The Mouse Market

Sketching on a Bumpy Road

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had a number of changes I’d like to implement in my booth display, and hopefully in time for my next show in a couple of weeks. These ideas are specific to my jewelry table, and not really applicable to my dollhouse show display, which will make sense once I explain what I have in mind. I sketched out a rough draft of the idea on a napkin while driving back from Knoxville–well, I wasn’t the one driving, as that would have been pretty impressive (or incredibly foolish, depending on how you look at things)–but since it’s about as intelligible as hieroglyphics, a little explaining is probably in order.

Summer in Paris Macaron Necklace

First off, I’m going to continue to use my blue table risers (which you can see in this picture), but I won’t be using my cork display boards, at least for this next show as I experiment with things a bit. The risers take up two-thirds of my table length-wise, and the remaining third typically serves as a spot for my mailing list sign-up, business cards, and other odds and ends. This time, I’d like to construct a simple wooden earring rack, and what I’m envisioning looks much like a book, propped open with shelves lining the inside (think science fair display, but with only two panels). My plan is to take two rectangular pieces of wood for the “pages” and one strip of wood that will serve as the spine of the book. Each rectangle will be attached to the spine with hinges so that I can fold the shelving unit up after each use. The inside will be lined with little wooden strips that will become ledges for my earrings, and I’ll stagger the strips so that the “book” will close easier.

Makeover: Fauxstess Cupcake Earrings

This wooden display will completely open up my table risers, and I plan to construct a few t-bar style necklace and bracelet stands out of wood scraps and collect random bowls and plates from the thrift store to create a more varied jewelry display on the risers. Ideally, I would like to have little “clumps” of products, such as a bowl filled with Parisian pastry earrings propped up in colored sand accompanied by a t-bar bracelet stand with similar accessories (and possibly a small selection of related dollhouse minis). That way, my table isn’t just a huge sea of earring cards, something that I think is a bit overwhelming for many shoppers, and I’ll also be able to fill more space with less product, something that will be helpful with the massive amount of room I have at this next show.

Poorly Lit View of My Tutorial CDs & Flyer

That leaves the space on the table surface in front of the wooden jewelry display. I’ll continue to use that as a spot for my mailing list and business cards, and I also have a set of CDs with my Summer Berry Tart tutorial that can be displayed here. The holiday custom order flyer that I brought to my last show was a huge hit, so I’m going to showcase that, along with a new flyer featuring custom jewelry options for the holidays, and these items should be more than enough to fill that space.

Chewy Fudge Cookies w/ Rainbow Chips

During the Louisville show, I had a bit of time to sketch and flesh out a few ideas for upcoming projects, and I even managed to tackle the conundrum of my banner makeover. Initially, I was planning on creating something similar to my current banner, only with watercolors, but so far, none of my experiments have really grabbed me, but while doodling at the show, the table of contents page of the current issue of Martha Stewart Living popped into my head, and I had an idea.

A Dollhouse Breakfast in the Works

My Very Messy Sketch

Hanging in the center of the box will be a little card with my business name, logo, and tagline, and on the right side of the sign will be an assortment of sweets, such as a fancy cake, a croquembouche, and a plate of cookies. On the left, I’ll have an assortment of savory dishes, such as a holiday ham, a vegetable platter, and garlic and sausages hanging from the “ceiling.” I’ll save the little box so that I can take a new picture when I choose, perhaps changing the wallpaper background and some of the dishes for different seasons or holidays, and I also want to include a few human-sized objects, such as a thimble or a button, to give the viewer a sense of scale and also to impart a sort of Borrowers feel to the scene. [Update: I built the box last night, so all that's left is creating the foods to go inside and selecting a card for my logo/tagline.]

Croissants in Peril

What I like about this idea is that all of the pieces that I make for the banner can then be sold in my shop, so I’ll be making double use of my time, and I also love that I can change it to suit my mood or the season. Also, as much as I love the illustrated banner I have now, I think I need to showcase my foods so that viewers immediately know what the Mouse Market is all about with the help of strong, eye-catching visuals. Tomorrow, I’ll share ideas that I have for spiffing up my booth display, and hopefully I’ll be able to implement these changes before my upcoming show!

Cuteness at Great Smoky National Forest

We’re back! The Louisville show was a ton of fun, and while it wasn’t the best show I’ve had in a financial sense, I still did quite well, and it was totally worth it in other ways. I met so many wonderful people, both vendors and customers, and I also met one of the regional coordinators for the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts (NAME), who was a wealth of helpful information, and she convinced me that I needed to apply for the NAME National Convention in July 2011. The deadline was yesterday, which was also the day that we were driving home, so there was a bit of circus-style finagling at FedEx Office as I pulled photos from my Flickr page to use for the application, but I managed to get everything in on time.

Unbelievably Gorgeous Rainbow Falls Trail

Why all the fuss? Well, for one thing, it’s a huge show with tons and tons of people, and the vendor selection process is pretty competitive, so it would be really exciting to have the opportunity to participate. Of course, the stories of artists who sold out on the first day at past conventions also doesn’t damper my enthusiasm.

Straight-Branched Coral Fungi, Perhaps?

I have so many things to share about the trip, but I want to give you the low down on my Etsy shop sale before I get carried away. While talking to other vendors and shoppers at the show, my eagerness to start making holiday minis and jewelry, which was already running high, reached near-dangerous levels, and I’ve decided to put a ton of pieces on sale in order to make room for my new pieces, otherwise my workspace will be completely overrun by teeny, tiny foods. So…be sure to check out the sale section of my shop, because there are roughly 80 discounted items, including loads of dollhouse pieces, and many of them are marked as much as 50% off. (I told you I went a little nuts.)

Tomorrow, more news on my upcoming projects, as well as additional thoughts on the Louisville show and how I plan to modify my booth for my St. Louis show in two weeks.

Original Martha Stewart Cake

I was feeling inspired yesterday to try something Halloween-y, so I decided to tackle a Martha Stewart haunted house cake. I ended up making a few changes, but for the most part, I worked very closely with the photo at left. For the base of the cake, I used up leftover clay from the “eat me” caning debacle, and since I plan to make a great deal of holiday cakes in the coming months, I’m pretty sure I can reuse the rest of that massive project’s leftovers. Rather than swirling the icing like I normally do, I used a toothpick to smooth the frosting in one, long sweep, much like I would with an offset spatula when frosting a real cake.

A Haunted, Little Cake

No question, the house and the tree took the most time, and I made them out of a thin sheet of chocolate brown clay, slicing away sections here and there with a blade. The shingles are cocoa-dusted white chocolate pieces, and I made a Skinner blend of yellow and orange for the windows and doors. I chose to make a little ghost peeking out of the front entryway, rather than the figure in the Martha cake. The crumbled dirt on the tops of the layers is baked clay, chopped to look like chocolate, and the chocolate covered almonds ringing the bottom layer are little balls of a darker chocolate clay. I had hoped that there would be more of a contrast between the frosting and the other components, but after baking, the frosting took on a much darker hue, so I’ll have to adjust next time. (See more pics on my Flickr page.) Sneak peek: When I get back, I’ll be working on a tutorial for a haunted gingerbread house.

Chocolate-y Details

Well, this is it, folks. I’ll be gone until next Tuesday night, and if you happen to purchase anything in my Etsy shop, keep in mind that orders won’t ship until first thing Wednesday morning, so apologies in advance for the delay. If you’re in the Louisville area, be sure to check my show page for directions to the show, and in the meantime, have a great week, and I look forward to sharing my mini show stories when I get back!

Replacement Buffet Section Minis

Well, believe it or not, I’m actually ready for the show. I’ve finished all of the miniatures that I needed in order to fill any gaps in my display created by Etsy sales, and since I typed up pricing placards weeks ago, all I had to do was double check that any sold items had been removed and hit “print.” I do need to make a quick trip to FedEx Office to get a copy of my holiday custom order flyer printed and laminated, but that’s about it. I can’t wait!

Cookies Galore!

Last night, I had a few unscheduled hours after dinner, and it was too dark to make new jewelry pieces, so I worked on my Halloween-Christmas plan. I managed to fill two pages with ideas, and then I carefully went over every piece and compiled a list of any additional supplies that I would need to create them. Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday, and I can’t tell you how eager I am to start making spooky cakes, cookies and other treats, along with a few miniature paper decorations and other non-food items that I’ll be experimenting with this year.

P.S. Check out my Flickr page for more photos of my recent minis.

Playing Dress Up Sugar Cookie Mice Earrings

Over the past six months, I’ve received a handful of emails from businesses requesting wholesale or consignment information, and I’ve been very reluctant to do that sort of thing, partly because I don’t want to sell my pieces at 50% less than what I can make in my Etsy shop, since I’m already making such a slim profit margin given the time that goes into each piece, but also because I want to maintain exclusivity of my work. But…a few days ago one of the co-owners of a lovely gallery in Seattle, Assemble Gallery and Studio, contacted me about consigning some pieces for the holiday season, and after paying a visit to their website I fell in love with the place. Their workshop/lecture listings alone was enough to make me swoon–sewing! Bookbinding! Printmaking! *sigh*

Long story short, I’ve decided to work with them on a consignment basis this fall/winter, and while I will likely return to selling pieces strictly in my shop after the holidays are over, I’m definitely much more open to selling a select amount of pieces in various shops and galleries during the busy gift-buying season. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes, and if anyone has any wholesale/consignment tales of their own to share, comment away!

Red Velvet Cake

In other exciting news, I was finally able to purchase a pound of Silicone Plastique, which means that I can make high-quality molds for regularly-shaped pieces, something for which I previously had to shell out $4-6 per mold. That also means that I might start selling molds in my shop in the not-so-distant future, and I’m toying with the idea of creating mold and tutorial sets as well, i.e. a cupcake tutorial with a cupcake mold, donut tutorials with molds, etc.

Last bit of news: I created a holiday meal flyer for my upcoming show, advertising a selection of festive entrées and sides that customers can pre-order for the holidays. Since I won’t have time (or display dishes) to make turkeys or hams in time for the show, I at least wanted to show off a handful of pictures that I took of my recent custom order to gauge what sort of interest exists for such holiday pieces. We’ll see how it goes!

Blueberry Pancakes Custom Order

Last night, I wasn’t in the mood to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so we ended up making an assortment of quick and easy side dishes to munch on, including some tempeh strips tossed in peanut-satay sauce (the tempeh was made locally!), sweet potato wedges with honey-butter sauce, and the best pancakes in the entire universe. No, really. I’ve been collecting recipes from Yoga Journal, Vegetarian Times, and other sources for a few months, stowing them all away in a binder, but I’ve never used them, which is pretty silly, so last night, I planned out our week’s menu from the binder, and we tried the White Pig Blueberry Pancakes, a recipe from a B&B/animal sanctuary in Virginia.

Pizza Pendants Custom Order

The pancakes have more sugar than normal, which is undoubtedly why I like them so much, and they’re great with non-wheat flours, too, such as spelt or oat flour. You’ll need 2 c. flour, 6 T. cane sugar, 2 T. nonaluminum baking powder, 1/4 t. salt, 2 c. milk (almond or other non-dairy milks work great), and 2 c. blueberries, or whatever fruit you’d like to use. Combine all of the ingredients, except for the milk and fruit, in a bowl and whisk to combine. Slowly whisk in the milk and combine until smooth, adding more milk if necessary (don’t over mix, or your pancakes will be tough). Cook your pancakes on a greased griddle, topping each pancake with fruit before flipping it over to cook the other side. These pancakes are so light and fluffy with a deliciously sweet flavor.

Packaging for My Etsy Shop

On a less edible note, I finished a custom order for a stack of mini blueberry pancakes, which were supposed to mimic this photo. I’m quite happy with them, and hopefully, I’ll be able to keep my energy up today in order to finish a set of miniatures to fill up the last blank spot in my show display. I can’t believe that we’ll be leaving next Thursday! I’m really looking forward to the show, but I’m also super excited about our side trip to Knoxville. I hope the city appeals to us, because it certainly would be nice to finally settle on a place to move next year!

The Finished Holiday Spread

I was so tired while writing yesterday’s post that I don’t really feel as if I did my recent holiday meal project justice, considering that it took an entire week of painstaking mini work to complete. I’ve uploaded a ridiculous amount of photos to Flickr, so be sure to take a peek, and I’ll go into a bit more detail in today’s post about the things that I learned while making these foods.

Turkey w/ Finished Sage

As I’ve mentioned before, translucent clay is your best friend when making mini meats (and most foods, really). The holiday ham was primarily translucent clay, and I created two mixes, one with a dab of darker pink, the other with a dab of lighter pink, and I used those two mixes in a Skinner blend, which was then used to make the ham. I shudder at the vision of my earlier ham, which was so embarrassing that I ended up dismantling it and using the pineapples and cherries for another project.

Cool Weather Vegetable Crudités

I used to be quite averse to using paint of any kind in my work, and I can trace that silly rule back to one of Angie Scarr’s wonderful polymer clay how-to books (and they really are wonderful–it was my own fault for working the no-paint suggestion into my mini manifesto). There is something incredibly impressive about creating intricate color patterns solely with clay, and for the most part, I never paint details onto my work, but for the holiday turkey, I wanted to give the sage leaves a fuzzier, silvery appearance, and a white-blue paint mix, dabbed on with a dry brush, made sense. I’m excited to experiment with more carefully placed paints here and there in my work for added realism!

Holiday Meal Detail

Finally, in many of my recent projects, I’ve begun using crushed artist pastels to create peels and rinds, rather than a thin sheet of clay. For example, the apples in the turkey garnish and the radishes in the vegetable plate were both created by forming a ball of translucent and white clay, shaping it as desired, and brushing the outside with pigments. For the radishes, I baked them after coloring and sliced the tops off after they cooled. If you need to add details to the inside of the piece before baking, like I did with the apple halves, which required seeds and texture, you can slice before baking, but be sure to use a very sharp blade and a swift motion, or the pigments can get “dragged” into the white interior of the piece.

So, what holiday projects do you have in mind? I know that I’ll be making a small assortment of holiday turkeys, hams and side dishes for my shop, and I also have a project involving gingerbread, which will have to remain a secret for the time being. Hope you’re having a lovely week!

The (Almost) Finished Turkey

I know I’ve been neglecting the ol’ blog lately, but I just finished the holiday meal custom order that I’ve been working on for the past week, so I should have a bit more time in my schedule. I do need to replace a handful of foods to fill up a few holes that have appeared in my show display thanks to Etsy sales, but that shouldn’t take me too terribly long. After that, my goal is to make as many jewelry pieces as possible in anticipation of the September show, since I’ll only have two weeks in between my show in Louisville and the September event.

If things go according to plan and and I have a little wiggle room for modest spending after the show, I’m going to purchase the license for my online shop, and slowly but surely, you’ll see some changes begin to unfold at the Mouse Market. I know I’ve explained my tendency to get bored with the look of things from time to time, and the fires of change have certainly been lit beneath my behind, judging by the fact that all of my recent journaling has focused on my plan for Mouse makeovers.

Not-Yet-Varnished Veggies & Potatoes

For one thing, I’ve continued to experiment with the watercolors here and there, so hopefully I’ll be ready to launch my revised banner relatively soon. With the new banner, I’m aiming for a different “color atmosphere” with bright, yet soft, colors taking center stage, much like the decorating collages I put together in an earlier post (the pastry shop and kitchen collages). My goal is to transfer this color change to my Etsy shop as well so the photos look a bit more tied together.

Before I sign off, I want to leave you with a few random tidbits that might be of interest:

• If you have an Etsy shop, you might find this application super helpful.
• For a cute and clever use for Moo’s Mini Cards, check out how Etsy seller, Tamar, incorporates the cards into her product packaging.
• My Redfield Beauty Tomato Earrings were featured in a Try Handmade post, and the website is a wealth of handcrafted eye candy, so be sure to check it out.
• From the above mentioned post, I followed a link to a seed-selling Etsian, the Bear Foot Shaman. Their shop is awesome!

Happy Wednesday, and I’ll be back in mini-making action tomorrow!

Holiday Ham Extraordinaire

I’ve been working on a custom order for the past couple of days, and I’ve finished the holiday ham (along with a few other Thanksgiving sides). I’m thankful that I received this commission now, because I greatly underestimated the amount of time the ham would take. Now that I have a more realistic timetable, I have a much better idea of what to charge for future holiday hams, which is handy, because I was planning on making a few hams, turkeys, and various sides after my next show in preparation for fall and winter holidays. (See more pics of the meal on Flickr.)

Sweet Potato Casserole

I’m really excited with the way this order is shaping up. Most of the dishes required techniques that I had never tried before, and it’s been a serious challenge, which is good for my art. This is probably going to be the shortest post I’ve ever written, because apparently, challenges are pretty tiring, and I’m beat. More tomorrow…