A busy and productive few weeks

It seems I start every blog post with apologies for not posting more frequently. It's such a conundrum; I want to post more, yet I get busy and the time slips by me and before I know it, a week (or three or four!) have passed. It means so much to me when people stop by to visit, yet I don't do more to keep you coming. Sigh. This is an issue that keeps coming up, and I don't have a solution as yet.

But enough about that! Let me share what's been keeping me so busy. First off, I did a holiday craft bazaar a couple of weekends ago at a local elementary school here in Portland. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun and I'm so glad I did it! I met some wonderful folks, made some good connections and made a little money.Here are some photos of my booth. We had a fairly small area and were crammed in like sardines, but that just added to the neighborly feel among us vendors.

These are an overview of my booth. I spent the weekend before busily coming up with some display options.


 

I found this Eiffel tower wine rack at Marshall's that is the perfect display rack for necklaces, I was so excited!

The white object with the earrings hanging from it is a candle lantern that my friend loaned me. Perfect!

Ok, enough boring photos of the craft show! Let me show you what I made this weekend (with a little back story). On Friday, one of the local thrift store chains had a 50% off everything in the store sale. So I booked over there after work to check out the goods. I found a slightly dated brown tweedy blazer and a maroon sweatshirt. Total cost: $6.00. I spent much of yesterday deconstructing and reconstructing those two pieces into one. I embellished and this is what I ended up with:

 This is  a pin that can be removed and used on other things...

 here's where I cut the sleeves off both items and rejoined them together...

Here is a close-up of the front.

Today I went to a monthly craft show to scope out a possible vending opportunity. I wore my new jacket and got loads of interest in it, so I will be making lots of fabric flower pins at the very least. I'd love to hit one of the shows before Christmas, so we'll see...