First Attempt

Alright, this is my first attempt at a blog so here goes. My sister and I have always enjoyed doing hand-crafts. I'm a quilter and have been for 5 years now. I'm good at it, will never win 'Grand Champion' at a fair, but I love doing it and all my gift recepients seem to enjoy them too. A couple of years ago my sister started to get into beading - mostly jewellery. Gorgeous stuff, and she loves doing it - so much variety out there to enjoy! With 2 completely different hobbies but both crafty, we starting going to the Creativ Festival in Toronto - every spring and every fall - we don't miss it EVER. It's a wonderful way to get new ideas and blow a couple of hundred bucks, all in one location! I always try to buy just for the projects I have going, but always end up with a few new ones too... my husband has stopped questioning my fabric purchases; he just shakes his head when he knows I've bought more! lol!



So Stace with her beading and me with my quilting, the Creativ Festival weekends are always a blast. However, that's only twice a year.... we'd get together on weekends and she'd bring me to yet another bead store and I'd be bored out of my tree. So. I decided to take up yet another hobby - Chainmaille jewellery. We both love anything medieval - castles, the Arthurian legend, gaelic festivals, the whole bit. I'd tried a bit of chainmaille as a teenager, but that was back in the day when all you could buy was the large, heavy steel rings designed with battle protection in mind. You know...King Arthur. And kind of impractical for a teenage girl living in Southern Ontario. But now, there are so many wonderful materials available, with only a click of the internet and a credit card away! My sister bought me my first kit from http://www.urbanmaille.com/ for Christmas 2 years ago and I was hooked! The kit I started on was sterling silver - absolutely gorgeous and I LOVE it and working with it, but it's so expensive. Bright aluminum is a good alternative - it's lighter and a whole lot cheaper, which means I could make jewellery to sell for a decent price.



So with the economy the way it is, and my mind on the potentially soon next generation (and therefore stay-at-home occupations), we started to think about selling on Etsy and becoming vendors at craft shows around the area. We both have full time jobs so this will just be part time for now, but who knows; if it takes off, it'll be great!



We set up on Etsy at the end of June http://www.sgsquared.etsy.com/. Apparently it takes a while to get going on that site so we're not too discouraged (yet! lol!). We've had one buyer on there so far (thank you Tile Goddess!!). But we've discovered that friends and work people are a great way to sell things! Stace and her husband are HUGE into cars - they have (let's see if I can get this right, me not having the slightest interest in the mechanical beasts...) a metallic blue '68 camaro (hers), an absolutely beautiful '32 Coupe (Jamie's) that's won a bunch of awards at shows (it really is a pretty car - it has flames), as well as a '29 Ford pickup that Jamie just finished building from scratch by himself. Well, he had a bit of help from various friends and family - let me tell you the door panels are beautiful! (can you guess which part of the car I helped with???) They just drove this one out east on an annual non-profit car tour they help organize. The car worked perfectly for the whole trip (so proud of him!!). If this is your thing, check out http://www.canadianrodder.com/. Anyway, I digress. Stace was at yet another car show a couple of weekends ago, and sold a couple of her necklaces to some of her car friends! Pretty cool!



Our first official craft show is coming up on October 17th in Victoria Harbour (where our mum lives). We're nervous but excited. It's a small town, so it's a good place to start. We looked at being a vendor at the Christmas Show at the Molson Centre in Barrie but they have 10,000-12,000 people through that show! That's a crazy amount of stock needed to do that show! I don't think we're quite there yet... we'll get a few smaller shows under our belt and see how it goes.



Anyways, I think I've babbled on long enough. Thanks for still reading. I'll post some photos soon. I hope this helps other people who are looking at doing the same thing - I'd love to hear from you if you are...

Cheers,
Sandy