Challenge 52 - week 10 - fete preparation (part two)

I'm getting there!
I've made four new flowery bracelets, which are always popular.
Over the last few days I've been making lots of strands of hair beads. I was given a bag of (unworn) glittery hair clips by a friend and had wondered what to do with them, whether to just sell them individually as a 'cheaper option' for the usual children with 20p in pennies clutched in their hand...but then had the idea of hair braid style strands.
A few years ago at the local school fete a hairdresser mum used to do coloured hair strands which she melted onto your hair with her straighteners (I used to go for blue or purple!) - this was really popular and she used to have a queue for most of the afternoon.
So I thought I would attach a strand of beads to the clips with a charm at the end to finish it off. I've made 15 so far and have more clips to use, so guess what I'll be doing in a minute?!

I've no idea how I'm going to display them, maybe just lay them out on the table. Unfortunately I don't have a TARDIS for a stall, I've got far too much stock for one table! Hopefully if the weather is dry and we don't have to put the sides on the gazebo, I'll bring the old pasting table with me too and put it on one side of our space at right-angles to the main table. My daughter Rebecca helps me on my stall and usually does the children's end, so she could have a table to herself. Hmm, better get some more cloth then - another thing to add to the "to do" list!

If you're in the area and fancy coming along, my fetes are
25th June - Keston Primary School, Keston Avenue, Old Coulsdon, Surrey
26th June - Caterham Dene Hospital, Caterham Hill (opposite Queen's Park)
9th July - Wallington High School for Girls, Wallington, Surrey

Right, I'm off to vaccuum the floor and make some more of those bead strands....
~Jane

Challenge 52 - week 9 - Fete preparation (part one)

Over the last week I have started preparing for the three Summer fetes I have coming up. I have my boxes of stock for stalls and jewellery parties separate from online stock, so got them all out to do a stocktake. I should probably make tidy lists in Word and keep them on the computer so I can delete things as they sell, but I haven't got round to this so far and every year do a big long list on lined A4 paper. I do have a huge amount of things to sell!

I want to cater for all tastes and all ages, so make a lot of childrens' jewellery at as low a price as I can, as there are always little girls coming up to my stall looking longingly at the pretty vast array and then saying "what can I get for 50p?"...well I'm afraid I don't really have anything that cheap, but I've made a bunch of necklaces I sell for £1.00, which are a silver acrylic heart charm on a length of ribbon which is tied to just slip over their heads. I still get some children who try to haggle with me over prices, but I just smile back and say "no, the price on the label is the price I'm selling it for" and point them in the direction of the cheaper items!

I have so far listed all the necklaces I'm taking (though I'll be making a few more, better to have too many than too few!). I even have a bag of "spares" to replenish my revolving stand of childrens/teens type necklaces - plenty of skull & crossbones, Hello Kitty, plastic stars, silver hearts etc. Last night made 16 pairs of clip on earrings as I realised I only had a couple of pairs left and neither were very 'little girly'. I wonder how they'll do this year, there were quite a few girls without pierced ears who bought them last Summer.
It's funny, each year there's something different which is the 'best seller'. A couple of years ago I sold loads of little seed bead bracelets...oh I forgot I do have something for under 50p, I bought these in (I gave up making them as the knotting drives me mad!) and sell them for 20p each...so bought in another lot and last year hardly sold any, hmm, I must remember to get them out of the loft and see how it goes this year!

Next job is to stock take the bracelets....

Challenge 52 - Week 8 - Twitter & Favicon added

Hello again!
We had another internet-free couple of days as there was either a fault on the BT line, or more likely the copper cables were stolen again. Apparently there were several cases in the South East of this over the weekend, we've had it twice this year! Luckily, BT were very quick to sort it out this time, so as you can see I'm back online.

I've done a couple of Challenge 52 type things today (making up for lost time!) - I put a 'Follow me on Twitter' badge on my website http://www.pirate-treasures.com/ and made a Favicon. If you don't know, a favicon is the little icon next to the URL of the website in the top bar - look at the little orange B of Blogger! I used http://www.favicon.co.uk/ to make mine; all you have to do is use a picture, photo or logo (made mine in GIMP) and upload it to the website where it will be transformed into a .ico file and resized. As it's soooo tiny I found it a bit difficult to make a decent one which still reflects my website, so just put a P and T in Vivaldi font on a cream background. It's a bit small to actually read, but it's the same style as my banner so will do! My website hosts http://www.create.net/ just add it as a widget and it appears like magic, so I'm afraid I can't offer any advice on how to add yours if you don't have a Create site - other than to get one!!
The Twitter follow badge is a bit of html from Twitter's official ones, just a simple one so as not to clutter up my homepage.

My next main plan of action for the website is to make a gallery (I've probably said this before) but that will take a while as there's loads of photos to add and I'm not sure how much webspace it will take.

The other thing I'm doing at the moment is stocktaking for the summer fetes I have booked, but more of that another time...

~Jane