Good morning! I wanted to share some photos of my booth from the "Art Fiesta" art fair which I did on June 1st and 2nd. Some of these items are still available in my Etsy shop. Enjoy!

ACCEPTED!!!

I'm delighted to announce that I've been accepted to show my primitive folk art at the 55th annual Art Fiesta, so please mark June 1st & 2nd on your calendar! The Art Fiesta is the longest-running juried art fair in the Sacramento area.

This year, the Art Fiesta will be held at The Pavilions, an upscale shopping center, located on Fair Oaks Blvd. (x-street Howe Avenue) and next door to the Borders book store that closed awhile back. Shoppers will probably be able to park at Border's -- there are always some cars parked there anyway. This show has been held at the Town & Country shopping center in the past (Fulton @ Marconi), however they're doing a lot of construction over there this year, in preparation for several new anchor stores.

These are my "Berry Dolls" (still need to make their berries!). They will be available for adoption at the Art Fiesta. I will have several other styles of dolls as well, and a variety of pillows and other "smalls" for you to choose from.

My booth is #325 (click the link for a map of the art fair booths) which is between Julius, where you can shop from such clothing lines as Armani and Stella McCartney, and Pavilion Shoes, an equally high-end shoe "salon."

I've got a LOT of work to do between now and then ... but I look forward to seeing you in June!

Sewing Lessons in Sacramento

I've been thinking about offering beginning to intermediate sewing lessons here in Sacramento, California. 

I've been sewing since before I entered high school, so that's more than 40 years. I have made clothing as well as craft and home decor items. I can teach you how to use sewing patterns and explain the terminology. What is a selvedge? What is the grain of the fabric and why is it important? What is a seam allowance? And more!

Unfortunately, I don't have enough room in my small apartment for students to come sew, but if you'd like to learn how to sew, let me know and maybe we can come up with a solution! 

Can You Help the Four-Leggers?

Y'all know I don't blog unless I'm really inspired to, and this photo from Facebook has inspired me!

One of my Facebook friends is Bernie Berlin. I first heard Bernie's name after taking a collage class. Bernie is an quite an accomplished artist! Then I started seeing Bernie's pics of puppy dogs on Facebook, and learned that another of Bernie's passions is rescuing the four-leggers from shelters where their days are numbered.

Bernie lives in Tennessee and rescues animals, primarily from the Sumner County, Tennessee shelter, where their days are numbered. Bernie's organization, "A Place to Bark, Inc."  provides food, shelter, and veterinary care for these animals until they can be adopted. Needless to say, all of this requires quite a bit of money! If you have the ability to donate a few dollars to help Bernie out, it would be so very kind! 

I took the plunge!

I've been hemming and hawing about Etsy's "new" (not so new anymore, I guess) feature called "Direct Checkout." This feature is still an option for Etsy sellers, although many expect it to be required at some time in the future.

My main concern about Direct Checkout is that Etsy expects requires me to ship items paid for via Direct Checkout BEFORE I have access to the funds/payment for the item. With PayPal, which I've used for 12+ years, the payment is available to me immediately (literally!); I have the PayPal debit card and I can use it to shop locally or online immediately after receiving payment for an item. Etsy, however, is holding seller's funds/payment for THREE DAYS, and after that it will likely take another day or two (at least!) for the funds to appear in my bank account and be available for me to spend.

Many sellers feel that Etsy is profiting from the "float" (interest) on the money. With tens of thousands of sellers on the Etsy web site, many of whom are using Direct Checkout, there is probably quite a sizeable amount of money being floated at any given time -- likely thousands of dollars, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars! After all, Etsy sellers sell MILLIONS of dollars worth of goods each and every month! Here's the link to the latest (July 2012 Weather Report), which is Etsy's monthly public reporting of many numbers associated with the site. In July 2012, for example, $69.5 million dollars of goods were sold on the Etsy site (this number takes into account refunds and cancelled sales). Now, of course, not all 69 million dollars of goods were paid for with Direct Checkout, and I haven't yet seen where (or if) Etsy is releasing any numbers regarding the amount of sales paid for via Direct Checkout, OR how many Etsy sellers are using Direct Checkout.

If you are using Direct Checkout, I'd love if you'd leave a comment here! Let me know how you like it, if it has generated increased sales for you, or if you've had any problems with it. Thanks!

Ingenuity!

Got an idea this morning that involved using paint in a container I couldn't get open. I have never liked the large "jar" type paint containers -- talkin' house paint here, folks, not craft paint. These containers are too large to grasp easily and, if the lid has gotten stuck on by dried paint, opening them is a real challenge!

First, I tried the usual trick of banging the edge of the lid with a knife handle (ok, so I used a screwdriver this time ... same thing!), but the lid still wouldn't budge. You may have done this with ketchup bottles or jars of pasta sauce -- and if you haven't, DO give it a try, as it has always worked for me! Anyway, since this was latex (water-based) paint, I thought maybe a little warm water would help.

I set a timer for two minutes so I didn't forget about it ... it happens, ya know?! And just about two minutes later, voila! 

Now to get back to my project ... 

What is the most ingenious thing you've done lately?

A Primitive Shop in ... JAPAN!

 

Today I received this picture from one of my wholesale customers in Japan. She ordered these hearts recently and yesterday she took this pic and posted it on her store's blog and her store's web site ... she says the hearts almost sold out right away!

The store is Nantucket Country and has been buying from me since about 1998. Masami found one of my early attempts at a web site shortly after she opened her store and bought things from me for a few years. My style then became "too primitive" (grungy & stained) for her customers, but earlier this year she found my Etsy shop and saw that I was still making things and has placed two orders in the last few months!

If you're in or near Kobe, or have the opportunity to visit in the future, I hope you will stop in at Nantucket Country and say hi for me!

And if you're a store owner who is interested in buying wholesale, please contact me for wholesale prices! Besides the hearts, I make grungy & grubby "extreme" primitive dolls (i.e., the grungier the better for me!), stockings for Christmas and other seasons, pillows, and a variety of things (mostly sewn or fabric). I love to work with antique quilts and other vintage textiles. Today I'm starting to work on Fall and Halloween dolls for a few customers and have already shipped some Santas to other wholesale customers!

Tana