While I was editing pics of my styled IKEA bookcase, I took one of the pictures I took and edited it into a little Christmas card. It's cringe but I am cringe, and I am free.
But seriously, thank you to anyone who reads this blog. I have been enjoying posting here this year and I appreciate your eyeballs passing over my pictures and words and thoughts and feelings. Hope you have a happy holiday season, whatever you celebrate -- or don't celebrate.
Okay, so I've been slowly collecting miniatures for years now. A couple of times I've been so lucky as to score furniture from thrift stores or eBay or Etsy, and I have even made some things. But mostly, my miniatures collection comes from the various craft stores that sell that kind of thing. Don't hate -- no ethical consumption under capitalism, et cetera!
I've been especially wanting to gather enough miniatures to believably fill in my IKEA Huset bookcase! Lately I've been putting stuff in it at random, loosely sticking to themes, and I decided to take pictures of some of my themed setups...
First is easiest: a kitchen display!
Jam jars; wooden dishes; pots and pans; ceramic teacups and saucers; a basket with a tiny pear and orange; books, including cookbooks and plant books; I am pretending the damask cube is one of those fabric drawer things. My favorite favorite favorite thing is the little gold scissors!!
Next idea: Christmas!
This one's pretty simple! I don't have much in the way of Christmas miniatures, because Christmas tends to be very primary in terms of colors. Red and green, of course, but also blue and yellow. Whereas I lean more pastel toned or earth toned or metallic. But these mini gifts are always everywhere in every miniatures section each year, so I have acquired a couple of packets on deep discount in the last few years. I got the mini bottle brush trees from the Target dollar spot a couple years back, and although they are large in scale for 1:12 or 1:16 scale, I think they still make for a super cute display!
Also in the shelf: a small scarf I knitted, all rolled up, and some miniature Christmas books. This gold mirror isn't Christmas-y per se, but I still think it works!
Finally: a cottagecore witch shelf!
I love this one!! I can imagine the owner of the items really clearly. I could have gone 100% witchy -- just spellbooks and spooky stuff -- or 100% cottagecore, with baskets and gardening supplies and herb books. But the rose quartz rabbit figurine, which I've had since childhood, inspired me to mash up the crystal boho white witch aesthetic with cottagecore! Bunnies, knitting, gardening, tiny mushrooms! I crocheted this rainbow rug from the same pattern from which I make rainbow pillows. I imagined it would go well with the yellow gingham sofa cover I have for the Huset sofa. But it looks sweet and soft here by this shelf, in my opinion!
I need you to know that this box holds a tiny but full deck of tarot cards!!! It's a bit hard to hold, so I put it in the lid of a small paper box I made years ago. I'd like to finagle a basket that's the perfect size for the deck. I'll probably need to get some twine and wrap a box to make a bespoke basket just for them...
Those are the three styles I messed around with today! Other ideas: craft/art room shelf (lots of knitting/yarn, an art set, maybe miniature paintings or drawings); bedroom shelf; shoe/bag collection shelf; an entire shelf of nothing but various mini mushrooms!
As I recently mentioned in a blog post or two, I've been hardcore focused on prepping for a craft fair! It happened this weekend!
This was my second year manning my own table. Which is a big deal for me! As an intensely shy person/introvert, this is a whole freaking undertaking for me in a social battery sense, let alone in the sense that I've been making enough items to even warrant having my own table in the first place. A ton of work! Executing my plans has taken up a lot of time and energy for me in the last couple of months.
I also invested a little chunk of money ($50! Nothing drastic) into my display, since I felt like last year's wasn't the most effective for me. Let me show you what I had going on this year...
I blocked out the background a little because I feel like it's hard to see, up against this highly textured 70s brick wall with photos hanging on it. I'm in the same spot as I was last year, so the background's the exact same!
Some other things are the same, too: some of my offerings, plus my little craft paper bunting! But I feel like the wire shelf added considerable height and the ability to display more, and that was an upgrade. I also bought a bracelet display stand so I could better display the bracelets I've been throwing together since October.
I didn't take many pictures at all, but I did take a quick video, and I captured some screenshots for it to show you what's on the table...
I had a lot of crochet on offer: rainbow pillows (also a couple of mini rainbow pillows), fingerless mitts, and earbands. I also had some other wearables: bear-eared barrettes and beaded jewelry. The rings are ones I've been making as a hobby and the bracelets are inspired by Taylor Swift friendship bracelets, but with Christmas lyrics instead of TS lyrics. Actually, I had a whole mess of Swiftie bracelets too.
All the jewelry was a dollar. I just feel like that's fun and accessible for people who didn't come to the market prepared to spend 15, 20, 30+ dollars on an artisan piece. And for kids/teens, of course. Also, I was just working with plastic and cheap glass beads! Nothing that would encourage me to charge any more than a single dollar!
I drew all my signage in Procreate on my iPad, printed it, and put them all in secondhand frames. Some of the frames are one I've had for like a decade, and painted. Others were one my mom had on hand.
BTW, yes, the misspelling of "barrettes" drives me nuts, but I had no idea it was even misspelled till way too late!!! "Barettes" looks more correct to me, even if it's not...
Last year I sold far more in the way of beaded rings than anything else. I foolishly expected that again, but this year, it was the reverse! I sold only a few rings and bracelets, but sold 4/5ths of my crochet mitts and earbands -- plus a couple of rainbow pillows.
Pictured above: the bracelet display, which rotates (!!! my bestie told me it has a nice ASMR sound) and my favorite pair of mitts. I didn't manage to get any better photos of these mitts with the bows on them, but I was thinking of the coquette fashion trend when making them, and they sold really quickly, both to the same gal. I only have this screencap from the quick video I took of my table, so the quality's not good. But I love the bows; I made them with a little french knitter!
I'm genuinely shocked at the way the mitts in particular flew off the shelf. I have been making them quite a lot over the past few weeks. But due to not selling much crochet last year, I expected the same this year. In fact, I said to my sister, "If I just sell one pair of mitts, I'll be happy!" But mitts were my first sale, my last sale, and people bought many more of them than any other item. One woman bought three pairs towards the end of the day. Another woman got on FaceTime with someone (a sister? mother? bestie?) and showed her all of my stuff. I heard the woman on the other end enthuse over the white and pale blue coquette mitts, with the bow. The woman bought the two similar pairs for herself and whoever to whom she was speaking. It was such a fun yet bewildering moment for me.
I mean, I think the mitts are cute, but I'm me. I have specific taste!
A fellow vendor at the fair bought a pair of flower-inspired mitts and they looked incredibly cute on her. She wore them the entire afternoon!!
I also saw a guy who had bought a rainbow pillow last year. He came up to my table, picked out some mitts for his wife, and said, "Last year I bought a rainbow pillow from you, and I love it!!" His enthusiasm struck me as so genuine -- rather than a nicety, know what I mean? -- that it makes me really happy just thinking about this interaction. It was so nice of him to say that!
Some awkward social moments aside (because, you know, Unfortunately, People) overall the market went super well for me. I didn't sell out of any particular item, but I came startlingly close with the mitts. Since I've been working adamantly on them, this is super rewarding.
Also, I made enough money outright to buy a Blythe and have some left over. So, fair warning, I absolutely bought a new Blythe!
I thought before it's too close to Christmas time, I'd share these pics of Plummery looking autumnal! Dressed for the chill in the air! Her dress is divine and to die for. Look at that bodice!!! Look at that little orange Peter Pan collar!
Recently a tag was going around on Instagram: "Post your favorite stock Blythe." I'm not sure if I have absolute favorites in terms of Blythes, but I adore Dear Lele Girl and to this day consider myself so lucky to have this little mori girl. She was a grail doll for me and I love her, and so I posted her on my Insta stories for that tag. And I felt motivated to take pictures of her today.
It's hard to see her socks, but they're rust-colored and I sewed 'em! I also made her scarf!
dress: DressingBlythe
ear muffs: Reve de Rui
boots: helloCoolCat
scarf: knitted by me!
socks: made by me!
I'm quite simply aching to take a redhead family picture, with Plummery, Winny, and Citron!!! As of yet I've only dressed Citron once, and I'm the most puzzled about her personal style. I gotta figure that out. It's tempting to stick with the Victorian theme?? Adventurous yet vintage? Gibson Girl Archaeologist? Hmmm...
Haha, well! I have been crocheting so much that I've effed up my left wrist. I've done this before, and sensed in these past couple of weeks it would happen again unless I was careful. I have been trying to be careful... but I was still shocked Pikachu when yesterday my wrist seized up while playing the guitar. Who could have seen this coming??
Waaah. All I want to do is crochet, so. It's a bummer!!
If you read my last post, you might have seen that I learned how to do the tulip stitch. With that knowledge I made the above pictured little cream-colored fingerless mitts, with pale pink tulips and dark green "stems." I love these and have been wearing them everywhere. They already look super beat up because I've been wearing them on an almost daily basis.
I've been crocheting so much in large part because I'm prepping for a small craft market -- the same one I did last year. It's T-minus one week out! I have until the 15th to finish stuff up.
I honestly do not anticipate a ton of interest in my wares, but did my hyperfocus get activated nevertheless? Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. I'll have beaded jewelry again, in addition to crochet pillows and these mitts and earbands. No pics of the jewelry just yet, but I did get this wire shelf off Amazon on Black Friday and think it'll make a better display than the one I had last year.
I've just been piling stuff up here as I've made it. I'll only figure out how exactly I am going to arrange everything the night before or day of, I believe. But look at these cute blue mitts with the daisies appliqued on! I think they're super cute. I have a coral/gold/brown pair of tulip mitts finished, and a pair with purple tulips in the works currently. (I can only hope I'll finish them in time; it depends on my wrist.)
I also have some plain mitts with zero froof or frills, but most of the mitts have scalloped trim crocheted on, and some of them have crocheted bows at the wrist!
I feel like my eyes are bigger than my plate, so to speak. If my wrist was in good working condition I would be crocheting some appliques for both the earbands and the mitts, and I'd be making up some more miniature rainbow pillows. And besides that, I meant to make some clay ornaments and never got around to it!
There's always next year, and it's never too early to begin prep. Or so I've learned.