Last Spring Show Review

I was so excited to announce my giveaway and do a review about it, that I forgot to do a review about my show this past weekend. This was by far my best Spring show. It was a 2 day show which helped, but even for a one day show it would have been great. As always, I handed out tons of business cards. I didn't realize how many cards I had handed out until I had to get the ones out of my purse and laptop bag to have enough! There was a nice, steady stream of people all day long. The show lasted from 9am-8pm, so we assumed from 4pm on it would be dead. Not the case! We had steady traffic until about 6pm! And Sunday morning rocked! I had another vendor bring photos in for some custom work and ordered an album while she was at it :) I also sold two more albums within the first hour! I was glad to get the business early as I had to pack up early so I could get some sleep before work that night. (gotta love night shift!) The best part of the show was that a couple that own a craft store in the mall, and the ones who put on the shows, asked me to put some of my items in their shop!!! They are very selective on who they ask, so I was very honored to be invited! I still need to get all the details ironed out and decide what I want to try first, but it's definitely worth a shot! They ask for a 6 month lease, which I think is a nice time frame to see if it is going to work out. That will give me Summer, Fall and part of Winter. I'll definitely do another post when I get all set up and keep you updated on how things are going. This was my last show for Spring, so I was very happy that it went well :) And I'm anxious to see how many of those business cards I handed out bring in more business...fingers crossed!!!

When All Else Fails...Read the Instructions!

I've had some success with engraving photos and was pretty happy with the results. I had a friend at work order a custom photo plaque and I was happy to take on the task. He emailed me his photo, I did the necessary photo editing and started engraving. Here are the results...

I was SO disappointed when this was done! It was too light, there was no contrast to the engraving...it was a mess! And I couldn't even attempt to sell this to him! I remembered I had printed off a tutorial a while back for engraving photos on wood. Off I went to read the instructions and try again! There were just a few minor adjustments I needed to make to the original photo and I was ready to give it another try. Here is the second try after reading the tutorial...

Isn't it awesome!!! It is by far the coolest engraving I've done so far! I'm very proud of the results and I hope his girlfriend loves her gift! Now my mind is racing with other things I can make out of engraved wood photos!!! You'll be seeing more of these soon!