Pantone Fall 2013 Fashion Colors and Emerald Color of the Year

I just realized how August is already more than half over and it is time to be thinking about fall colors already.  Pantone determines the fashion colors for each season and shares them in their Fashion Color Report.  I've been busy mixing these new colors up using the Kato Poly Clay and will share my new clay color recipes with you over the next week.

As I was mixing up the new colors I could imagine all sorts of various combinations.  I find the mixing process gives me the jumpstart I need for the next season.  If you like to make jewelry to sell or even for yourself, it is great to keep up with the current fashion colors so you or your customers will have something to go with that new blouse or dress they just bought.

Check out the video (click here) where Leatrice Eiseman, the Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, talks about and describes these new fall colors.

To start you off, I already shared the clay color recipe for Emerald which is the Pantone fashion color of the year.  If you click on the photo below, it will take you to the blog post with the recipe using Kato clay.

Renewed Scarf Clips

The Shuswap Lake Festival of the Arts in Sorrento starts this Saturday and runs for eight days.  We are finally relieved to have all our items bagged, tagged and arranged in the gift shop.  I entered several pieces in the juried part of the show again this year which I can't show you just yet but will after the show starts.

We have a few new items in the gift shop this year.  Since creating our scarf necklaces we have received more requests for other types of accessories to wear with their scarves.  I was never totally happy with the scarf pendants we had made last year as the finishing of the clasp was very time consuming and finnicky to make.  I was so happy when we finally found some actual scarf clip findings.  These have a very strong spring type closure so it took quite a bit of experimenting to figure out how we could attach them to the backs of our clay designs without using any glue.

Here are a few of our new designs using the spring clip.

And here is a sneak peak of our scarf slip display set-up in the gift shop that will be open to the public this Saturday.  We had found these shutters which we painted and trimmed in fabric.

There are two of them so we can display our brooch pendants on the other one.

Overview of Our Time at the BC "Everybody Loves Quilts" Show 2013

The BC "Everybody Loves Quilts" Show went by so quick and we cannot believe it is already over.  It was a great show that was well run and organized and a pleasure to be in.  It was fun to see a lot of familiar faces and meet many new ones.  We were really happy with our booth set-up and was nice to hear so many comments from others how much they liked it.

Since we started selling wholesale, we have been doing less shows but it is so nice to do some every so often  so we can meet face to face with the public and the actual customers that purchase our work from the local stores.  It is the best way to get some honest feedback and see what types of items get ooohed and aaaahed over the most.  To be quite truthful, it gives you a real lift at the end of the day after getting your ego stroked so many times!

So here are some photos and highlights of our past weekend event:

We did our initial booth set-up the day before minus our product.  It made it go much easier the next morning to get everything ready.

Here is an assortment of the wide range of buttons we make with our newer designs featured in the center.

Our jewelry was on the opposite side of the booth featuring our quilt patterns and interchangeable earring system.  We found these shutters and spruced them up with some paint and fabric for a fun display for pendants on cards.

Our shawl pin display showing off the different styles.  I had a table set up next to it (on the right) for demoing but there was so much talking that I really didn't get much claying done.

We had a mannequin display set-up in front on each side.  I show how you can make these using a simple sweater and hanger on a previous blog post (click here).

This is the display on the other side.  We had the posters made up at Staples in their print department and couldn't believe how gorgeous they came out and how affordable they were.

We try to use photos and props whenever possible.  This is a favorite photo of our niece modelling one of our Bargello style necklaces.  She just had a new baby (girl Emma) over the weekend so she was on our minds.

Our scarf jewelry was front and center and of course one of the main attractions.  We had a wide range of styles and colors available and were a big hit.

This is one of our new Crackle Medallion styles with the matching earring beads shown.

  

Jan, the owner of The Sewing Basket in Salmon Arm was there with a large booth as well.  Here she is trying to decide which color of scarf jewelry she would like.

She decided to go with the Bargello style in turquoise and blue.  It is one of my favorites and looks really elegant on her, doesn't it?  The Sewing Basket has some of our scarf jewelry available for sale and will have more of our new styles within the next week or so.

And at a quilt show, there are of course, ... quilts ... more than 300 of them!  This is my friend Sharon with the quilt she created for a button challenge and received an award for (came in first).

She also made this cool bangle using vintage buttons.

What made this quilt show even more interesting is that along with the local quilters guilds, other types of  fibre groups were invited to take part such as The Spinners and Weavers, Embroidery and Needlework Guilds.  This  is my friend Kathy Kinsella.  She was invited to be the featured fibre artist and was given a space to display samples of her work.  

I blogged about Kathy before (here and here) where I shared a bit about her work and how we collaborated with making some buttons for her to use on her gorgeous felted cuffs (shown above).  You can see more of her beautiful art in her Etsy shop.

Doing the Happy Dance!

We are frantically doing last minute preparations for the BC Quilt Show that is this Friday and Saturday.  We like to do a practice set-up in our home to be sure everything is going to fit just the way we want it.  Dave already started packing the car as he wanted to be sure everything will fit and there won't be any last minute surprises.

We have had some really good news this week so have been doing the happy dance.  One of the things is that Heather from Heather's Fabric Shelf informed us that our Kamloops button has again almost sold out -- a week ago she had only 2 left in stock.  I was totally blown away and could hardly believe it.  This is by far  our best selling button with no signs of a drop off in the near future.

We have been busy making more and will have them for sale along with some of Heather's "River's Edge" bag kits at the Quilt Show.

The other good news was our Floral Collar necklace was featured on The Daily Polymer Arts Blog today which was a real honor.  If you haven't been following Sage's blog, I definitely recommend it as she has some real inspiring stuff.  You can sign up and receive it directly to your e-mail on a daily basis.

BC Quilt Show 2013

We have been preparing for the upcoming BC "Everybody Loves Quilts" 2013 Show.  It is in Salmon Arm this year which is not too far from where we live.  We took a large space so we can display a wide range of the products that we make.  If you click on the poster you will see a map on our website of where the show is located.

I posted this photo on our facebook page a little while ago of a bunch of leaf canes I made that day.  That was an extremely good production time for me and it did help with having most of my clay colors already premixed.

So here is what some of the leaf canes were used for ...

More concave leaf buttons -- this time we made some in a smaller size that will be perfect for the knitter.  Our leaf buttons have been a popular item but since we put a lady bug on them, people cannot seem to resist them!  So we should have lots of leaf buttons available at the quilt show next week.

Quilt Canada and New Scarf Jewelry for Summer

I am finally back into blogging again now that we are finally getting caught up on our summer orders.  We actually spent the last few days recovering from our busy time by visiting with family.  This was followed up with some rigorous house cleaning and studio organizing which was also neglected a bit from all the rush.

We are also happy to announce that a good assortment of our new buttons, scarf jewelry and accessories are now available at Linda's Quilt Shoppe in both the Kelowna and West Kelowna stores.  Linda will also be in the Vendor's Market at the Quilt Canada show in Penticton this Thursday to Saturday (May 16 - 18).  Everyone is quite excited as the Canadian Quilt show doesn't come to our end of the country very often so it should be well attended.  Many of our handcrafted items will be available at Linda's booth.  One of the items will be a selection of our scarf jewelry.

We now have a new line of scarf necklaces for the summer which we have titled "Soft Elegance".  They are much lighter with our own handcrafted clay bail making them more suitable for the warmer weather.  We searched around for the perfect scarf and found these gorgeous polyester ones.  They came in a wide range of colors so was a lot of fun matching up the clay colors in different designs.

The scarves are light and airy and feel really soft around the neck.

You can see the various styles and colors available on our website.