Our First Bead Fair & week 15 from handmade Mondays

Yes I did say bead fair, sounds rather strange when you see a table full of wooden items but that's what we do. To say a trade fair is different from a craft fair is an understatement people were there with one purpose and that was to spend money and we were fortunate enough to be there and share in the atmosphere and to sell a few of our items.

Our table yesterday

I know it looks rather jumbled but it was a table full of display items and there was no other way to show them, what you have to remember is on a normal table there would maybe only be a small selection of these items.



Fold flat necklace display with hand turned knobs

  This small but quirky display piece can be adapted to any size with a fully rebated back which can be painted or padded out with your own material to show off you own stunning items. At the front of the picture is a selection of our bow jigs.

Bangle and Ring Cones

Just the thing to show off individual unique bangles and rings, to the right there is a chain stand, it's the extra pair of hands you need when making charm bracelets. Also some business card holders made from burrs and some turned pine ones. You can also see half a plier rack sitting on the collapsible stepped shelves.

One of the display trees

These trees are basically branches from wind felled tree's that we collect and once cleaned and treated are placed on a substantial base of timber to give stability. They give height to a table and are even functional at home for displaying your own jewellery so you can see at a glance what you have instead of digging through a box.

Bangle display

This is a combination of 3 different woods, beech top, walnut support and pine base. The lady who actually bought this could not stop raving about it and actually described it as a work of art, well I am just glad that she likes it, she had me put it to one side and told me not to sell it till she got back with some money. I think she will come back to me at some point for a taller version for hanging necklaces from.

So what did we take from today? Well we managed to hand out loads of cards and spoke to people about what we offer so hopefully this is the start of people knowing about us, Networking! such a brilliant word. It also gave us an opportunity to tell people that we can make items to their own specifications because today we had to pre-judge what people would like, I think we got the basics right but everybody is different and has different ideas, we just want to make their ideas a reality. So there you go that was our first bead fair and it definitely wont be our last.

Its week 15 over at 1stunique gifts and there are already lots of blogs listed for you to have a read at so please pop along and say hi to Wendy and take some time out to read what other crafters and artists have been up to this past week.

Many thanks for reading my waffle and check back regularly to see what we are up to. If you want please follow us on facebook that's where we usually showcase our concept ideas prior to production, your feedback is invaluable to us so please feel free to comment on our ideas we can't get it right if we don't know what you think of them.

Drew