Getting ready for the Festival!

Hi everyone! I'm one of the newbies, Susan Kennedy, of SueBeads! I'm really excited to be here and be able to contribute along with an amazing mix of artistic ladies!  Thanks to Jennifer for choosing me and for providing the forum for this wonderful blog!

I thought today for my first post I would tell you what has been taking most of my time for the past month.  I am vending at the Delmont Apple 'N Arts Festival this coming weekend (Oct 6-7) and is supposed to be a really big one (35-40K people)!  I'm nervous - this will be my first year with good weather.  Last year we had a monsoon for the entire weekend, no one really came to the show, and we all closed up early on Sunday.  This weekend is supposed to be incredibly beautiful, so fingers crossed!  I hope I have enough inventory but at this point, it is what it is!  This will be a learning experience for me.

I have been concentrating my time on things other than jewelry - I have a lot of jewelry left from last year, and my jewelry doesn't really seem to sell.  It's priced maybe a bit higher because of the art beads and sterling I use. One thing I have been doing is melting glass bottles in my kiln!  I make recycled wine bottle cheese trays, and recycled beer bottle spoon rests!  They are fun, and I love that they are using up something that would otherwise go to a landfill!  We all have do do our part!  I can make two of these a day, one all day, and one all night.  The kiln has to get up to 1500 degrees to melt the bottle flat.  Then it slowly over hours and hours ramps down until you can take it out and have your finished product.

And of course, I have to make beaded wine bottle stoppers as well!  This is only a sampling, I have a large variety of colors that I make.  I really have fun with these and they are a nice, affordable hostess gift or holiday gift!

I have been making window ornaments as well.  I make the ornament hanger, out of silver plated 20 gauge wire, and I connect the hanger and the beads I made to vintage chandelier parts!  These are fun too!

I have also been spending a lot of time making bracelet beads.  I really enjoy making them and, even thought I don't even have or wear my own european style bracelet, I know lots who do!  I am making them mostly in sets of 5, because I think they would be great on a bracelet with a bunch of the silver spacers! 

Of course, I have some other items including jewelry that I'll be selling as well, but I just wanted to show you the things that I think are really fun!  So thanks for hearing about my show prep - I'll let you know how it goes!  Wish me luck!