Papercutting

I have always loved silhouettes and similar style pictures, so when my friend Rachel and I decided to go to the Papercutting course at The Make Lounge in London, I was very excited!

The course is taught by the fabulous Poppy Chancellor, who had set up a picture outline for us to practise on and then a choice of picture outline that we could be a little bit more precise with!

This is the one I picked:

I was really pleased with how it came out, even if I can't take credit for the design :)

We then did a design of our own making. As you can see in Rachel's blog, hers came out really well! Mine was less so, as I took longer over the picture above. :)

However, when I got home, I had been bitten by the bug, and decided to make a papercut Christmas card for my Mum.

All you need to do something similar is a cutting mat, scalpel, paper (normal to thick paper probably best, card is much harder) and a pencil to draw a design with. Then something to mount it on - in all cases here I used a thick paper.

So first I drew a design. There isn't a lot of designs or templates around, but I found a picture to sort-of-copy. I actually drew it backwards so that I wouldn't have to erase my pencil marks, but that was very hard work!

And the final product:

Have a go yourself - it's addictive!

My first craft fair!

I went to my first craft fair in Aldershot in December (yes I know it was ages ago...) and I thought I'd write about my experience in case anyone else found it useful.

The fair itself was great - in a church with nice people and good stalls. The lady running it put a lot of thought into advertisement and had a santa outside to attract more people into the fair. In addition, the main road in Aldershot was closed and diverted past the church, so that worked in our favour!

For my part, I thought the stall looked pretty good (pics up on facebook here) but sales were slow in getting going. I was sat next to two lovely ladies selling Christmas decorations, but they were doing a roaring trade! My bookmarks finally started selling though, and I was very pleased that my Harry Potter themed bookmarks were the most popular! I set out with what I hoped were two reasonable aims - to make more than it cost me to attend, and to sell at least one of my papercraft pictures.

The first seemed to (eventually!) be going well, but the second less so. People tend not to buy art for others too often and while I cam close two or three times, all the people tempted eventually said that they couldn't justify spending on themselves right before Christmas. However, mid-afternoon I succeeded! I was so pleased to accomplish both the things I set out to.

In addition, I had a nice day with my sister! For my next craft fair I would hope for similar things, but also to sell one of my larger pictures.

I can highly recommend going to craft fairs - especially as a buyer! - to any crafter, but do check what they expect the footfall to be like and the target audience. It may affect whether or not you think it's worth it to go with your product. On that note, I'm going to be making an effort to aim at a more arty crowd in order to sell more pictures. I hope!

Happy Crafting!

xoxo
~Miss 50s

I've had a super busy couple of weekends, I've not had much time for blogging or other forms of social networking! On the plus side though, lots of fun has been had :D

Last weekend I went to the Cake and Bake Show in London, which was *amazing*. I met some great people wondering around, as well as bumping into an old friend from high school who I haven't seen for ages, that was lovely. I managed not to bankrupt myself (just) and only bought a few bits which I mostly haven't tried out yet. Will have to take photos when I do try them! I did however try a couple of my new moulds (buttons and a bow) when I made cupcakes on the Sunday as well as a multicoloured icing attempt. The buttons went well, the bow less so (wasn't enough "edge" really) and the multicoloured icing (from a tip from the Dr Oetker stand) was less successful than hoped! I'll try that again though, you never know!!

I do highly recommend going to the Cake and Bake show next year, lots of fun to be had.

This weekend, I have been crafting items to sell - I have made loads more bookmarks which will hopefully be up on-line shortly as well as some more papercraft art. I'm really proud of the art, I hope you guys like it as much as I do! The art may be a little longer making it's way on-line - partially because I'm not sure I don't want to add something (haha, it's easy to never be done!) but mostly because I want to make some more and put them on as a large collection. A first stage photo may appear on facebook though - as a a teaser, I've indulged my current fascination with all things beach hut related. Now I just need to go and purchase more frames! It's nice to have run out!

I hope you guys have been having as much fun and been as productive as me!

xoxo
~ Miss 50s Craft

Papercraft

I'm pleased to report that the close of my competition went very well! both people were very pleased to win and both said they rarely win things so that was nice :)

I've been up to some new crafting - papercraft pictures. I really want to go and buy new papers for this, I feel so inspired by it. At the moment though, I'm not sure my crafting ability will match what my head has come up with! :D

I actually got into all my crafting through a love of baking (that I didn't connect with crafting for ages) and being introduced to papercraft (making gift cards) by my friend Rachel. It's really nice to come back round to it and still enjoy it as much as I did originally! You should check out my friend Rachel's blog as well - Crafty Weekend - as she's still inspiring me with what she gets up to!

~Miss 50s
xoxo

Craft Fair stalls

It's a strange post-relaunch world :)

I feel that yesterday went really well, I hope to be able to keep up some of the foot traffic to my shop that I achieved yesterday. If you went by and checked out my shop - thank you very much!

Anyway, today brings me to thinking about craft fairs. I'm applying for stalls at 3 or 4 places in time for Christmas, and am likely to have a stall at my day job in December too. So I've been thinking about how to dress it, how to make it look interesting and most importantly, how to encourage people to buy things! :D Etsy have a good article on thinking outside the box, but I am starting from scratch and low on funds. Does anyone have any top tips on how to dress a stall? Or ideas for low cost but interesting things to do?

Of course I have to actually get a place at some of the fairs first, but I like to be hopeful about these things! I will keep you all updated on how I will be dressing my stall as I go. After all, what's the point in having a blog like this if I don't share my experiences - there's lots of advice out there on what to do, but I hope my perspective on how I attempt to launch a craft business is interesting to you. And I will be adding posts on interesting makes too, in case craft business stuff doesn't entertain you!

~ Miss 50s xoxo

Rebranding!

I'm so excited. Today I am launching this blog officially, along with my new logo. I have also uploaded all my items to Etsy - I hope someone makes a sale soon!

In the mean time, I will also be closing my twitter competition this week. I was going to close it when I got to 100 followers (I'm pretty close!), but this seems like the perfect opportunity. I'm going to offer double entry to anyone who retweets a different tweet between now and the official close on Friday.

I mostly wanted to share my excitement - please check out my new items at my Etsy shop!

~Miss 50s xoxo

Setting up the relaunch

So I'm currently in the process of relaunching, tying up a bunch of currently loose ends in order to be able to run Miss 50s Craft as efficiently as possible. I know, I know, I'm a mad woman.

On my to do list currently are finalising the new logo that I have commissioned (nearly there! Very exciting!), moving everything to my Etsy account and letting the Folksy listings run out (I'm sort of sad about this, but it's easier to maintain one than two and the research I've been doing tells me this is the right move), and take new photos. This final one is the most important for now - I have a little photo studio to put to good use and will hopefully increase the saleability of my products! :) That's what I've been up to lately. I need to go on the Etsy forums to drum up interest, finish my twitter competition, and order business cards as well, but those are either ongoing or a product of my main objectives :D

I really hope I can get this to take off properly - I love my products and want others to as well :) I love making them, I love coming up with the ideas and I love talking about them. Hehe. Anyway, that's it for now. Hopefully my next blog post will be about my new logo!

~Miss 50s xoxo

First post!

Firstly, welcome to my blog!  I'm not really sure what I'll post with it yet - some posts about crafting (things I admire, things I want to learn, things I do) are inevitable though!  In the mean time this is just a sticky to say that I hope you enjoy my blog.




I have some handcrafted items up on Etsy, please go and have a look and let me know what you think (also buying things is very welcome!).



Check out my social network places:



Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.



Thanks! ~Miss 50s xoxo