Craft Fairs & Events

Making progress

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

With 18 days to go before the San Francisco Bazaar Bizarre Winter 2008 show, I’m feeling the pressure and quality time with my Janome has never been better. Last week we put together a collection of Miss Priss Totes (2nd from the right in the photo below), and this week we’ll have done up a number of Little Lugs in new fabrics (middle batch).

Also on the list are more neck warmers and some new wool felt brooches to go with them. Jimmy seems to enjoy the brooches — so versatile! — so they’re sure to be a winner. =}

Now time to study the Craft Fair Production Schedule and figure out what more work needs to be done. Off I go! Well first, a PB&J + coffee to fill my belly. Mmm that sounds good.

posted in Craft Fairs & Events, Product Updates by eleen | 2 comments »

The Vinyl Snap Pouches are up!

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

I started listing my new Vinyl Snap Pouches on Etsy this afternoon thanks to Jimmy’s new Nikon D90. I did one photo session with all the pouches together and then solo shots of the Chocolate Brown pouch just to make sure the whole setup turned out okay. Tomorrow I’ll work on shooting the rest of the colors individually.

vinyl snap pouches

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I’m also excited to have made good progress on a couple of Big Lugs in new prints, too! Hopefully I’ll have those posted by next week, and then I think I’ll start getting ready to close up shop temporarily to get serious on building inventory for the Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco Holiday Show on November 30th. Whee!

posted in Craft Fairs & Events, Product Updates by eleen | no comments »

Bazaar Bizarre! Bazaar Bizarre! Bazaar Bizarre!

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Wow, try saying that five times fast. I’m THRILLED and delighted to have gotten accepted into this year’s Bazaar Bizarre craft fair at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park!!!

I’m so ready to start dreaming up some new bags/pouches/wristlets and of course keep whipping up those Big Lugs! Looks like I’ll be busting out that craft fair production schedule again, woohoo!

Thanks Bazaar Bizarre team!

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | 1 comment »

My craft fair production schedule

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

This here’s a screenshot of the craft fair planner I made for myself, updated slightly to look at how far ahead or behind (mostly behind) I was on a week-by-week basis as compared to my original schedule for the Renegade Craft Fair earlier this month:

The schedule reveals much behind what went down here at home, behind the scenes. Basically I started production 6 weeks before the show date. I had planned to calmly and steadily produce between 8~12 items per week. That’s laid out, good intentions and all, in the “Planned” top section of the spreadsheet.

What really happened was a different story. See “Actual” section, bottom half. Week 1, I did a great job. 9 items planned, 9 items produced. Zero variance! Week 2 I floundered about a bit. 8 coin purses? Didn’t happen. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it or working towards the overall goal in some shape or form; in fact, I spent a lot of time sketching and prototyping a handful of new items to see if maybe I ought to work those into the mix instead of the items I’d originally planned. That’s kind of where I got into trouble - didn’t stick to the plan. The plan! Ultimately I did end up working in 2 of the 4 new designs I made, so the time investment wasn’t a total loss. But, it may have been if I didn’t make that major push during Weeks 5 and 6.

Because, by the end of Week 4 I was in a panic. OMG, I only have 27 items for a 10×10 booth?! That lit a fire under my butt and poor Jimmy didn’t get a single home-cooked meal for the next two weeks. Well, maybe one. Or even two. But otherwise it was pretty much take-out, frozen or canned foods, or one of his own concoctions.

The things that helped me most about my schedule were:

  • Countdown: This cell contains a formula that calculates the show date minus today’s date, which automatically updates to be the date that you are looking at the spreadsheet. I specifically recall starting to panic when the Countdown reached 14 days, because by that point as you can see I was already 14 items behind schedule and a whopping 38 items behind my targeted total! =/
  • Cumulative Variance and Variance Against Total: How far behind am I based on my week-by-week schedule? And how far behind am I against my target 65 items?
  • Planned section vs. Actual section: My background is web project management, so it was a no-brainer for me that I’d need to have something that laid out my specific goals for “the project”, alongside something that measured my progress against those goals. Otherwise, how would I know how freaked out I ought to be at any point in time? It’s all about measuring panic, after all.

I didn’t track my other to-do’s on this schedule, just items to be made. But, there was a long list of other stuff that had to be done especially since this was my first gig. Those things I worked in along the way (like buying an imprinter, picking up some shopping bags, signing up for a credit card processor) and of course we had a few long nights just before the show to do some things that I didn’t get to earlier since I’d fallen behind schedule (signage and tags, primarily).

And, here’s the XLS file in case anyone should find it useful!

>> Download Craft Fair Planner.xls

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | 3 comments »

Z Boson hearts My Imaginary Boyfriend’s log

Thursday, July 17th, 2008


Z Boson hearts My Imaginary Boyfriend’s log

Of course, I took home some treasures of my own from the craft fair.

Pictured here are an adorable screen printed wool log pillow from My Imaginary Boyfriend, which Z Boson the subatomic particle plush toy from Particle Zoo is so happy snuggling up against. (Note how adoringly he looks upon his new friend).

Sigh. How cute are THEY?!?

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | no comments »

We did it!

Monday, July 14th, 2008


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I had the most amazing time selling my wares at the SF Renegade Craft Fair this weekend!

Thanks so much to everyone who visited the booth and checked out the goods, and *big fat* XOXO’s to those of you who purchased an item of your very own!!! I so appreciate that. Talk about warm & fuzzies!

Super major thanks as well to my hubs for being so supportive all the weeks leading up to the fair…and being right there with me both days, all day long! And thanks to my girls Clara and Jenn for helping us (wo)man the booth on Sunday so we could check out and splurge our earnings on other crafters’ goods!

I like this photo from Kevin for so many reasons:

a) It shows us in the middle of a sale - YAY!
b) It catches Jimmy totally struggling (and sweatin’ it…literally) with the knucklebuster
c) You can see Olivia giving him grief in the background
d) You can see me laughing at him from the side
e) I can see what the table looked like from the other side!

As my very first fair, the process and the whole experience - in addition to being one of the funnest things I’ve ever done - was also an incredible learning opportunity. I’ll post more about it in the coming weeks (after I move out of my condo this weekend!) but wanted to start out by celebrating the whole affair and saying my thanks online!

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | 2 comments »

Craft Fair progress

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

I made a little Excel spreadsheet to help me track my goals and progress for the Renegade Craft Fair.

Craft Fair Planner

It ain’t fancy but it helped me keep on top of where I stood and how freaked out or not I felt on any particular day. My initial goal had been to create 60 items. With 4 days to go, it looks like I’ll be just 6 items shy of that but I think I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done anyways.

As you can see, the big push came last week in Week 5, when I jumped from 25 items to 44. Woohoo! It helps when you don’t leave the house for 5 days straight AND the hub takes over the cooking and cleaning.

Okay well I really ought to take advantage of the morning before the heat sets in and I get baked out of my upstairs workspace. Toodaloo!

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | 2 comments »

A knucklebuster to call my own

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

Bartizan 4850 Tabletop Imprinter

Whee! My Bartizan 4850 Tabletop Imprinter and 100 imprinter slips arrived today, thanks to eBay seller Mr. Imprinter.

I had a really hard time deciding which imprinter (aka knucklebuster) to buy but in the end decided to go with the low-end version since the contraption is only supposed to be a backup to the merchant account I intend to sign up for with ProPay.

All this of course is in prep for the upcoming Renegade Craft Fair SF, my first ever craft fair. FIRST EVER CRAFT FAIR! Yeeeeeaaaa baby.

My thanks go to the experienced Etsians who’ve so generously shared their knowledge about how to accept credit cards at a craft fair in the Etsy seller forums.

All told, the Bartizan 4850, 100 slips AND personalized imprinter plate - set me back $21.49 including shipping. Not bad right? Hopefully it doesn’t bust my knuckles as the nickname implies. I’ve yet to try it out. Ex-ci-ting!

image from Mr. Imprinter

posted in Craft Fairs & Events by eleen | no comments »