had some major monkey arm issues. After removing the zipper and adding a cute little wood button, I decided to cut the arms off into a little caped sleeve, and use the arms as leggings. Oh. My. Word. socute. I took her to the market in the outfit, and a lady grabbed my sleeve and asked where I bought her outfit! I told her I made it and she then told me I should be selling my stuff at the market! So future IDEA: keep my eye out for similar sweaters, and make them into matching sweater/leg warmer sets, and needle felt a cute little appliqués onto them!
Recently I started making flowers out of my wool sweater scraps(I have bags and bags of it that I have refused to throw out saving them for an occasion such as this). One perusal through etsy and I know its not an original idea, but my pattern is original, and I have SO much fun matching colors and buttons and they are quick and easy to make. I doubt I will sell them on etsy as it is over saturated with like product but I'm thinking of selling them at some upcoming craft sales, so as to have my product accessible at all different price points.
Speaking of which! I have applied just recently for the opportunity to sell some of my wares at an art festival! Its called Kaleido Art Festival and its put on by the Ave's Artist Association. I submitted the quite detailed application last week, and I will hear back by the end of June. Lets just say I will be a tad disappointed if I don't get chosen.
Here is what my table might look like if I get in!(Might meaning, this was thrown together last minute, but will be a 100x better if I were to get a spot!)
I'm really hoping for this opportunity as I think it will be a great learning experience. My goal is to have a booth at the Make It craft fair, in November 2011. That is the BIG leagues, so hopefully by then I will have more smaller craft shows under my belt.
My goal is to be able to make this side business my career(after the kids are in school full time) so now is the time to slowly build up my presence in my local craft community/online and learn everything I can in order to be successful! I don't ever want to go back to work doing something that doesn't creatively satisfy me. Been there, done that, got the prescription anti depressants.
SO. In order to do these craft shows/fares, I am required to extensively build my stock, Which I can say is coming along! Sometimes just looking at the sewing machine hurts my neck, but when I am able to sit down uninterrupted I can crank out quite a few items. Its nice to be able to see progress... Unfortunately my limited storage space is feeling the brunt of my industry, so I am going to have to figure out where to keep all the goods(I can only stack so many Tupperware's and boxes before the avalanche sirens go off)!
Now to make sure all items are posted on both butterflygarage.com AND etsy so stay tuned!
