Dreaming of Spring!

It seems like spring is on Andrea's mind :) Maybe with the mild winter everyone seems to be having there will be some real flowers soon!

 

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jason

Farmer's Markets

I was reading another bead artists post about how summer sales were going and thought of talking about how the farmer's markets do good for us.

We are currently doing four farmer's markets in closeby towns (same four as last year) and we are a guest in a further town twice for the season. The sign up price was really affordable, between $50-100 for either may-oct or june-oct depending on the market location and they are all weekly rain or shine. The sales were a little slow at the beginning of this year but they have picked up quite a bit. We mostly sell beads and pendants on handdyed silk cords and solid copper chains. We have earrings and rings available but they are slower selling items, we don't have an earring display which would probably help. Soon we will be adding sterling silver chains as an option for necklaces. The sales for each market can range from $0-$275. Somedays it will seem like the sales won't be great because of weather but one or two sales can boost the numbers significantly.

A few people also want beads/pendants that we don't have so sometimes that gives us ideas for new styles or just fun projects. When we sold on eBay there were a lot of requests for different beads but since we no longer sell on eBay we haven't gotten much requests for something different, usually now it's something similar to what we already have which isn't a bad thing but nice to get new ideas :)

There are often owner's of stores that come to a market and invite us to a consignment shop/gallery. Sometimes it isn't what we are making at the time, last year someone wanted ornaments in their shop towards the end of the market season. Often it is a store that we don't know about or been to but many others have heard about it or been there.

This year with us moving the studio we are creating a mailing list that we have at our booth for people interested in classes. There is a lot of interest and this way we are advertising to four local towns for free. Even if they aren't interested in the classes they can be informed when the gallery/retail section is open so when the markets close they can still see our work offline.

Our online sales are still going as well, last year we stopped listing on Etsy while we did the markets.

I think I covered most of the info about the markets :) If you got any questions let us know!

Jason

Some Garden Photography

It's such a lovely day today! :) It was nice and cool at the New Boston Farmer's Market this morning and in the afternoon I decided to have some fun taking some photos of the garden. I've always been drawn to macro photography, so that's mostly what I'll be showing. I took these photos using a canon g10 powershot. It's not as bulky as my Nikon D70s and has a ton of manual modes which I love.


























































The last shot is pretty cheesy, but I still love it. I set the self timer on the camera, tossed it in a flower pot and ran across the yard, haha :)











Andrea

Our Pendants Reviewed

Check out this review on our pendants and also a chance to win a FREE pendant!!!!


http://singlemama-reviewcorner.blogspot.com/2010/04/powers-art-glass-review-and-giveaway.html

Soft Glass Marbles

Wednesday I ended up making one soft glass marble that turned out great but had a flat spot where the final punty was. Yesterday I didn't have much time on the torch but I was determined to make a perfect soft glass marble. I made four total, one had a mark that almost looked like a chip came off the marble so I wirewrapped it for myself :) It was a nice organic one with silver leaf on it. I was surprised I did so well with soft glass marbles since I like to use a lot of heat and thought boro would be easier because of that. It turns out the soft glass ones took quite a bit less time to shape.

I am starting to wirewrap some of my old boro marbles that have been sitting waiting to be listed online. Those will start to be listed on the upcycled copper Etsy now.

Here's my soft glass marbles from yesterday (only two out of the four)

Rings!

I am really having so much fun making all sorts of copper jewelry! Made some rings Monday and yesterday, so here's a few of them that are listed on Etsy. It seems like everytime I am driving lately I come up with new pendant ideas so going to work on those in the next few days. Just a little over a month to our first show!

Wire Jig

Our packages came in Tuesday and I am loving using the wire jig! Here are a few of the beads/buttons pendants I've made (middle one just sold and is our first sale!!). More on our new etsy upcycledcopper.etsy.com :)

New Etsy

I don't have a picture of the copper bracelet that I said I would post because our wire straighteners are coming in today so I figured I would show the one I make next that is a better quality. We opened up a new etsy shop, www.upcycledcopper.etsy.com It has only copper wire pendants with lampwork beads so far but will have much more variety soon. We ordered a tumbler so going to put our stained glass/fusing glass scrap in the tumbler and then make some home decor items. Probably also get some earrings and rings up but that won't be right away.

We placed a few different orders lately so waiting on a bunch of new exciting things :) From Arrow Springs we got some puffy mandrels, adventurine and a JC sifter with coil actuator. From Rings and Things we got some greek beads, wire wrapping jig, wire straightener, ring sizer and ring mandrel. From Monsterslayer we got sterling silver wire, sterling beads and the tumbler. The Arrow Springs order got delayed and should be in today along with the Rings and Things order :) It's so fun getting new stuff to play with :)

Here's a few of the copper pendants in our new shop

Spring is coming! + Sale

Today I was outside with Zoey, Andrea's mom and her new dog, Jack and she showed me some plants starting to make their way out of the ground! It's nice to see and makes me even more excited for spring! It even is starting to warm up a little in the studio which will make it much more bearable to torch longer :)

Been working on making sets now using the Val Cox marver which is going great. I have one finished set (pictured below) and a bunch that are almost complete and will finish those up this weekend. The Jim Moore lentil press will be here this coming Friday :)

We are starting to plan our shows/markets for this year and first one planned is Mother's Day Gift Show at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, NH. This will be our first show so hope it goes well. We are hoping to do plenty of farmer's markets this year, so far we have heard from the Amherst, Peterborough and Newmarket markets.

Tomorrow is Zoey's first doggie play group! It is an hour long and hoping that goes well since she is scared of large dogs :( She has been getting better around people though! I brought her to the vet on Tuesday and she did not bark once! A much better visit than previous times, she barked about the whole time on those visits. So proud of my little hound haha :)

We are having a Valentine's day weekend sale with our Etsy shop, 20% off till midnight of Sunday EST. Here's the picture of first set finished using Val Cox marver :)

Sale

We are having a sale on our etsy shop, 25% off the 100th item sold in our Etsy shop. If you order additional items with the 100th item those will be 25% off as well. Money will be refunded after via paypal or can send a message and we will make out an invoice :)

I didn't realize until the other day that I haven't posted an entry for about a month! We have been to a few Microcredit business meetings the past month and been working on a business plan. We are planning on selling glass rods and supplies on our website since there is not a supplier near us. When we start selling glass rods we will most likely only carry 104 (Moretti, DH and CIM). Once we get going we will try to carry all of 104 brands. After that we will work our way down in coe (96, 90 and then 33). We are very excited and should be able to start stocking up in a month or two :)

We placed a small order from Frantz of 104, we have been running low because our last order was Sept of last year! We got some good odd lots and uniques so those will be fun to try :) It should be here next Wednesday so I'll post some pictures of whatever we make.

I have been making quite a few marbles since the Kobuki class. I've made a few jellyfish and flowers but mostly other styles. Monday I did try something that I've been thinking of making for a while, I took two frit implosions and mashed them together. They came out better than I thought they would! I'll get some pictures of the marbles sometime this weekend.

Here's a picture of a test candle holder I made recently. Next time the base will have color. I thought I wouldn't need a base but it was very wobbly with the alien as the base.

Farmer's Market Video

Adventuring into Polymer Clay

We were at Henniker Riverside Artisans shop yesterday to place some of our work on consignment and the owner had some polymer clay beads that were really neat. Today we ended up buying a small sampling selection, hopefully it will be here by sometime in the week :) I'll post plenty of pictures of the cane and whatever else we end up making :) Ultra excited to try something new :)

I switched our website over to a new host and been working on it a little bit. So far I like the layout better, just have to work quite a bit on the Zen-cart part of the site.

Anywho, here is some murrini getting listed on Etsy tonight by Andrea.