Forth Valley Open Studios (pt 1)

What a brilliant weekend, opening up my home and workspace to the local area to get the chance to meet my neighbours and talk about my work.

When I signed up for the Open Studios in January, I had no idea that things, life, would be so...crazy.  I had thought that I would make a bunch of hats to sell and that would be that.

Er, yeah, so that was binned.  And so, the challenge:

How does one make crochet design and photography eCourses interesting and enaging, whilest also fufilling your child's life-long dream??

Well, it goes something like this:

 

       

Notes:

Lemonade Stand:

Ellis has ALWAYS wanted a lemonade stand, after seeing them in America. When a friend suggested it, I knew it would be perfect. We positioned him out front and got a lot of traffic because of it. The lemonade stand is made from the cheap ikea kids table.  We painted the top of the table and chairs with blackboard paint.  The dowels are screwed into the sides and the bunting strung across the top, held by tacks. 

E was also responsible for the cupcakes, ergo he ate a lot of cupcakes. He loved it.  Kat and I are making a film of the day and I have some lovely footage of the song he was singing to get people to come to "buy" lemonade.

Postcards:

The postcards were from Mail Boxes Etc on their in-house card.  I clipped the corners for the rounded effect. I had originally hoped to do Moo postcards, but I left it too late.  However, I am very impressed with these and they worked out to be about £40 for 200.

Displays and Activities:

I found this bit the hardest...how to represent my work well and in a way that is more coherent than it feels sometimes. Of course, readers of blogs "get" the whole photographer/crochet designer thing (I hope), but in real life they can be perceived as quite a strange combination (even if for me, they stem from the same need to get an image out of my head and into reality).

To try to convey all of this, I filled the house with photos. The photo wall is made of the cheapest of the cheap ikea frames. I laid them out on the floor and then hung them.  The frames are so light, they don't hang all that well, so needed a bit of blu tack on the back to get them to stay in place in addition to the nail.

Patterns, business cards and were generally on display and I transformed the TV shelves into a Capturing Childhood unit, with the videos playing on loop and course information available. 

I also ran mini-workshops on yarn dyeing with Kool-aid and spinning.  Far and away, spinning was the most popular. Everyone asked about the wheel and I was able to really spend some time with it.  I am so torn about spinning.  I love it when I do it, but I never have time.  I am always in two minds about selling it, but I just can't stand to part with it!

Well, I say that spinning was the most popular, but really it was this:

Come back tomorrow for some awesome crochet mustache action and a run down of the booth!