Open Studios, Holiday Arts Happening Recap

Western Avenue Studios had a special second Holiday Open Studios on December 8th and I had a great time! Faithful readers will recall I had a migraine for the previous one, but this past Saturday found me in top form and ready to go. I will admit I was a bit frazzled as I had a show on Sunday as well.

Sometimes the packaging and such take up enormous swaths of time. I decided to redesign the stickers I put on my jewelry boxes, that had me peeling and re-sticking for quite a while. I also adhered return address labels to all the receipts in my receipt books. I've never had any really good way to package my barrettes so I created a pillow box template and started cutting them out and assembling, then of course those needed a sticker too! I shredded tissue to put in egg boxes then I cut and folded egg info cards. I printed and cut up business cards too! When I have decided on my new logo, I will have business cards professionally printed.

So Saturday went really well! People came through and bought my things, though maybe not as rabidly as on the 1st, but they did buy and I am grateful! I saw friends and met new people. I am really enjoying the friendship of the other artists in the building.

I sold out of my newest flower/nest pin within the first hour and a half! This put me in a bit of a spin as I could see myself at the Worcester show lacking my one hot item! I worked all day to replenish my stock and was very successful.


In the evening, D came to help me pack up and load the car. We were able to go home around 8:30. I stayed up later to be really, really ready for Sunday.



The sunrise on Sunday morning in Lowell:


Sunday morning, D drove us to the DCU center in Worcester where we were able to bring the car right into the building to unload! Very cool and convenient. I have never met a nicer bunch of people than the volunteers and staff of stArt on the Street. They were right there and ready to help unload! It was a well organized show.

It was very cold with that big door open and they gave us cups for free coffee at Starbucks so D went off in the car to fill them. As soon as he left I turned around and saw that my purse was not in my stack of stuff! There were two possibilities: it was in the car or it was stolen. Along with my wallet, the purse contained all my show change. I rarely lose anything. I really started to feel awful. My words to D echoed in my head "If it's too much trouble to get the coffee, just go home..." We live 45 minutes from Worcester and we don't have cell phones. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Liz showed up and immediately comforted me as the lack of sleep and stress got to me and I started to cry. D was gone for about a half hour. I was using Liz's cellphone to leave a panicked message on our home voicemail when she said "Hang up! Here he comes!" And there he was! Striding toward us with my hot coffee. Relief part one! I told him the situation and he ran back to the car to check. Ten minutes later he strode in again with my purse held over his head in triumph! Relief part two. I really love that man :)

After that, I recovered and kicked into gear setting up my table opposite Liz's in our ten foot space. Here's Liz and her gorgeous table of sparkly things:


Here's my set up:


My new flower/nest pins:


We met some other Etsians including Paper Menagerie, plus saw Heather of Heather Wang Jewelry and Peter and Eve of La Sal Mountains Studio who are also at Western Ave. Amanda, yet another WAS artist came to visit and shop!

I wore one of my new pins and waited for the holiday shoppers! Well, we had a few, but unfortunately, not in the kinds of numbers that make for a really successful show. So cash-wise, I would not classify the day as a success. But I did enjoy myself and passed out a bunch of cards and talked with a lot of friendly people and demonstrated needle felting.

Mom and Dad came out to visit!




That's always nice and I did sell a bunch of Mom's cards. D came back at 5:30 and we packed up in the fastest time EVER, I only broke two nails and we were headed home.

I thought I would have all this free time since I had been working so hard for these two weeks and now they are over. But it turns out I had put off a lot of things in that time and look, here they are, patiently waiting for me to attend to them :) So I'm back to work!