It's A Craftmas December!

The Rochester NY Etsy Street Team (RNEST) has a month-long party of handmade goodness planned for December! I'm at a loss for words when it comes to describing my joy about these events. This is going to be gooood!

Several months ago the RNEST team decided to rent a space for a month somewhere in Rochester to hold shows, workshops, and community building events. The Hungerford Building became available to us a few months ago, but something fell through with that. Instead that was a blessing in disguise as now we have the space for December and we can focus on holiday shows and winter fun.

The extra exciting, really cool thing is that Etsy gave our team a grant to do this. Yes! Etsy gave us money to put all of this together. How cool is that?!

We've met. We've talked. We've planned. Now it's time to reveal the crafty month-long RNEST party we have in store for you!

All events are located at The Hungerford Building, Door 8,
at 1115 East Main Street, Rochester, NY, 14609. 

Craftmas Events are on Facebook! Click the links below to RSVP, then share with your friends!



Craftmas: Etsy Style! First Friday Holiday Craft Sale
Friday, December 2nd at 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm 
Saturday, December 3rd at noon - 4:00 pm 

A Handmade Holiday hits the Hungerford Building! Come shop from a selection of quality items made by local artists. Give the gift of handmade this holiday season!


Clothing Swap 
Monday, December 5th at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm 

It’s time to clean out that closet! Bring in your unwanted clothing and take home some new-to-you pieces for your wardrobe...all for free! RNEST artists will also be available to teach demos with techniques for altering and upcycling your clothes into fun, new items! *Any clothing left over at the end of the night will be donated. Nothing will go to waste!


Creative Play Session 
Saturday, December 10th at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm 

Creativity boosting activities and exercises to spark your artistic inspiration and get out of a rut. Come with an open mind and leave with ideas for new projects! (For ages teen and up)


Open Craft Night: Etsy Style! 
Thursday, December 15th at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm 

Demos: glass pendant soldering, knitting, bead weaving and MORE! Everyone is invited for a handmade, fun-filled evening of simple planned projects and unstructured time with RNEST artists. Bring your crafty works-in-progress, share our supplies, experiment with our tools, and ask us about tips and techniques. A small sampling of our works will also be available for sale.

I am part of the planning committee for Open Craft Night. We have a lot of cool projects lined up that are easy as well as more intermediate and low cost to make. No art experience required! Just watching all the demos alone will fill up the night. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait!!

Direct questions about any of these events to me at inmyheadstudios [at] gmail.com

We hope you can make it to at least one of these events! They will be a lot of fun simply because our team is a lot of fun!

What now? Head over to RNEST on Facebook to RSVP, then share the events with your friends! 

xoxo

- Vickie

St. Rita's Craft Sale: This Saturday

What a busy week! I am gearing up for this Saturday's show - the first one of my season. I always get a little nervous about the holiday craft show season. It means I have to leave my studio and talk to people. I'm just a tiny bit socially awkward. Shhhhhh... don't tell anyone. That's between you and me. 

So if you want to find some of the best handmade around, you can find it St. Rita's Craft Sale - where you will also find me being socially awkward behind my table. :)

Saturday, October 22, 2011
27th Annual St. Rita School Craft Sale

9:00 am – 3:15 pm
St. Rita School
1008 Maple Drive, Webster, New York 14580

** Our booth is located in a classroom, Room 14, this year (not the gym) so be sure to check out the classrooms, too! **

 

Now more than ever, I believe that supporting local small businesses (that includes artists and crafters) this holiday season is that can help our community become stronger economically. 

Your dollars could be making a day job out of a part-time art gig. That, in turn, not only makes the dreams of an artist come true, it helps families in our community to pay for food, housing, or medicine. It also creates jobs for your neighbors, family, friends, and maybe even you. And right now, Rochester needs you. 

Please think about how spending your holiday shopping dollars at the big box chain stores or the big online shopping sites means those dollars won't be supporting the "little guy" in our community.

A handmade gift, even if it wasn't handmade by you, is always a classy, gracious, and generous way to go. It means so much more to the recipient when you give handmade, especially these days where gift cards and electronic gadgets rule. Yes, that new gadget may say "I love you!" to your loved one, but wouldn't a handmade gadget case be a great choice to go with it? 

Giving handmade is giving love. Love to your loved one, and love from the artist who put their hard work, time, and energy into the creation of something out of nothing. With your purchase of handmade you are also spreading joy to the artist so they may keep spreading joy and love in an immeasurable way. 

See? It's not just about money. 

See you at St. Rita's!  

- Vickie

Mayday Underground Crafts + Art: Spring 2011

Mayday Underground Crafts + Art is my favorite show ever! That’s not hyperbole!

The Main Street Armory, where Mayday Underground Crafts + Art was held, is an enormous and beautiful venue. I, in the 22 years I have lived in Rochester, have not had cause to go there for anything, thus solidifying my hermit status even more. Luckily I trusted my gut about lighting. I was worried it might be dark in a big, vast space like that so I checked off “yes” for electricity on the application just in case, even though I don’t have a light set-up ready to go. Yep, day-of-the-show improvisation. That’s me, much to my mom’s and Mr. M’s chagrin. Of course, I didn’t actually pack the lights or extension cords, and I had to politely ask Mr. M to go home and get them. He politely obliged. He rocks!

We were sort of in that no-man’s land at the far end of an aisle past the point where people would turn to cross over to the next aisle. They would have missed us completely because we were in the dark under the balcony overhang. Amanda so very nicely said we could move out a little on an angle. We were very careful not to take too much advantage of that though, as it wasn’t super fair to the other vendors under the balcony. I think everyone in that aisle should have been moved out about five feet and into the light.

The extra lighting we brought made a huge difference. I believe it contributed greatly to the near-record breaking show total we made. Lighting is definitely on the list for future shows. I hope to find some battery powered halogen lights, if they even exist. (My dad could have made them for me if he was still around, goshdarnnit.)

I still cannot believe the positive responses to my work. I am so lucky to be doing what I do. Art can be a solitary life with little to no feedback on a day-to-day basis. Then you do a show and you get filled up with about six hours of happy dance from customers. It makes the solitary confinement worth it! It gives me an answer to the times I am in the studio asking myself,

“Why am I even bothering with this?! Does anyone even care?!”

So I have to work to hold on to the feelings of show days to remind myself that I’m not just pushing paper and paint around on canvas or dominoes.

I am creating joy.

I lose sight of that until I see smiles when people are looking at and buying my work.

The talent at this show was unbelievable. I think it was the best collection of artists I have ever seen at an indie show. The number of young indie artists was greatly encouraging (I think I have recently aged out of the “young” category, I’m afraid). Nice to see the newbies getting their feet wet! Of course it’s always fun to hang with my Rochester NY Etsy Street Team buddies! I was next to my pals Michelle from The Quilted House and Stefani from Pine Tree Designs!

On a side note: The doors to the stalls in the bathroom at The Armory were gorgeous antique wood doors. Tall and slim and carved with really ornate designs. But they left me feeling more like I was walking into a church confessional than a bathroom stall! It kind of creeped me out and made me laugh at the same time.

"We Are Queens"; original mixed media collage on 6"x"8" gallery wrapped canvas; available for sale

Rochester needs more shows like this. Amanda and Casey and all the Mayday vendors have proven three times now that this city supports indie shows. Let’s have more!

The next Mayday Underground is slated for November! See you there!

- Vickie

Lilac Festival 2010

I spent a lovely Sunday at Rochester’s Lilac Festival at Highland Park. The weather was perfect – not too hot, not too cold. Due to the nice weather every single person living in the Rochester metro area was also in attendance at the Lilac Fest on Sunday, too. It was the most crowded I’ve ever seen Highland Park! This giant 10-day festival kicks off the local summer season of outdoor festivals and art and craft shows.

The aisles down the craft show rows were shoulder to shoulder with people. It was kind of hard to see all the great arts and crafts! Plus I dislike crowds so I was having a mini-panic attack. We attempted to make our way to the food tent. The path was just a river of moving bodies inching forward ever so slowly. When we got to the food tent there simply was not room to get inside. So we got out of there (much to my relief!) and went elsewhere for some garbage plates.

I was surprised to see how few local artists I recognized from doing shows here for the past two seasons. My friends Amanda Preske from Beadwork By Amanda, Jennifer Born from PS Enjoy Your Life, and Stefani Tadio from Pine Tree Designs were there with their arts and crafts. And that was it. Most of the business cards I picked up are artists from Pennsylvania, Arizona, or Buffalo. Very few locals. And I picked up a lot of business cards!

Stefani and I have formed a really cool friendship, email a lot, and sometimes do projects together. This was her first big outdoor show with the whole tent-setting-up business and leaving things out overnight. Her tent and set up looked great! And she did really well, too! I’m so happy for her! Plus now I get to pick her brain for when I finally get up the nerve to buy a tent and do outdoor shows.

Here are some pictures of her awesome booth:

Small notecards and adorable hand stitched paper pins

Hand stitched greeting cards and paper magnets

I love Stefani's Sticky Notes Holders!!

My plan for 2011 includes doing outdoor shows like this one. I have no idea how much inventory I would need. Maybe I better shut off the computer and Twitter and get crafting!

The Spot Coffee Craft Show

I set up. I waited. Not many people showed up to buy. So I had 12 sales for all three days total. But I am not complaining because that’s 12 more than I would have had if I were just sitting at home on my sofa eating bons bons, which now that I think about it has just become my To Do List for tonight. The other crafters were awesome! So much fun meeting craft show people – especially the younger indie crafters.

The work of Jen Born, of P.S. Enjoy Your Life, really caught my eye. Our work is similar in style and I just love her business name. She makes these great mixed media collages on blocks of wood and seals them with bright shiny resin. She also makes bottle cap fridge magnets from tiny bits of paper and collages them under resin. I wanted to buy out her whole booth!! You know how much I love tiny bits of paper!

Casey Wright, of Peaches Products, creates tiny wonderful needle felted animals. Her unusual set up was really cool. She has copper wire coils attached to tree branches so it looked like all the little owls, birds, and chickens were roosting in the trees. I bought a little blue tweety Twitter bird from her. This little guy makes me really happy!!

Sunday, my friend Stefani Tadio from Pine Tree Designs came to set up shop. Her work is so perfect! She embroiders paper and embellishes Post-It note pads in ways that would make a well dressed woman look bad. Seriously! Her stuff is amazing!!! She also carries cards and paper brooches.

I scheduled myself a spot again in June. I think repeat exposure will bring more sales. So we will see about this show then. I think it’s too early to decide if we should opt out. The show is just getting started and this town is always slow to embrace new things to do. Plus the parking there is tricky for non-city folks to navigate. The patrons are more my demographic than usual craft shows so I really want this show to work out well. I have a hunch it is going to catch on. It’s just going to take some time.