Artist market~week 2

My second week of the Artist Market was yesterday.

I decided to set up my tent in a different configuration than the week before to experiment..I'm not sure which way I like better yet. Each had their advantages/disadvantages.

There was quite a bit of foot traffic concidering how HOT it got. I met lots of nice people, had quite a few sales and was asked to wholesale in a gorgeous boutique.

Now I feel I can finally sit back and breathe!! That was a busy couple of weeks! Unfortunately yesterday ended in a migraine-either from the extreme heat or the lack of allergy meds. I'm just so glad it didn't hit full force until last night!!!

Travis has been out jackhammering our driveway and has found a driveway underneath our driveway-that's always a fun find-not. It's been raining on and off all morning so we may run to the video store and just hunker down and relax today...hope everyone has a great Sunday! :)

First outdoor art fair

Let's see how much my van can hold without bursting, mmmmk? Eep-I didn't think the tent was going to fit. We had to rearrange three times and slide a seat over to wiggle it in.

Here's my tent all set up. I ran out of room for a few busts and rearranged the set up a couple times to make room for my checkout area. I think I'll switch something around next week and see if there's any better way to arrange it all to fit. Overall I thought it was ok though? :)

Table shot

How about we take a little tour from the back table working our way up to the front, shall we?
Travis made my pendant board...

My funny little easter egg tree turned keychain hanger.

Travis made me my copper earring holder-love it. I got tons of comments on that thing-lol.

I only wish now I'd had him build it 2 or 3 tiered...

Maybe I can talk him into another one? You reading this, honey?

Moving towards the inner corner...some glass rods shown for people who don't understand that the beads are actually handmade by these rods of glass.

Screened frame for pins and extra earrings. Burlap bracelet rolls.

Checkout area

The front. I love how my glass cases turned out! They were these silly candle holder things I bought a couple years ago-I think I may have actually blogged about them when i found them. Glass was restored, metal painted, foam was cut in wedges and slipcovered in burlap and necklaces easily pinned into place-I had many compliments from other jewelers on them.

The framed photos of past custom work actually was a bigger hit than I expected and had quite a few custom orders from people already thinking ahead for Christmas. Christmas already? Eeep. that reminds me I was thinking about home parties for the holidays. Now all of a sudden I feel overwhelmed-lol.

I'm signed up to do the same show next weekend as well. It was nice to have a smaller venue to be able to concentrate on the set up and tear down timing as well as tweaking presentation. Next week I plan to play with the set up again as well as more outdoor/close-up's of my jewelry to get any extras added into my Etsy shop. :)

Random Friday

My camera is all packed up. These were taken a couple of weeks ago after our bad flash flood here in town. Our yard was still waterlogged-so once the sprinkler came on it turned into a mudpit-Chloe and her friend had a blast going down a wet slide landing in a pond or swinging on the rope seeing how high they can splash. *Trav had fun scrubbing the side of the garage after that...: headache today
: soooo humid out
: fed the geese today and walked the trail by Trav's work
: the sunroom is lined with totes for the art fair tomorrow.
: Can't believe how much stuff I have/need for it.
: it's going be hot tomorrow. bad
: I want to go buy a battery operated fan tonite somewhere

: visited my dad and stepmom this morning. he may have refractured his pelvis :(

: it's going to be a long summer for him

: i reallllly need to vacuum

: hoping to go to a little art thingie at Norb Andy's tonite

: trav's taking the kids swimming after work so I can finish packing and wrapping up loose ends

Kids art projects week 1

I've had the urge to paint lately. Not quite sure what it is...I painted in school- a ton. Why don't I ever do it anymore? Honestly-to the point that the other night at a stop light I gasped at how gorgeous the sky was and tried picturing the colors I'd use to paint it...Guess that should tell me something. (?)

So I saw this blog post about weekly art projects with your kids for the summer and got inspired-I could do this! Chloe's been talking about signing up for art camp-maybe she'd get a kick out of trying some new ideas.

Our finished pieces laid out to dry.

Gabey's-not bad for a 3 yr old with no help

Chloe's friend, Shaylee, who had spent the night

Chloe's

Mine

Chloe's talking about how she wants to start over and make her petals brighter-I said that's the beauty of watercolor-just put some more right over the top-wahlah! We're going to work on that today. I am envisioning big white mats, black frames and a gallery of bright flowers on the staircase wall.....Wouldn't that be pretty?

These are the blogs for inspiration I found this project through here and here.

They were so easy! Just pencil in a "bee's eye view" of a flower, trace w/ a sharpie then fill in. They feel very "stained glass" feeling when you're done. Make sure each side is touching the edge or running off...that's it! :) I pulled up Georgia O'Keefe paintings in Google images for the kids to go through before starting to give them some ideas and off they went.

Summer has begun

And with it comes the emergence (and obsession) of silly bands. Couch cushions all over my living room for sommer saults and forts
Dirt under my fingernails (and mosquito bites!)

All 3 kids wearing birthday hats as unicorn horns and making up unicorn sounds

One summer birthday done-2 to go...I'm not feeling very creative this year and would love to do what we did last year-by combining Gabe and Chloe's in the backyard with neighbor friends. I wonder if she'd let that happen again?

The kids have been playing outside all morning finding roly polys and centipedes to put in the little bug catcher box with neighbors. My legs stink like bug spray and itch. lol. They'll love me in class tonite ;)

Part 4...yep, still working on em!

Can you tell I got tired of uploading pictures? I needed a little break I suppose.

Anyhow, these are from our day at Busch Gardens. I'll spare you the other 400+ of them and just throw a few on here...

Here are the greeters as we walked in. They had all sorts of stilt characters walking around the place. Gabe was terrified of them.

Our first stop was the wooden roller coaster. I was shocked when Chloe agreed to go on it with me-since she'd never been on one before. I have a feeling she is officially done with roller coasters and is permanently traumatized. Here is our photo immediately afterwards commemorating the event-still a bit scrambled.

I was able to take home a lovely souvenier of it as well. I wn't be riding anymore wooden coasters that's for sure. I spared you the fist-sized bruises on either thiegh. My arm got 10x worse than this.

They loved the splash park they have there...

Nice rules. Once again-me with the signs. Glad they don't want people with diarreah in there-lol.

The bird habitat was so cool! they'd come and land on you and pose for pictures.

Why, hello there!

Gabe was in love with the tiger area.

It's easy to see why-look at this gorgeous creature! Just look at how close I was able to get-with just that piece of glass between us...

Here's another stilt guy-a grasshopper? Gabe was trying to climb up Travis while screaming if I remember correctly while he took our picture.

He was also really into the animal shaped topiaties all around. There were pretty cool. He informed me that we need some in our yard...ummm...ya-I'll get right on that.

Caught the elephants getting baths and a drink from the hose~

Played on some statues~

Got up close and personal with this cute guy...

This one too. How gorgeous is he? I was about 6 inches from his head. Cool, eh?

At the end of the day we found a couple crocs in the water soaking with a little iron fense (with another sort of protective liner stuff inside) around them. Gabe wiggled his finger near the fensing calling him and wouldn't you know that sucker beelined it over-just a few inches away from him? Scared me to death-creepy how it sat there staring at my child. Ick.

And our family pic they always make you pose for when you walk in. lol. Makes me miss my jogging stroller...was stolen last week. :(

That's it for today. Off to start piecing some table slipcovers for my tent. My first outdoor art fair is a week from this Saturday. Eep. Wish me luck.

Today

How is it possible that two years have passed so quickly? Happy Birthday, Buddy. I couldn't imagine life without you.