Archive for the ‘Craft Show Blurbs’ Category
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“The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
~ William Morris
We have been working on our design lines for 2011. That involves coming up with a basic concept, and then working it into many forms. For example, I thought it would be fun to have a lolly pop flower type of line this year. Simple and cute. So, the first thing I did was to make a few sample nuggets. I played around with the bracelet nuggets first. Once I had the basic look I wanted, I started to figure out how I would like the dangle earrings, varied pins and pendants, bracelets, and tiny studs to look. Brook wanted to work with the new technology of crinkled dichroic glass in a line this year. So, I had him sketch some idea of what he would like it to look like. We are introducing these new lines at the Philadelphia Buyers Market this week. In addition to the 2 new lines, we have taken advantage of advancing glass technology to update 4 of our older lines, too. It has been a very complex season preparing for this year’s new lines and updates~! Then, we wanted to show our wholesale buyers photos of these lines to take away from the wholesale show… but we wanted to keep our prices low. So, for the first time, I designed the color catalog supplement, and we went to Staples for a reduced cost printing. Not quite as flashy as our past color supplements, but we are quite pleased with what we’ve come up with. It is a new look… like a sunny day at the beach. It does show some of our glass colors rather well, too. Here are our 2011 line sheet supplements to go with our color catalog (the one’s shop owners buy from… sorry, these are NOT retail prices). But, we figured you would enjoy seeing what we’ve been up to for the last month~!
I gotta tell ya, I am having so much fun creating the Hayden Brook Online Shopping Cart`! Brook and I have been loading items onto the website for several weeks now, with the goal of having 1000 items on line at all times. It is a pretty big goal, and more time consuming than I had originally thought. To photograph and list items does take a bit of time. But, people are looking at our work, and buying it too~! One of the things I am particularly enjoying is that I don’t have to work within a restricted medium category. At craft shows, we are pretty much limited to selling glass jewelry. But, in our real lives, we like to create other items as well. I am also a fiber artist. Most of the time I am the sole recipient of that passion. But now I have about 20 Hayden Brook Handbags on the site… well… most of them are listed… few more are waiting to be listed. We have experimented with other functional items. You can see them in our store~! We sold a purse today. What a mixed emotion… so happy, yet sad, to see it find a good home. Come visit the HaydenBrook store: Click here for our Online Store~!
We see a lot of the same customers come back again and again for more HBS jewelry. They will have gotten compliments, or will have gotten personally attached to what they had already bought, and find they “need” more… maybe in a different color… blue, pink, green, rusty oranges…. or hot mixes of all the colors~!
Meet Jillian. Age 7. Jillian is one of our returning customers. She looks for us specifically when she comes to a PA Guild craft show. We see a lot of these precious youngsters returning to Hayden Brook, year after year. We have tiny button earrings, adjustable rings, bobby pins, 1″ barrettes, pins, and even pendants sized for this younger generation. I love when parents have the discipline to make their children look at every booth in the craft show, and then decide what they want, after they have seen everything. Very, very often, I see cuties like Jillian come back and get their special something from us. And look at this girl! She is so cute! She makes me smile even without buying jewelry! Jillian chose a pink and gold rainbow colored 1″ barrette. I have to admit she has fine taste in jewelry. It was the best tiny barrette we had on display that day.
We have seen other “Jillian’s” over the last 17 years. Some of them are now in college, studying art, or jewelry. Some are working as artisans, selling on etsy, or displaying down the aisle from us at wholesale shows. Others are craft collectors. Of course, to perpetuate the craft industry we need to raise up future buyers! They start out as young girls, hoping to find a rainbow that they can hold in their hand, or wear in their hair.
Brook delights in “custom fitting” an adjustable ring on a tiny little finger, and seeing these youthful faces burst into big smiles. And then, we get to see them grow up into lovers of fine art and craft. Still glowing with satisfaction when we outfit them with a set of earrings and a pendant, to match the scarf they just bought down the aisle. One more reason to love my amazing job~! (Thank YOU God~!)
What an exciting day… well, that is the last 3 days. We have been playing around with our new photo equipment. We have taken photos of most of the HBS Line Boards, and we have taken some new jury slide shots as well. Overall, I am pleased. I love what computer technology has made available to regular old people like me. Cropping, adjusting the exposure… good stuff! Make sure to reallllly explore the updated web-page. There are changes on most of the pages.
We head to the Rosen Wholesale show this weekend to meet with our stores (www.buyersmarketofamericancraft.com)… then off to the Poconos the next week to sell to the public (www.poconocrafts.com)! Always a good time! Come visit us!
Say a prayer for Hayden Brook Studios as we delve deeper into cyber space. We have made an investment into some photo equipment so that we can take better photos of our work. See our “Design Line Board” inside this white tent. The tent will help to eliminate hot-spots from bright lights needed to illuminate our work for photography. This provides an even and consistent light. (EZ Cube Link). We also got a gorilla pod tripod for our camera. We now need to get busy snapping off the shots of our work. GorillaPod link
WHOLESALE CRAFTS.COM – We are looking into selling our work on this website…. wholesale of course. It should be a great addition to our wholesale shows. We have been exploring their web-site and talking to them this week. It looks like it could be a “fit”. Visit the link: wholesalecrafts.com.
We decided to make 1000 pieces of jewelry to donate to the kids in the Iris Ministries Orphanages in Mozambique, Africa. Why 1000? 100 just wasn’t enough. Abundant blessings poured out of the overflow from our hearts! Kids LOVE getting gifts for Christmas! It was so fun putting these gifts together, too, like playing “arts & crafts”. We made a bunch of stuff that is quite different from what we do for a living. It is sad to be finished now. Although these children are in orphanages, technically they aren’t orphans. They know Daddy God, “Our Father Who art in Heaven”! For more info on Iris Ministries, here is their web-site: irismin.org. I really would love to visit these people some day! This is a mind blowing ministry. I have tremendous respect for Iris Ministries. They are changing the course of a nation. There is a photo gallery at irismin.org where you will find lots of fabulous pictures of some of the people who might soon be wearing the precious gems you can go see in this photo album link! Merry Christmas Everyone! Let’s count our blessings and rejoice!
Here is a link to more photos of this jewelry,
lots of variety, goofy fun stuff: Jewelry for Mozambique!
We are working on our 2010 Advertisement Photo… the one that goes into Niche Magazine to promote our booth at the Rosen Show (AKA: Philadelphia Buyers Market). We’re thinking that this is the piece we are going to use. This might even be the photo we are going to use. We don’t usually do our own photography, but we thought we’d play around a little bit. What do you think? It is my own pendant. I liked it enough to keep it. It looks like candy… eye candy! Yummy! Hard to believe that is is made up from random scraps. Believe it or not, the scrap pieces take longer to make than the pieces I specifically cut glass for… all the hunting and digging for the right color in the right shape takes extra time.
PS – DON’T FORGET ABOUT OUR HOME SHOW COMING UP… CHECK OUR SCHEDULE FOR MORE DETAILS! HBS SCHEDULE
Fall is here and we are into our busy season. We have three good shows coming up. You can look at the schedule on our website to see where we will be over the next 2 months. I’m already tired and it is only starting now.
This is my favorite season to ride my bike. We went out for a 20 mile ride today. It was stunning! The trees and fields are so beautiful. I find that I put more rusty colors into our jewelry during this season. Our fan club seems to appreciate that. The jewelry made in fall color themes sells very well this time of year. Come find out why. You’ve got to see it for yourself to understand the appeal.
I am in the process of making a list of retail stores who buy from Hayden Brook Studios on a regular basis. I am hoping to find active websites of each store to include in that page. It probably will not be a complete list of stores who buy from us.
This is a photo from An American Craftsman Gallery. They are located in NYC, right across the street from Radio City Music Hall… You can see some of the name reflected in their window. I would say that An American Craftsman is probably our top wholesale account. They have multiple store locations and they buy from us every month, very faithfully. We are so grateful to have such a good working relationship with them!
Visit their website: An American Craftsman