Thursday, April 21, 2016

Catching Up

Huh, look at that.  It's all ready been over a month since I last posted about my crafty doings here on my blog.  Where does the time go?  Oh, well this time, I actually have an answer to that!  I spent a week out of town on a road trip with just me and my 2 little boys to visit family back in New York state.  And the rest of this past month has been spent sewing like a crazy woman to get 3 wholesale orders out and prep for a craft show!  Yes, so many really fun opportunities have come my way since March. 
 
First, a few maker, entrepreneur and mom, Kat (whom you can find here on Instagram or here where she and her business partner sells gorgeous hand dyed yarns and rovings), spotted some rope bowls I had been making and posting about on Instagram.  Instantly, she had a brilliant idea to have me make some rope bowls that would be the right size and shape to be used for yarn bowls.  Umm, yeah! After a few trial runs, we landed on something that was just perfect. :) (First picture is the right size/shape. Second picture is the snap/loop finish we came up with to provide a loop for the yarn to travel through while also making it possible to take a project out of the yarn bowl before it's finished)
 She wholesale ordered 10 of them from me for a fiber expo they were having a booth at in Chicago a few weekends ago. 
Well, those 10 rope bowl/yarn bowls sold right out, and she needed another 10! for another fiber expo they were doing in Ann Arbor the following weekend!  
And those nearly sold out too!  Crazy right?!?!  It's pretty exciting to be a part of the collaborative project with a fellow maker and to really be a part of "makers supporting makers"! I love it! 
So, as if that wasn't enough to keep me busy, out of the blue, I was contacted by a lovely lady who owns "The Happy Woman" shop in Sutton's Bay, MI.  She had seen my rope bowls that I had listed up in my Etsy shop and loved them and wanted to wholesale buy them from me to sell in her lovely shop!  Not gonna lie - I totally squealed and did a happy dance when I got her email!  :)  Here are my rope bowls in her shop.  They fit in quite nicely with the other beautiful things she has curated for her shop. 
I also had another opportunity work out to sell my handmade sewn items in a brick and motor shop in Traverse City, MI called "My Secret Stash".  It's a nice little shop filled with beautiful, fun and unique items from fellow Michigan makers and artist.  Things are sold on commission so I'm going to try it for a few months and see how it works out.  Right now, I've got a nice selection of Elephants, Bunnies, Pencil Pouches, Fabric Baskets, and Pacifier clips in this shop. 
And then, to top off all the crazy busy fun going down around here, I had a craft show this past Saturday!  Naturally, it also happened to be the first truly nice Saturday of the Spring!  So it was a little bit slow and not as large of a turn out as craft shows that I've done in the fall, but still, I did fairly well at it. Well enough to consider it a successful day! :)
Oh, and one last thing! Remember how I've started to make shop samples for the local quilt shop?  Well, I was in there earlier this week and she had the 2 I've gotten done thus far all hung up!  How exciting is that?! :)  They are the large quilt hanging up above the ladies and the mauve/gray quilt next to the owl and hedgehog. 
Plus, I do have a few other finishes that I want to show you, but that will have to be in a few other blog posts which I'll get up soon (hopefully!). :) Thanks for stopping by!

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