Off to Lynden Tree Yarns in Grand Forks

We are off to Grand Forks BC for a presentation of our work at the new yarn shop, Lynden Tree Yarns.  It will be a full day as we demo our clay and show off our selection of handcrafted buttons, shawl pins and other knitting accessories.

Susan and Clyde of Riverstone Yarns will also be there and teaching a couple of classes on dying your own yarn.

We have a few new items that we will be showing off.  One is our new magnetic 5 way convertible brooches.

Wear 5 ways:

1 - double brooch

2 - single brooch with charm

3 - eyeglass or badge holder

4 - sweater guard

5 - necklace pendant

We also have the 3 way brooch as well:

Wear 3 ways:

1 - eyeglass or badge holder

2 - brooch with charm

3 - necklace pendant

The faux red turquoise is one of our art beads on a snap base from our "Snap Decisions" collection.  We are expanding with more new ideas with this and loving it.

Lots of Fun Stuff Arrived

A lot of fun stuff arrived in the mail today.  Is exciting to get all the new goodies but also means lots of serious claying ahead.  Of course that also represents fun -- especially when we get to make something new.  Our first item arrived earlier at the door with the Fed-Ex guy.  They were our rare earth magnets.  Was happy to find the ones we wanted from a Canadian supplier (thanks to Helen Breil for sharing).  Yes these have a hole in the centre which works perfectly for our new brooches in our interchangeable "Snap Decisions" collection.

Along with our usual Kato clay, these are some goodies that arrived from Shades of Clay.  They have so much stuff that is aimed for the polymer clayer and is nice they are here in Canada.  Some of the items here are Helen Breil's new silkscreens.  We have been experimenting with silkscreens and looking forward to trying these new ones out.

The Sculpey blade set is a present for Dave.  He was admiring one that someone had at our last Okanagan Polymer Clay guild meeting and loved the handles on it.  Now he has his own set and I am jealous as it is better than mine!  I think he will share with me so we're okay.

Also got some fun stuff that Wendy had on sale and clearing out getting ready for her new website.  Some Luminarte paint (one is a gorgeous purple color) and some fabric paint pens.  I am working on something this summer that involves fabric and painting so these should come in handy.

The sharp pointy tool should also come in handy as well as the little Kemper clay cutter.  I couldn't find it at first as it was so small and then discovered Wendy had attached it to our pointy tool.  The round cutter is just the right size for some special buttons we are making.  Did you know Shades of Clay has all sorts of these in different sizes?

The other item is in that foil package on the left.  That is a surprise that I will be sharing with you a little later.  It is a new product that Wendy sent us to play and experiment with.  We will give it a whirl and let you know what it is and what you can do with it soon.

Lastly, the long awaited interchangeable crochet hook kits arrived after being on back order for nearly 4 months!  We have some customers waiting for theirs so will be making some up as soon as we can get at them.

We are still waiting on more goodies but all this should be enough to keep us out of trouble for awhile!  After spending a whole week in front of the computer working on our new website it will be good to get back to the studio to clay!

Photographing Outdoors

The weather here has been really fabulous lately.  With the midday being so hot we are thankful for the central air conditioning in our home but the morning and evenings are perfect for sitting out on the patio.  We needed to photograph some of our scarf jewelry for listing on our new website and noticed the lighting on our patio under the shade of our large umbrella was perfect for this.  My set-up was quite simple which was a white tablecloth draped over a garment rack.  We have several of these racks for displaying our scarf jewelry at shows and now found another use for them.

While taking my pictures a few little visitors on our patio caught my eye -- they were the baby chipmunks that live underneath our deck.  I managed to snap a photo of one before he scurried away.

And here are a few photos from today.  These items will be available on our new website very soon.

Faux Red Turquoise Stone Scarf Necklace

Bargello Scarf Necklace

Pink & Purple Scarf Necklace

Mother's Day at the Historic O'Keefe Ranch

We were asked to take part in a Mother's Day Fibre Fashion 'N Tea at the Historic O'Keefe Ranch last Sunday.  We normally don't do outdoor shows but we thought this one would be fun and so glad we did.  It was a lovely day and the sun was a little warm so we were thankful for the tent that was provided.  This was our display where we had samples of our many items sold in the local yarn shops.  It was nice talking with people who came by and recognized our work.  Some even shared with us about what items of ours they had used on their hand knit or crocheted project and even shared photos of them with us.

We did polymer clay demos throughout the day where we would show how we make a "cane" and then sculpt a flower from it.

We also had our "Snap Decisions" collection available.  Customers seem to really enjoy picking out their different "snaps" to create their interchangeable jewelry pieces.

This is Althea and her sister of Intwined Fibre Arts in Salmon Arm.  They were set up next to us for the day and were busy spinning.  The selection of fibres and wool they had were in such yummy colors that were hard to resist.

The Historic O'Keefe Ranch had many other activities going on all day such as sheep shearing, pony rides and stage coach rides which passed by us on a regular basis.

The afternoon tea was really done up old fashioned style with the old style teapots and teacups and home baked goodies.  There was a fabulous fashion show hosted by A Twist of Yarn.

My camera wasn't cooperating too well to keep up with all the models so I managed to get one to pose for me.  Here she is wearing a gorgeous red hat and infinity scarf and with our maple leaf shawl stick.

It was a fun day and for a show like this was actually quite relaxing.  It was a nice way to spend Mother's day.

Mother's Day at Historic O'Keefe Ranch

We are going to be at the Historic O'Keefe Ranch this Sunday for their special Mother's Day event.  They are hosting a "Fiber Fashion N' Tea at the Ranch" together with A Twist of Yarn.  There will a lot of demonstrations including sheep shearing, spinning, weaving and wool dying.  There is even going to be a fashion show which will also be featuring some of our handcrated items.  We will be there with a wide range of our work and will be doing two polymer clay demonstrations at 11:30 and 2:30.

They are predicting nice weather this weekend so should be a great day.  If you are in the area, stop in and say hi.

After Craft Culture

We had a fun but exhausting two days at the Craft Culture show last weekend.  We are constantly asked by our customers what other shows we are in so they can find us again but truthfully we do very few shows and even then, only select ones.  We find them very exhausting as there is so much preparation work beforehand in not only preparing enough product to sell but also working out a proper display so everything is well presented.  Then there are the long hours during the show and then the take down and packing up process at the end and then usually a long drive home afterwards.  We are finding doing shows more and more of a challenge to do and so instead we are currently working on a new website for selling more of our product which should be up and running soon.

One thing we like about doing shows, however, is meeting our customers in person and seeing the happy look on their faces when they leave with their purchase in hand.  We also had a more complete line of our interchangeable snap jewelry collection available and received lots of feedback with more ideas of what our customers were looking for.

One thing about this show was that there was plenty of live entertainment with everything from music performers and gardening tips to cooking demonstrations such as Chef GIULIO PICCIOLI of  One Big Table shown here.

The other thing we enjoy is talking with other vendors in the show.  This is Marzio who was our neighbor and was really great getting to know him.  He is an excellent cartoonist who does caricatures and also has a great sense of humor as you can see in the ones he did of Dave and I.

Another artist that was across from us was abstract painter, Graciela Blancarte,  Graciela is originally from Mexico but now lives here in Canada.  She is so sweet and the colors in her paintings are so intense and beautiful.  You can visit her website here to see her work. 

Marzio also did Graciela's caricature that she is holding.