all the preparation!

As many of you may recall, after a mad last minute rush for my last big craft show I swore off crafting procrastination and promised myself I would be prepared for my next show a good week in advance! Well...that was a great idea in theory...but it didn't really turn out how I'd like it to. It is a mere three days until the big show (which I hope you are all coming to if you can) and I'm still tying together all the finishing pieces! I am much better off than I have been for previous shows (thanks to my hardcore crafting every spare moment since january) but I have learned one very important thing - you can never really be fully prepared for a craft sale! I've come to the sad realization that I cannot predict the future and actually have no idea how to be completely prepared for the unknown! What an unrealistic goal I set for myself. Alas. But let's focus on the positive here - I have managed to whip up a huge assortment of handcrafted goodies and will have a well stocked table for the spring sale! Hooray! Let's take a peek at a few felt items I made this past week:

1.) felt flower brooches! I originally made a few of these for xmas presents back in '09 and had such overwhelmingly positive feedback that I decided to break them into craft shows too! I whipped up 20 of these babies back in april for my very first craft show and...they didn't sell at all. Seriously - I think I sold a total of three over the last year. Rats. At my last fabulous finds show I ended up consignment selling all of my carefully handcrafted brooches to the super awesome shop funktional. I figured it was a good idea to whip up a new batch of these brooches since (list time):

a) brooches are back! And this time I'm not the only one saying it for the last two years. They are popping up all over the place and are totally due for a fashion comeback!

b) it's spring! and spring is all about pops of colour and flowers!

and

c) the super trendy kelowna shoppers will have spotted my felt brooches at funktional and will want to get the crafter direct sale price for these babies!

Hooray! Take a peek at the fabulous fresh spring colours they're available in:


Yay! But not to worry - I made a whole slew of flowers (in loads of colours) just in case they are a giant hit:


2) felt flower hair clips! I hinted about these last tuesday and luckily they turned even better than I was expecting! I really wanted to have a few items that were more spring and summer appropriate than all the tweed bags I had for my last show and figured wool felt hair clips were it! After all, I think they are awesome (always a good place to start right?) and I just bought a ton of wool felt squares from etsy (which, by the way, was an absolutely fantastic experience I totally recommend to any felt crafters)! Bring on the stacked felt flowers:


Here's a peek at the back of the clip too (notice my sneaky snap clip concealing) :


Hooray! And (of course) I made a ton of hair clips in an assortment of fun colours:


Woo! Now to figure out how much to price them at! What do you think?

3) felt flower hairbands! When I was looking for hair clips to use for my felt flowers I impulse bought a package of elastic hairbands and after watching 3 hours of petticoat junction followed by countless hours of elvis (can you believe I own 10 elvis movies?) I thought I'd whip up some higher price point hair accessories just in case they are a hit. Take a looksie:


What do you think? Certainly a springy bold accessory for the fashion forward right! As always I made an assortment to chose from:


I had a ton of fun making all the felt flower goodies and I really hope I get a good reaction for them at the show! I figure if they are a flop I will just have to become well known around town as "that girl who has 31 felt flower hair clips and 8 flower hairbands"! Perfect plan right?

Whew! I can't believe how much product I whipped up this past week! Now I just need to figure out how I want to showcase the items at my table and work on packaging! Oh and pricing! What do you think I should sell them for?