11.23.2014

christmas tree hunting.

normally, i'm a strong proponent of not decorating for christmas until after thanksgiving. this year however, i made an exception and  went tromping over the river and through the woods to get a christmas tree with two of my favorite people for my birthday.


it was quite the exciting adventure. we went to angle wings christmas tree farm outside of hillsville, virginia. i'd recommend it, if for no other reason than the beautiful drive that you take through the blue ridge parkway to get there. 


margot loved it. she refused to be held the entire time. i like this picture because she looks like buddy the elf as spotted by ny1 news.

soooo much cuteness!

 


i didn't even get any pictures of the tree we got. evidently i was too distracted by this tiny one. i did get a pretty swell family photo taken, though.


i think we'll have to make a tradition out of this.

11.16.2014

craft fair.

so, i did my first craft fair on saturday, and it was pretty awesome.


it was put together by my brother's church in greensboro. i was pretty stressed out about putting together enough stuff to sell at it, but having a looming deadline really got my creative juices flowing.

between jon and i, we had seven different 'product lines', ranging from plush monsters to laser cut santa-squatch ornaments. some of it was made awhile ago (and never appeared on this blog because i'm terrible), and some was made specifically for this sale. our random assortment of goods inspired our booth name 'we make _____' (i.e. we make blank). for tags and such, we then filled in the blank with whatever it was we made.


like 'we make kitty magnets', which seem to have gotten cut off in every picture. these tiny wooden kitties in the lower left hand corner were a pretty hot seller. i'm excited to think of all the fridges now adorned with kitties.

and 'we make monsters'. these little plush guys also sold fairly well. each one was unique and was inspired by the original monster that i made for margot. his name is edgar. margot knows him by name. it's ridiculously cute to see her go and fetch him when you ask her 'where's edgar?'.


these 'we make string art kits' were probably my favorite item. i made these wood ornaments at the martinsville fab lab. i designed a rabbit, a fox and a bear, laser cut from quarter inch oak plywood. i packaged them with neon embroidery floss and a tapestry needle, so that you would have everything that you need to make your own awesome woodland ornament.

jon contributed two items of his own to this endeavor. the first was his 'it's about ham time' print. this, along with our other two prints, were actually made some time ago when we took a letterpress printing class in cincinnati.

his laser cut (also at the fab lab) santa-squatch christmas tree ornaments were completely absurd and totally amazing. who doesn't need a big foot on their christmas tree?



rounding out our 'made in the fab lab line' were our 'we make cross stitch cards'. for these i designed a llama, ram and a rabbit with a grid of holes that you could then cross stitch a tiny sweater on. because who doesn't need to do that.

and our final product was our chickens. these were another item made quite some time ago. we screen printed these chickens to sew tiny plushes for a baby margot. nice high contrast black on white complete with ribbons, perfect for tiny hand (and mouthes).

i had a great time making all of these products and selling them at the fair. i also had a really fun time raiding my house for things to stage my table with (the 'table cloth' is our queen-sized bed sheet--which fits perfectly on a eight foot table fyi). all in all it was a great experience.

i have a lot of leftover inventory, and plan on posting it all in an etsy store in the near future (hopefully this week). so, stay posted. if you see anything you can't live without, leave a comment, and we can make arrangements.