AMAZING birdhouses!

I have something to share with you today...my Dad!  Some of you may already know that my Dad is an amazing artist.  His artwork comes in the form of beautiful birdhouses.  He has been making them for more than 20 years and he and my mom used to do several craft shows a year back in the day and he did VERY well.  He stopped selling for few years to take a break but he never stopped making birdhouses. 

Well, he's back and ready to sell again but doesn't really want to do the craft show circuit anymore so I got him set up on Etsy over Easter and yesterday we loaded up his first handful of items.  Here is the link to his shop, Okaw Valley Birdhouses.

HE'S ALREADY MADE A SALE!!  I think he's going to be just fine.  He will be slowly filling his shop over the next couple of weeks.

Here are just some of his creations:

found here

found here

found here

found here

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

When it rains...

Do you remember me complaining, eeh...I mean telling you that my first craft show did not go as well as I had hoped.  Well, I didn't get the sales I had hoped for that weekend but I'm so glad I did the show because it has resulted in some great things.  Man, when it rains it pours!

One of my customers from the show contacted me about a week later and placed my first wholesale order. I was so excited!  I met her with trunk load of items and she bought them all.  I was a happy girl.

One of the other crafters from the show has asked me to make her a super cute wedding cake topper for her wedding. {I'm sharing pictures of the idea below}

To top it off another sweet customer from the show contacted me through my Etsy shop and I'm working on a few custom orders for her.  I'll share those later...I don't want to risk ruining the surprise for those whom she is ordering for!

Lately I have had several custom orders...mainly for weddings.  Maybe I've found my niche.  We'll see.

Here are some of the wedding items Ive been working on lately.

Mason jar centerpiece vases or candle holders from here

romantic table number holders from here

Chalkboard tags for goody bags and place settings:  located here

burlap cake banner

Burlap and lace table runner



Ever since the Royal wedding, I have romance and weddings on my mind!
I hope you all have a great week.

My first craft show...not quite success

So this past weekend I had a booth in a craft show for the first time.  I was scared, very scared...and well, I'm still scared.  I wouldn't exactly call it a roaring success.  I'm trying to take it in stride.  There was very little foot traffic going through the 2 day show and I didn't hear from any crafters that did really well.  I heard more than a couple say that they hadn't yet made enough to cover what they paid for their booth.  I made money, it just wasn't what I had hoped for. 

So, I'll take it as a learning experience.  I learned that I made way, WAY too much stuff.  I learned that Spring shows aren't as good as Fall shows and I learned that there are some very nice and supportive fellow crafters out there.  Now that it's over, I'm happy that I did it.  I went ahead and committed myself to doing the Fall show so that I'll have a base for comparison.  I'm cautiously hopeful that the Fall show will be better.  Although, craft shows just might not be the right venue for my stuff.  So, we'll see.

In the mean time I'll be busy at working listing all of my items on Etsy.

Here are the pictures of my booth. 

Thank you Dad for letting me use your wooden crates, they worked great!

crafting is a lot of work

I have been a busy girl.  Truthfully, I feel a bit overwhelmed but I do love being busy.  I signed up for my first craft show and it's in just over a month away so I've been trying to craft during the day {normally I only work on stuff during punk's nap time and after she goes to bed at night}.  I'm exhausted.  Punk's not thrilled with it either, she's used to me being able to play with her non-stop all day long.  My Etsy shop is also suffering, I only have a few items left and I need to restock this weekend...if I can take a break from the craft show crafting that is.  Boy is crafting for a business a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun!

Last weekend I attended an all day scrapbook crop.  I don't scrapbook, but I thought it would be a great way of getting a lot of crafting done all at one time.  Well, I had fun but really didn't get much accomplished.  It was like I didn't know where to start.  I did make my first coffee filter wreath though.  I think I'm the only decor/craft blogger around who hadn't made one yet.  Wowsa, it took a long time but I think it turned out beautifully.  I share photos of it later. 

I also made some altered peat pots.  I got the inspiration from similar ones I found in a magazine {of course now I can't remember which magazine it was}.  Truthfully I wasn't totally thrilled with the way they turned out at first.  But while at the crop a friend was looking at them and said something about them being Easter Baskets.  I had originally intended them as flower pots...for fake flowers.  After all, they are peat pots and will breakdown if wet.  Kinda like a twist on a May Day basket.  But that Easter Basket thing stuck with me.  Then the other day I sat down and brainstormed. 

I had a conversation with myself, it went something like this: 

{"Okay, Aaron.  Easter Baskets, Easter Baskets, Easter Baskets.  Stop saying Easter Baskets over and over again, it's obviously not helping.  Okay, I can do this.  What is an Easter Basket...a basket that has goodies in it.  What kind of goodies?  Chocolate!  Man, I wish I had some chocolate right now.  Okay, focus Aaron, for the love of God, focus!  Chocolate and jelly beans and sometimes money, all  inside of little plastic eggs.  EGGS!  Easter Baskets have eggs in them!  Okay, that's good but I need more than eggs.  Hmm.  What lays eggs...birds!  Birds!   Brillant!"  }

Yep, I had a full blown conversation with myself.  Embarassing, but true.  My two year old punk was in the room with me playing with her blocks.  She heard all of this.  She then went on to ask me for an Easter Basket and chocolate for the rest of the day.  But, that is how this was born:

Some basket have lace, some pearls, some vintage buttons, some vintage Easter images from The Graphics Fairy.  

I went from not digging them at all to loving them!  I will definitely be making more to sell.  Well, my "break" is over, time to get back to work.

Have a great weekend!