The little trees are sweet. I love the mushrooms. How high are the mushrooms?
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The little trees are sweet. I love the mushrooms. How high are the mushrooms?
Love both of those forms! I am sad that I'm not going to be in Massachusetts next Saturday and thus can't come to the sale. Although my wallet is probably grateful. (We were on the Cape last week, and my wallet is, ah, empty, lol, especially after coming home thru the Berkshires and hanging out at Chocolate Springs...)
IL: The mushrooms are ornaments and about 1.5 " tall. The trees are about 6" tall.
Early: Chocolate Springs is awesome! We visited while we were out there in Sept. We just got home from Harbor Sweets in Salem - are you familiar with them? They have amazing chocolates. If I want to get laughed off the Frugals forum, I could post about how I used my various discounts to knock the tab down to a mere $380, and we even got some freebies thrown in.
No, but I've pinned it for our next "up East" adventure! Checked out their website, and it looks scrumptious - thanks for the info! I got home from all points East, to find that one of our resident mice had eaten half of the hot cocoa mix from Chocolate Springs that I had stashed. Ignored the Swiss Miss and the Trader Joe stuff, and went straight for the gold plated. I am SO ANNOYED - I may set a trap for the little bugger. Generally, I'm a live and let live person when it comes to a rodent or two, but really!!!
I agree the mouse crossed a line, although it clearly has good taste!
Those are so cute, rr! Are you able to put some lights in the Christmas tree holes? (I've seen that done with bigger ceramic trees)
Happy - they are meant to have a battery tealight under the tree, and the light shines through the holes.
I'm thinking that will look quite lovely and nicer than those bigger ones I've seen.Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
We are all set up for the crafts fair today. We did our setup Thursday, and it was so nice to get all the pottery out of the cellar. Unfortunately, I'm sure it's inevitable that some of it will come back home again. After we set everything up, DH said, "Now we could just go away and never come back," lol.
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Wow! That's a lot of stuff! Good luck and have fun today.
It all looks beautiful. Quite a lot of variety.
Wow, that's impressive! Here's hoping that all of your pieces find new people to love and admire them. Best of luck on the sale!
I hope you come away with no leftover pieces!!!
Update: We did pretty well, and it was fairly enjoyable. We netted a little over $300. Most of our stuff was $5 - $10, with a few items priced at $20, so we must have sold quite a few items. Then why do we still have so much pottery?? lol.
We made a good connection with a very nice woman who is interested in having us participate in a local craft fair next September. She was selling crocheted items and did not even make her $25 table fee in sales, so I felt bad about that. I gifted her an ornament she had been eyeing. I gifted another piece to a little girl who bought a bowl for her mother for xmas. There was another woman who wanted 2 bowls for a total of $20, but she didn't have enough cash on hand, so I gave them to her for the $14 she did have. Who goes to a church craft fair expecting to use a credit card?
I think we are learning some useful lessons about what we like to make vs. what people will buy and when. It will be an interesting balancing act, because we are doing the pottery thing for fun, and the selling is definitely secondary. I would never want to focus exclusively on making things with an eye to selling rather than the fun of making and learning. On the other hand, we do not want to fill our little house up to the ceiling with pottery, and the money is certainly helpful. The cost of classes is about $4000 per year for the two of us, and one of us likes to buy extra tools and glazes and such (looks in the mirror sheepishly), so offsetting a little bit of that cost is a good thing.
I could envision us doing 2 -3 local fairs a year with a few mainstay easy-to-make items that will be likely to sell. We will still be building our skills with those items because practice and repetition are key. We can still focus most of our efforts on making things that are more for our own enjoyment, but try to keep the quantity down, knowing those things might be less likely to sell so either will be have to be kept or gifted. I also don't want to inflict a lot of pottery on innocent friends and bystanders either - "look out, here come Rosa and she's bearing more pottery!"
I think you just need a website, Rosa. I would buy some of those blue mugs--I need them for some blue dishes I have!
And I think more than one of us would purchase trees and mushrooms, lol. Maybe SLF needs a "buy me" forum?!
I like rosa’s little mushrooms, they’re very cute. I’m always attracted to mushrooms.
But Rosa doing mail order means she has to get into the whole shipping business and digital monies collection. I doubt she wants to do that.
Rose, I think the fact that you made $300 at a little church sale is really really great! A $25 table is a low entry point for a sales table.
I’m afraid next year I have to figure out a “low entry sales point” for iris rhizomes coming out of my garden, not because I need money, but because my small local iris society needs community engagement. I had a trial run last year where I dug, marked, bagged and listed iris to give to a friend who was planning a big iris garden. I would only have to add to that process pictures printed by Walgreens and a simple display method. I may try a local farmers market or two. I am so NOT looking forward to this.
I think if I were in Rosa's shoes, I would actually enjoy doing a little shipping business, because then she could keep the inventory in the house low.
But she may feel as you do!
That's wonderful, rosa! I in the "it went well" corner! Congrats.
during Covid, I sold many books and little bit of jewelry on Ebay, things easy to ship. Personally, I wouldn’t want to deal with breakables.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tybee
when I order any piece of pottery, I hold my breath until it gets here safely. Last year I splurged on two expensive pieces this time of year, but I told the potter to hold the pieces until the Christmas shipping crunch was over.
Thanks for the positive feedback folks. IL is right on target.
This was shared by our pottery group yesterday. It's a 5 minute skit from SNL about pottery. I laughed so hard I cried!
https://youtu.be/Kw5A2Es8SLw?si=vZv6tQVyZ05NZ-kA
So funny, rr!!!
That SNL clip was funny! There is some truth in it, ya gotta admit.
A lot of truth - that's what makes it so funny!Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Here are a couple of my recent class projects.
The mushroom was supposed to be a footed fruit bowl, but then it seemed to want to be a mushroom, but the stem was too thick, so it decided to be a fairy house for the garden. I also dropped it on its head during construction, so I was pretty amazed to end up with something that I actually liked at the end. I had been kinda thinking it was cursed.
The owl was supposed to be a bunny - epic fail - which was looking like a large potato and nothing at all like a bunny. Determined to have something to show for my efforts, I hit on the idea of an owl as something accessible for the non-sculpturally inclined.
The next two months with be a class dedicated solely to sculpture, so this should be interesting!
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Fairy house or toad house, I like it.
rosa, I'd call that a magnificent set of "saves". Art evolves into itself sometimes.
I agree with nswef. I like the owl!
I haven't shared any pottery pictures for awhile, so here goes. The heads were made in the sculpture class, and they were a lot of fun. I think I will make more. I love making things that can be used as planters or are plant related. The ornaments were made specifically for selling at these local fairs. Our town is locally famous for its "Route One kitsch," so these are a nod to some of the more iconic images. I hope they will be popular, since I personally have no use for 49 orange dinosaur ornaments! We are also working on some town-themed mugs, and I have some more townie ornament ideas for next year if these go over well.
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All so cute! Love the faces! Just a question... I didn't see any holes to run string to hang the ornaments. Are they not those types of ornaments? Or used some other way?
(While the dinosaurs are cute, I like the cactus. LOL)
Happy, they have little wire rings at the top for hanging. The wire is dark so it doesn't show up in the picture against the dark background. It's funny that you prefer the cactuses, because those are the ones I'm the least satisfied with. Hopefully others will like them too. This is the original inspiration in the picture, so I feel like I need to do something with a sign in the middle with the zigzag edges.
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Very nice, rr. I hope you do well at the sale, even if a little one.Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
I'm so happy with the result on this one. Not only relieved that top did not fuse to the bottom (a common issue), but I'm really pleased with the color and texture. I think I would like to make more of these.
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I love this!Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
Pretty little box! I really like it!
That is lovely! I love the color as well.
We did great at our sale yesterday. We sold $881. in pottery, and more than half of that was from my Route One collection! I had done a few posts on our town FB pages, and a lot of people told me they came to the fair specifically for my orange dinosaurs, so that was good for us and I was happy that I helped drive traffic to the event in general.
We had paid a $40 table fee, and we did have some other significant expenses: fudge, more fudge, chocolate cherries, caramels, other caramels, raffle tickets, etc. You get the idea. BUT, DH won the best raffle prize, which was a wreath of gift cards totalling just about $700! He was so excited! We won't be able to use all of them, but there were $75 in visa cards, $50 in Amazon, $50 for Home Depot, $30 for Target, $20 for Stop & Shop, so still an excellent score that more than made up for our fair-related spending. It was a very successful day overall!
Wow what a day! Good show.
You might be able to use some of those gift cards for gifts at Christmas or otherwise give away, I assume. Why can’t you use them all?Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
Wow! That WAS a great day, rr! Congrats to dh! And I'm with Tradd - you should use them all! Even if some are used as gifts to other people, that means you are still using them!