Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

Welcome Guest Blogger and Crafter Anitra Cameron, for the Blog “Coffee Pot People”.

Necessity Breeds a New Wire Wrap Technique

This may be new only to me, but I love it anyway.

One of the things I like about a car trip, if I’m not driving, is that bright expanse of free time. Really free. I can’t do dishes, or laundry, or weed the flower beds. I have to sit, and if I’m going to do something, the options are limited. Reading, going over my music, crocheting, or what I did yesterday, beading.

I worked on Button Stack Bracelets, finishing three I’d already started, and almost a fourth, brand-new one. On that one, I did all the button stacks first, and then turned my focus to creating the chain to put the stacks on.

Finished Bracelet

Now, where was that 20-gauge gold wire…? Oh, no! I was sure I’d put it in, but it was nowhere to be found! I stared at what I had, a spool of 24-gauge that was much finer than I’d want to use for a bracelet chain. What to do?

Ooooh. The idea was ripe for the plucking, and solved a problem that had nothing to do with the lost wire: I don’t like it when the end of a wire can be felt, and when I’m doing a wire wrap on a bead, that happens all too often. Up until yesterday, the only solution was to struggle with the wire until it would properly tuck in, or file the end down if it proved too stubborn.

But what if I worked with a fine wire, doubled?

Here’s what I came up with:

Gather your tools and materials–

Two sizes of wire shown for comparison

• 24-guage wire
• Wire snips
• Round nose pliers
• Flat nose pliers
• Bead

Cut a length of wire about six inches long, then fold it in half.

Loop it over one side and pull taut

Flatten the doubled end with your flat nose pliers as tightly as you can.

Squish!

Measure your folded wire against the bead you’ll be using, leaving enough length for wire wraps on both ends. 

That looks about right

Start a “regular” wire wrap, working with the cut ends of the wire.

So far, so normal

 When you’ve done a wrap and a half or so, lay the ends flat against the rest of the wire length. If your wire ends are longer than the bead you’re using, snip them off.

Those ends will be hidden inside the bead

Slip the bead over the doubled end of the wire, and complete the wrap. I’ve shown what would be the first bead in an assembly, and not left it open to accept another.

No sharp ends anywhere

If you cut your folded wire extra long, you can have extra fun.

Curls and Loops

I finished the bracelet this morning, and am quite pleased with it.

Click here to read more from Anitra Cameron.

I love to paint! Finger paint, watercolors, spray paint, and brush it on paint! The Society of Decorative Painters is a great organization that loves to paint too! It was organized in 1972 to stimulate worldwide interest in and appreciation for decorative painting; to recognize diversity and excellence in the art form; and to serve as the resource center for all aspects of decorative painting. You’ll find all kinds of information on the group’s website including a directory of teachers. Each year the organization has a huge conference (this year was in Peoria, IL, June 16-20) where classes, demos, and a marketplace for all things painting.

My favorite painting teachers include Priscilla Hauser and Donna Dewberry. I might be a little bias since I know both ladies, but each has brought their own magic to teaching and to painting. To me, Priscilla is the first lady of decorative painting and Donna opened the doors for people like me with average talent to excel in my brush strokes.

Jane Seymour paints her signature hearts at CHA Winter Show.

Take a visit to the Society of Decorative Painter’s website and download the group’s learn how to paint instructions. You’ll end up like me, you’ll just love to paint!

Please welcome guest blogger, mixed media artist, painter and paper crafter, Laura Bray.

Check out her website.

Check out her blog.

Tips for a Successful Craft Show

By Laura Bray

You have spent many frenzied hours preparing your art and craft items for the craft fair, but does that mean you are fully prepared to make as much money as you can at the event?  Probably not.  As creatives, we tend to focus on our art and forget about everything else (my house could fall down around me while I’m in the zone and I wouldn’t notice.)  The problem is, you went to all that time and trouble to participate in a craft show, and I want to make sure you make the most money you can while you are there.  It’s not just about what you sell at the show, it’s about the contacts you make and how you use them.  Craft shows are a great place to network and market.  Here are some easy tips to make your next craft fair/show pay-off for months after everyone goes home.

• Display is important.  Dedicate some creative energy to your display.  You want to stand out in the crowd.  This is especially important if your artwork is currently a popular trend and you have lots of competition.  If you sell jewelry right now, you know what I mean.  At the majority of the shows I have attended, I see the jewelry laid out flat-sometimes on black velvet or in white bins at almost every table.  What if you bought cool, retro mannequin heads and used them to display your jewelry?  I know I would make a beeline to a table full of faux heads to check-out what’s going on. 
• Once you have attracted clients to you with a great display, you need to capture their information.  Have a guest book out and invite people to sign it and tell you what they think about your art.  Make sure you ask them to check a box saying they would like to receive mailings from you.  The book will be give you an idea of what people like about your art and you will have their contact information.   Create a mailing list and make sure that you send out cool invites every time you are going to be at a show.  Include a discount coupon on the postcard, that way you can track how effective your mailing was.  For an even nicer touch, make sure you send out a thank you note, right after the show, telling them how glad you are that they stopped by to look at your work.
• Have a free drawing.  Ask people to drop their business cards into a hat and raffle off a prize.  Instant list!
• GET MARKETING MATERIALS!  I can’t tell you how many artists don’t have any information about themselves out on their tables.  What if I don’t want to buy today, but really like your stuff?  How will I ever find you again?  You absolutely must put out business cards.    Business cards don’t have to be expensive.  You can even print them out from your home computer; just make sure you give people the opportunity to find you again.  Make flyers about trunk shows or anything else you want people to buy from you in the future.  If you have catalogs bring them.  Create a portfolio of your work and have it out for people to look at.  You might get some special orders.  I download digital pictures onto my laptop of past work and have a slide show of the work running on it during the show, or you can use a digital photo frame to display your portfolio!
• More on marketing materials…Every product should have a tag on it with all your contact information.  I just use my business card, hole-punched with a ribbon.  This gives both the buyer and, if the item is being purchased as a gift, the recipient your contact information.  The recipient may want to collect your work, but won’t be able to if there isn’t a tag.
• Have freebies.  Everyone loves to get gifts.  For the holiday boutique I am participating in this year, I created special, creative gift tags.  Each customer gets a free set with the purchase of any item.  Of course, the back of the gift card has all my contact information.
• Network with the other artists and crafters.  Make friends.  Even your competitors are potential clients.  Gather the business cards of everyone who is participating at the show and send a friendly email to each one within a week of the show.  Tell them how much you enjoyed seeing their work.  If you remember something specific about them or their work, mention it.  Tell them a bit about you and tell them to contact you if they ever need anything. 
• If you follow these few simple steps, you should have a nice list of clients, potential clients, friends and business partners in your possession. Now you must use this list to make it pay. Set-up a schedule to touch base with each person on a regular basis. Send them invitations to all your shows, send them your monthly newsletter or just drop them a line or a note telling them you are thinking about them. Have fun and be prosperous!

If you follow these few simple steps, you should have a nice list of clients, potential clients, friends and business partners in your possession.  Now you must use this list to make it pay.  Set-up a schedule to touch base with each person on a regular basis.  Send them invitations to all your shows, send them your monthly newsletter or just drop them a line or a note telling them you are thinking about them.  Have fun and be prosperous!

Further Resources

If you liked this article, and want more information about networking and marketing your arts & crafts business, sign-up for katydid designs free monthly ezine at Katydid-designs.com .  Laura also sells inexpensive ebooks and worksheets about the business of art at her Etsy shop.

About the Author

Laura Bray is a mixed media artist, painter and paper crafter.  As an artist with an MBA, she strives to help other artists achieve their dream of making a living doing what they love.  To see what Laura is up to, visit her whimsical blog at www.katydiddys.blogspot.com.

Welcome Guest Blogger Anitra Cameron, from the Blog “Coffee Pot People”.

Do you ever get the urge to just make something? Maybe you don’t have a lot of time, but there’s that need. It was that sort of a day for me. When time is limited, earrings can feed the creative hunger I feel, and anyway, the beads and buttons were already out, because I’d finished a bracelet just before going to bed last night. Since I’d been working with green, I just dug around in the green button baggie until I found a pair of buttons I liked.

Then I turned my fifteen minute project into two that took considerably longer by deciding to do this tutorial. Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

You’ll need the usual array of beading tools–round-nose pliers, flat-nose pliers, and wire nips. And also:

Pick out your beads

Fine gauge wire (I used 24 gauge)
2 matching shank buttons
4 matching flat, square beads (other shapes would also work–they just need to be flat)
2 seed beads

I’m going to assume you know basic wire wrapping technique (just enough to make a wrapped loop) to keep this brief, and also because I know others have already put tutorials for that up, and mine wouldn’t be as good.

So start by cutting a length of the wire roughly a foot long. You want to give yourself enough to work with. Make a wrapped loop on one end, and the thread on a flat bead, a button, and another flat bead.

Threading on

I noticed when I was working with my beads that the hole ran at a bit of a slant. If yours are similarly drilled, put the off-center hole against the shank of the button. Also, check to see whether one side of each bead is prettier or more evenly colored, and be sure to put the nicest side facing out.

Twist

That’s a lot of words for something that really happens almost intuitively, so study the picture below and go with your instincts.

Almost Done

I think they turned out rather well!

To read more of Anitra’s blog, click here.

Welcome Guest Blogger Ricë Freeman-Zachery, writer and fabric artist and from the Blog “Notes from the Voodoo Café”.

I have the best job in the world: I get to sit around in my pajamas all day and call up artists and ask them nosy questions and then write about them. And then, in my spare time, I get to make fabric art. Every now and then–about once a year or so–I get to write a book–my newest one is “Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists”, and you can read more about it here. Art, writing–all without having to leave the house! What more could anyone want?

The Joys of Hand Stitching

I don’t know about y’all, but I have a ton of stuff I don’t use. Like, just for instance, four sewing machines, including the olive green Elna my mother used to make all my clothes when I was a kid. I have my trusty all-metal Kenmore from 1977. I have a heavy-duty Singer. And I have my shiny new Janome. Oh, I’m not saying I never use them: I use the Kenmore for doing all those things I would never dream of doing by hand, like mending seams. But that’s not what I think of when I think of “sewing.”

When I think of sewing, I remember learning to sew under the ironing board in my mother’s sewing room, playing with the scraps she handed down to me from her sewing table. My efforts weren’t pretty, but I learned to love the act of joining two pieces of fabric with a needle and thread.

I have never had any discernible domestic talents. None. Ask my husband. Although I took Home Ec in 7^th grade and made an apron and, at the end of the semester, a little dress, that was as far as garment construction went for me. I didn’t make any of my clothes in high school-my mother did that. What I did do, though, was to stitch on the clothes I had-lines of embroidery, stitched names, butterflies. Although I was too young to get the full benefit of growing up in the 60′s, I discovered Native Funk and Flash when it first came out in 1974, and, for me, that changed everything. The idea of altering your clothes to make them into personal talismanic garments seemed to be about the coolest thing anyone could do. I started then, with a bunch of work shirts and jeans, and I’ve never stopped.

What is it about hand stitching, about pulling thread through fabric? It’s not about fancy stitches-I know only three embroidery stitches:  I know the running stitch, which is like saying I know how to breathe; the split stitch, which is so sturdy it will still be holding on when the fabric around it has worn to threads; and the French knot, which I learned just to show off. For me, it’s not about doing rows of fancy little stitches. For me, it’s about altering something, making something new, with nothing but my hands and a rainbow of floss.

And here I’ll admit: it doesn’t even have to be embroidery floss. When I did make clothes from scratch, my favorite part was always the hem, and it was always a blind hem, done by hand. There’s something about creating a perfect, invisible hem that just made me happy. Yeah, I know that sounds pathetic, but what can I say? I love to stitch. I love to sew, and I love to mend, and I love to decorate-if I can do it by hand, I’m happy. One of my favorite things in all the world is to sit on the front porch and stitch. The only thing that keeps me from being my great-great grandmother is that I’m stitching words and appliquéing skulls rather than creating little daisies on the edge of a pinafore. It could be scary, but there’s something comforting about imagining myself flowing into old age with my needles and a bag of bright thread.

It’s calming. It’s meditative. It’s downright Zen.

And it’s the height of being hip: taking scraps of fabric, or clothes faded by years of wear, and keeping them alive  by working on them with your hands-that’s about as green as you’re going to get. Zen and hip? What more could you want?

Click here, for more posts from Ricë.

Twitter has become a place where artists and crafters are promoting their wares. Twitter.com is a social media-networking site where you post messages in 140 characters/spaces or less. You sign up like most websites creating a screen name. For example on Twitter I’m MariaNerius and you’ll find other creative screen names like GardensAndCrafts (tips on gardening and using your garden elements to craft), BookGal (help with Twitter and books), and JavaCupCake (she sells her crafts on Esty.com)

I enjoy spending a few minutes each day reading the updates from those I follow (you find people to follow through the Tweeter search engine or other search directories like Twellow.com) And I post an update (usually sharing a great find on CreateForLess.com or to let others know I’ve posted something new on my blog) to those that follow me.

It’s a cheap tool to promote yourself, your crafts, your business, your blog, or anything else that meets your fancy. You’ll build a following over time and you’ll have a way to send a message out to potential customers. Come on and join the fun! Give me a tweet today!

I made this card to celebrate tweeting!

Returning Guest Blogger, Diane Gilleland, from the Blog and Podcast “CraftyPod“.

I used to Drink out of my Bracelet.

Tiffany Threadgould wrote the greatest article for CRAFT 03 about turning plastic soda bottles into all kinds of useful things. I especially loved her Photo Cuff bracelets.

Ever since that article, I’ve been eyeing the plastic bottles in my recycle bin, and last night, lightning struck. Here’s my bottle-bracelet variation, using felt!

A 16-oz (500 ml) water bottle makes a particularly good bracelet, fitting my wrist comfortably with a little room to spare. Besides, many water bottles have nifty horizontal ridges around their middles, which make for perfect cutting guidelines.

You can use a utility knife or even a sharp kitchen knife to poke through the side of your bottle. (Be very careful with this! Make sure the bottle is on a stable surface, and anchor it so it want roll or jump.)

Using the slit you’ve just made as your starting point, cut all the way around the bottle, using one of those ridges as your guide. Scissors will work fine for this – use the big, tough ones you keep around for the heftier cutting jobs.

Now, make a perpendicular cut (see the blue arrow above). Then choose another ridge to cut along – based on how wide you want your finished cuff to be. Cut around the bottle again.

Great! You now have a rough bracelet. You’ll want to trim about 1/4″ to 1/2″ off of each end, so there’s a little gap in the middle. You’ll also want to round off the ends. I used a circle template and traced it with a Sharpie, but you can also trim the ends free-hand.

Now, cut two strips of felt. They should be a little longer than your plastic form, and about 1/4″ wider. Decide at this point how you want to decorate your bracelet. There are lots of possibilities here – you can do felt applique, or bead embroidery, or regular embroidery, or silkscreen, or stencils . . . .

Do all your embellishment on one of the felt pieces. I recommend keeping about 1/2″ of felt at each end of this strip unadorned, because you may want to trim it off later. (I didn’t do that here, and it came back to bite me . . . .)

Now, put your two pieces of felt together, right sides out. Begin joining them with a whipstitch along one of the long edges. Stop stitching when you reach the rounded end. (By the way, futuregirl has the best tutorial ever on how to stitch felt.)

Insert your plastic form into the felt, and adjust the felt as necessary so it lies smoothly against the plastic. Wiggle the plastic form a bit so that you have a roughly equal amount of felt at each of the rounded ends of the bracelet. Now, you might need to trim a little felt away from the ends, so that you have about 1/8″ sticking out beyond the plastic form.

After that, continue your whip-stitching until you’ve stitched the felt together completely.

And that’s it! These bracelets are lightweight and comfortable to wear, and hold their shape beautifully.

Be sure to check out Tiffany’s website for lots more great reclaimed-material projects, including a soda bottle candy dish.

To read more of CraftyPod, Visit her website.