Craft-a-Fair 2014

The Salmon Festival is over and we are preparing for our first Christmas Show of the year.  It is the Craft-a-Fair at the Interior Savings Centre in Kamloops this Sunday, November 2nd.  It is put on by the Royal Inland Hospital Auxiliary with this year celebrating their 30th Anniversary.

We will be in the same spot as we have been for several years now which is on the concourse --  turn left at the main entrance.  We are down a little ways on on the left hand side.

Our main feature again this year is our interchangeable earring system with plenty of new styles of art beads to wear along with our most popular selling item, our scarf jewelry.  This year we will also be featuring our latest interchangeable scarf necklace designs which were first introduced at the Lake Country Art Walk last September.

Taking in the Salmon Run

We had some family visit us last week so had took some time out to take in the salmon run.  The fall weather this year has been really pleasant and was great walking all the newly groomed trails in the Roderick Haig-Brown Park along the Adam's River where all the Sockeye Salmon are spawning.

Walking trails along the Adam's River

Look-out point over the river to view the salmon spawning

One of the information boards along the walking trails

I couldn't get a good photo of the salmon spawning this year so this is a picture I took from four years ago.  Dave's daughter took a really great video of the spawning salmon which I uploaded to our facebook page.

All that fresh air and exercise made us hungry and there are plenty of food vendors set up at the grounds serving anything from fresh bannock and salmon burgers to pizza and mini donuts.

Food Vendors

This month is going by so quickly, it is hard to believe the salmon festival is nearly over with the final day on Sunday, the 26th.  Winter is just around the corner and time to think about our first Christmas show of the year which is only a week later.

Demo at the Salmon Festival

We had a full day last week at the Salmon Festival helping out at the Artisan Market and doing a demo.  We met a lot of tourists from various parts of Canada visiting along with some from the U.S. and as far away as Australia.

Artisan Market tent with demo out front

Table with clay items for demo

Dave and I later discovered this photo prop and were goofing off a bit.  That was Dave's Yogi the Bear pose (I think?).  lol

Salmon Everywhere

The Salmon festival started yesterday and our display rack at the artisan market is all filled and ready for the more than 200,000 expected tourists to come through over the next 3 weeks.  We will be out several times to view the spawning salmon in the river as well as replenish the supply of our handcrafted ones.

As part of the artisan market gift shop, we are to take our turn to help out and demo our work.  We will be taking our first shift this coming Friday (Oct 10th) and are looking forward to it.

To get into the spirit of things, we are seeing salmon themed shop windows like in the Intwined Fibre Arts store in Salmon Arm who have some of our salmon zipper charms for sale.

Chum 'N Luba's Unique Boutique here in Chase is selling our salmon jewelry which go really well with some of the new fall designer dresses they have in stock.

This dress happens to have a front zipper and the salmon zipper charm looks like it was made just for it!

These are a couple more of their dresses with a salmon necklace that go really well!  I absolutely love this dress and could see myself wearing this!  I love the hat too and is handmade from Nelson BC.

The red dress here was in the shop window so was difficult to capture a good picture.

It's All in the Package

Now that our sockeye salmon pieces are done, we have been busy packaging them all.  Sometimes it seems as much time and work go into this part as making the items themselves.  We design and print all our own labels to accommodate each item.  It takes a bit of work setting up the original templates and then afterwards they are ready to print anytime we need more.

The switch plate cover was a little tricky to figure out how to make and took a little bit of engineering on our part.  We wanted to hang them on our pegboard display but also show them off nicely.

Sockeye Salmon are Coming!

It has been an unusually busy summer for us as we have the Salmon Festival coming up in October which happens only every 4th year.  The salmon are already arriving but the great event starts October 3rd and will run for 3 weeks.  This means we have had to work on creating our salmon pieces in between our regular shows and filling store orders.

In order to do this, we had set aside several hours each day to work on our salmon fish pieces.  So far we have made more than 1000 clay "fish" which are then attached to various findings and made into items such as key chains, zipper pulls, cell phone charms, necklaces, earrings, tie bars, fridge magnets and even switch plate covers.

Salmon earring beads ready to bake

Finished salmon pieces

Lake Country Art Walk Come and Gone

I hadn't blogged in a while as the last few weeks had been so busy with hardly any extra time to spare.  Dave and I had both been putting in long hours working on fall orders for the local stores that sell our work as well as preparing for the Lake Country Art Walk.

The Art Walk was last weekend and is hard to believe it has now come and gone.  We weren't as exhausted afterwards this year thanks to the extra help we had this time.  The show was so busy I didn't get a chance to take any pictures during, but did manage to get a few pics of our set-up the Friday evening before.

This is Dave and our sister-in-law Pat resting after doing our set-up the Friday evening before the show.  Pat and her friend Brenda were a great help all weekend.  We also hired an art student to help as well so there was as many as 5 of us to help take care of customers.

This was our earring display along with our flip flop pieces.  The theme this year was "Shoes, A step forward" so we had to have our flip flop jewelry to go along.

This was one of our jewelry displays.  Also included were some special scarf jewelry pieces on some gorgeous silk scarves.

This was our new sweater guard clip display.  The sweater guards were a really big hit and we had nearly sold out of them.

Some of the sweater guards here were in our new faux turquoise colors (the green and red) using the Cabezel moulds.  I will share the new color recipes I used to make these with you in my next post.

Sweater guard in new faux green turquoise

Sweater guard in new faux red turquoise

More Flip Flop Sandal Jewelry

Here is another style of flip flop sandal jewelry pieces using the extruded retro square pattern.   They are a different look for those who are not into the flowers as much.

We will have a selection of our popular flip flop jewelry available at the Lake Country Art Walk coming up in September.  Each year there is a theme and this year's is "Shoes: A Step Forward".

Gone Fishing

Dave and I have been doing a different type of fishing these days -- even though we live by the water we are sculpting our fish rather than catching them.  Every four years their are larger amounts (in the millions) of salmon returning to spawn in October.  This year is one of those times and so several hundred thousand tourist will be stopping by to see this spectacular event.

This will be our second time participating in the Artisan Market.  We know a little more what to expect this time round so will be better prepared and have already been in high production mode.  We have set aside several days each week where we try to make our "quota" of salmon.  With this plan in action we should be able to have enough made in plenty of time.

Here are some of the salmon ready to attach to various findings to create souvenir items like zipper pulls, key chains and such.

Ladies Hat and Dress Brooch Pins

We had a nice time in Sicamous last Saturday at the Classic Car Show & Shine.  The weather was nice and warm and was perfect for enjoying the outdoors and viewing all the fabulous cars on display.  I managed to capture a few photos of some of my favorites.  Dave said I took some pictures of a few of his as well, although we had to take turns so that one of us was at our booth in the craft fair all the time.

This was my favorite car with the matching camping trailer.  I loved all the cool details right down to the cabinets in the back.

Along with the sweater guards in our display, our ladies hat and dress brooch pins were also a big attraction.

I had come across these little clothes hanger charms and decided a little dress had to go on them and they were then added to the kilt brooch pins.

Sicamous Show & Shine Car Show

We have a show coming up this weekend which will be a first for us but should be a lot of fun.  It is the 5th Annual Show & Shine Car Show in Sicamous.  Dave is a real classic car buff and he is hoping to take in most of the sights in between sales.  We will be set up at the Craft Fair in the arena on the Saturday from 10 to 3pm.

We will have a large selection of our popular scarf jewelry along with our interchangeable earring system and some other specialty items.  Our modern vintage items such as our sweater guards and scarf buckles and clips should be a good compliment to the show.