Adding Art-o-Mat: Phoenix Collection

           I've been meaning to post this for a month, but here's a few behind the scenes look at our new Phoenix Collection for Fall 2013. These are custom orange fire bracelets inspired by the idea of turning death into life. Because we will all fall, the question is if we choose to stay down or get back up. Me? I think there's a wealth of possibility waiting to learn and improve from failure (our own or others). Each one is individually designed and sewn. A lovely piece of art. And hopefully a message worth being inspired by.
           You can find pieces at in local art vending machines across with country with Art-o-mat for $5.00 each. Taking my love of leather and sewing to the next level. May it inspire you to try something new or step outside your comfort zone.
            The past month with Techshop RD's closing on short notice (3 days) and just general fall-out, Nash and I have had a number of occasions to look at each other and be grateful to have each other in the fox hole with us. I'm not going to pretend it's all been easy, but hey a little sharpening of the soul and craft is never a bad thing. Happy July 4th weekend.

PS- Will try and post more of our store and designer collaborations this month. If you're interested in having us produce for your store or private label work, short us an e-mail at: DaraPage@lisashay.com.

Black Leather Gauntlets in Etsy Shop

Nash finally had some time this past week to make a few pairs of black leather gauntlets that were so popular at AZ. We actually sold out last month which was a lot of fun. It's nice to see a particular design is well accepted. The smaller size is $18.00 while the larger size is $20.00. Hopefully I will get to see more awesome fights and theater cosplay as a result. Very fun and durable pieces.

Happy July 4th weekend everyone!
May your dreams and fireworks have fun!

Putting Etsy Shop In Vacation Mode

            Hey guys, we're putting the Etsy shop in vacation mode to catch-up on orders. :-)

Textile Friday: Lint Balls and Dryers

     Ok, back a little bit late than never. My laptop was cat burgled last week after the resident cat found that she could make cool beeping noises with her butt if she sat on my keyboard. I still have no idea how she managed to tie up my computer in knots with no actual knowledge or opsiable thumbs. Thankfully, I have an awesome husband who can fix anything, even feline blunders. Now, I know everyone out there doesn't use a dryer, so next week I will discuss hanging clothing.
     Dryers are an amazing gift in terms of giving anyone anywhere in the world with access to electricity warm, dry clothes in a matter of minutes or hours depending on the model. Anyone who has needed a last minute pair of pants for work or shirt for a date night can attest to how powerful these machines are in terms of saving you time and allowing you to ignore the weather. Who cares if it rains? You can still have warm fluffy towels for your shower.

    They are also incredibly energy inefficient. Like so bad the US government doesn't even bother to rate them bad. There's a lot of improvements on the market, but most are still too pricy to bother recommending or using. There is however, one which I feel obligated to mention, if you don't already have a couple of dryers balls, please go buy a set TODAY. You can find them everywhere for $4-8 a pack (Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, YOU name it) for one simple reason: they work.

      Dryer balls are small balls that provide loft in the dry cycle which translates to 15-50% energy savings (average is around 20-25%) per load. Since it costs a min of $5.63 to run most dryers per cycle, even the sloppiest apartment dweller with a load a week will find the balls pay for themselves every time they run the dryer after 2 months, thereafter you save $1.25 min per cycle. A sweet couple hundred dollars a year for most small families of two like us (multiple the more kids you have). I wish all my advice could be as bottom line helpful. You can also make you own easily compliments of this great tutorial here with yarn and a pair of old pantyhose.
      Ok, I am getting off track..washing machines ruin clothing lots of different ways, dryers ruin things in simple ways. They shrink clothing and harden it. This is normally in response to heat (often heated air) and motion. The motion generally isn't that critical unless you snag a button, but the heat....you only have to think about fabric cushions left on the front porch exposed to the elements. It gets hard, brittle, and smaller. Same with your dryer. Dryer balls and dryer sheets help prevent this, so does limiting the heat and time a piece spends in the dryer. The old advice to clean your lint trap each cycle is golden, also follow your general settings. Most cheaper clothing (polyester) needs permanent press or should ideally be line dried. Gentle or low heat is better for cottons to prevent shrinking though you can read the manufacturer labels for specifics.
        Sadly, that's all folks... the best solution to using a dryer is a $5-8 toy and reading the labels to prevent any gross mismatches in fabrics to save you $200 plus a year, but there ya go. I used to say buy Sanfordized cotton as it lasts forever and is designed to shrink less than 1% over time, but you don't see it as much any more so it's not very practical advice. However, if you like shopping thrift stores, I encourage you to snap up anything with the sanforized label on it. Lee, Wrangler, Arrow, a bunch of great clothing lines all mark some of their most durable stuff with this name. Next the world's favorite: line drying. Happy friday everyone!

Melsie Glass

             There are certain people I just like being around. I always walk away from hanging out with them feeling better. Melanie is one of those people for me. She mixes a background as a corporate warrior before she walked away to pursue her craft on glassmaking with the whimsy of an artisan. Everything she makes is meticulously crafted with an attention to detail, while still having a lot of fun in the process.
              Whenever I have a long day or am feeling down about my craft, I wander over to her shop and a few minutes later I find myself chuckling. Just take her latest Christmas necklaces. Totally precious. I hope you have a chance to check out her booth at the show.
             And a warm congratulations to her for being picked for the VAE's retail incubator program in 2013. You completely deserve it!
             Check out her Etsy shop and look for some new pieces at the show in a few weeks.

              

DIY Paper Kite Tutorial

       Thanks everyone who came out to the Acorn to Oak Handmade Etsy Team meeting on Tuesday night for our kite making tutorial. Thanks to Nick Wentworth (and his Dad), we have a cool instructable for you to try your hand at if you missed the meeting and still want to make your own. The windy October weather around here is perfect for kite making and flying. I love quick and easy crafts like this in which most of the ingrediants or tools are lying around your house and can be quickly assembled to provide a great distraction for a sunny afternoon. Have a great day and happy flying! :-)
       

   Also, congratulations to everyone getting hired and married this month. It seems like it's been a good busy month for a lot of people. It is nice to see friends and family doing well.

Acorn to Oak Handmade September SparkCon and Coursera

         This coming month we have two great events planned for the team on really opposite ends of the spectrum.

September 13th-16th: SparkCon: A number of team members will be at setting up shop at BazaarSpark in downtown Raleigh and showing for the 4 day event which is the largest arts and crafts event all year featuring local creativity and talent in the area. Whoot! So excited! Please come out and enjoy the wealth of beauty. This is the last week to register to be a sidewalk artist if you are interested in making something fun and new we would love to have you. Food, bands, exhibits, acrobats! It's a wealth of beauty. This is one of my favorite local shows. Especially, LLLavender by Lauren Smith for the Fashion Show. She's an awesome designer/group member. I really love her knitwear collections being more of a woven gal myself I like peeking into her mind. Please come have some fun! There's so much to do and try.

September 24th-November 5th: Operations Management on Coursera by Christian Terwiesch: This summer everyone in the team worked on learning various elements of the business or polishing them to brighter shine if they had prior experience. While some people are at the point that they are ready and off to the races or fall shows, other people need more help on the meta skills of managing their business. Since Coursera has started offering many of the top business university courses online for free (not sure how long this will last so please go ahead and sign-up). This will not make you a better artist, craftsman, or designer, but it will help you streamline and cut down on the time you have to spend doing the boring parts of your business. Nash is looking to get his MBA because we struggle with the not art part of the business all the time. Because we all want to spend more time making meaningful connections and works, and less time on paperwork. Hope to see everyone online or in person this month. If anyone is interested in doing a coffee study group for this class let me know. :-)

Have a great day! Looks like an exciting fall.

July 26th: Counting Metal: Cash and Jewelry

         Alright, weather permitting, we will be talking about money infrastructure and practicing casting jewelry in kilns this coming week. Of all the things the business does, one of the things I consistently struggle with as a business owner is accounting. When you're getting started, the money part is easy, mostly because you don't have any. As you grow it becomes headache inducing stomach flip-flops.

7-8 Show Me the Money: There's some basic steps you need to take as a business to make sure you are pulling a profit

First, you need to buy some accounting software. The industry standard is Quickbooks. You can buy the basic software for $26 off Amazon, you can also upgrade up to $186 for the deluxe package. Most people just use the basic stuff. Some banks offer this for free to their businesses. The major advantage of using Quickbooks is it is cheap, industry recognized, and most accountants love it so they're easier to work with. Win-win for everyone. The downside to me is I hate bookkeeping. I've tried to hand it off to Nash repeatedly for a year, and he doesn't like it any more than I do. I'm in the process of getting an accountant to help with our growing pains.

Next, you have to use the actual tools. Ah, the hard part. For this Quickbooks and Excel are your friends. But they can only help you if you use them. There's a great number of accountants, banks, and people to reach in the area that can help your business grow. We will be touching on some. This is by no means a complete list, just the most well-known. For banking we will be talking specifically about Federal Coastal Credit Union and Harrington Bank.



8-9 Jewelry Kiln Pouring: We will have some wax molds for people to practice making into jewelry. If you are planning to do this part, you will need to come back later to pick up your final piece. :-)

 Note: If it is over 85 degrees, we will reschedule for later.

Have a great day everyone!

July Acorn to Oak Handmade Events: Websites and Banks

             Alright, I am so excited to see that our summer bootcamp is up and running! We had a great time at the first meeting where we went over the basics for the summer sessions. Now, we are going to talk about specific elements people get stuck on. For July, we have two meetings.

July 10th: Setting up your online presence/Microwave Crafts: When I was getting started, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get a website, store, blog, etc. and made a TON of mistakes. Some of what I did was good, other pieces were problematic. We will be going over how to do the website portion of your online website ($10-20 year annual cost): registering a domain (dreamhost, godaddy), using a web platform (weebly, ipage, wordpress, google, big cartel, shopify, etc.), starting a blog, making a facebook page, and linking it all together so it functions smoothly as a whole. This can be done easily barebones in a night, but it takes time to build up a website persona. Blogs often require several hundred or thousand posts to get a following over several years. Please bring your laptop if you have one as we will be doing this in real-time. I will have what has and has not worked for me and others. We will also be doing papermaking/stamping art with the shop microwave. Because paper is just so cool! Above is a stamp I made for my fabric from a really great blog for the Animazement talk in May. Look forward to seeing everyone there.

July 24th: Banks, Accountants, and Jewelry Kiln Making: There are two really good banks in the area for small business owners: Harrington Bank and Federal Coastal Credit Union. SCORE recommends Harrington Bank. I have more experience with Federal Coastal as you can open a business account with them for free if you have a $25 checking account. We will also discuss the other big players: BB&T (bad rep), Wellsfargo (new local player), and some of the others. With Charlotte being so close the good news is small business owners have the ability to shop around. I will also be handing out business cards of local area accountants we know: pricing tends to break down by gender. Men tend to ask for monthly retainers and women charge hourly rates. I'm partial to using female accountants as they seem to be more detailed oriented and charge me 1/2 a year what a male accountant wants to charge a month for the same percieved work. This is probably a lack of understanding on my part, but it can often add up to a couple thousand a year which is significant savings. I meant to do this back in April for tax season, but we ran out of time. Lastly, we will be using the jewelry kiln to do some beginning metal casting. This is a scaled down version of the free weekly pours Evan does at Techshop geared towards making jewelry specifically.

Look forward to seeing everyone this coming month. It's going to be a great time.

Review from Woodworking Night at Todd's Studio

            Thanks everyone who came out last night to make birdhouses, spinning tops, and generally have fun in Todd's woodshop learning to turn. It was most exciting. I had a great time making my first spinning top and never knew woodworking could be that fun. No one in the group had ever turned before so it was exciting to see people mastering the basics. It was also very humbling to see a master at work. Todd does some incredible one-off projects and unique pieces of beauty.
             It's really wonderful that his shop is so close to ours and I know a number of people are excited to head back in a few days. My head is still spinning, literally from all I learned last night. Some of the cooler things I learned was about aging and seasoning word for years to dry it out and how most wood is turned in stages to prevent it from cracking. Most pieces you see are actually what is called "twice turned" where it is turned in a rough form, allowed to dry for a year or two, and then turned again gently to bring out the inner beauty. While you can turn objects on a lathe very quickly, the actual process of making wooden pieces of art takes years beginning from the selection, cutting, and drying process.
             I'm definitely looking forward to going back and trying my hand at doing more pieces. While it seems abitious, I would like to try making a wooden bowl in the future. Hopefully some of the other group members will get to have fun hanging out with Todd this summer too. Have a great day everyone and look forward to seeing you at the next Etsy Tuesday night meeting in a few weeks.

May 22nd: Father's Day Woodworking Night

Hi Everyone, I am excited to say that we will all be getting together from 7-9 pm at Todd Hartzell's studio and gallery to learn more about Woodturning and the Woodturner's Guild. Rye Gewalt has designed some AWESOME kinetic moving stars for everyone to try their hand at making. These are built using basic geometry and math to move them which is pretty cool in my book. He is planning to have some kits available for the Holiday Christmas show for anyone who is interested in making more. They will be free and open to all Acorn to Oak members and their family to take home for Father's Day.

For those of you who aren't familar with woodmaking, this is a great way to get your feet wet with demonstrations and easy DIY projects. I hope you all have a wonderful week as you get geared up for the summer.

Acorn to Oak Handmade
5825 Triangle Drive
Raleigh, NC 27617

April 21st: Guest Lecturing at the Visual Art Exchange

        This week, I will be downtown speaking at the Visual Art Exchange on Saturday, April 21st at 3:30 pm on selling online, specifically on Etsy and our local Acorn to Oak Handmade Team which is dedicated to helping local artists and craftsmen make a living selling online. A lot of people as me why I created a local team for this purpose and why I mention Etsy repeatedly as a good venue for up and coming artists to get started on making a living.
         Mostly, it gets down to money and time. Of the 24 some places I opened an online shop the first year I had a design company, the only place I ever sold art or crafts online was Etsy. There's a saying that without money, artists disappear. I don't know if it's true, but I do know that hunger is a great driver both into and out of a given field. As a designer, in a wonderful co-op, surrounded by great talent, I feel it is part of my job to help my fellow friends and companions grow. Since 1994, online sales are the only venue that's growing. That means for the last 20 years, the only pie that's growing is the internet pie. Having spent a decade in sales before starting Li Sashay, I can tell you that the internet is having a pervasive, eroding effect on traditional sales outlets. Traditional sales associates are being slashed out of the process as it becomes cheaper and easier to market to the online crowd. Why give 70% of the profit away when you can reduce it to 5-8% online?
        And therein, lies the problem, most artists find when they set up their webpage. You can set-up a store now for under $100 a yr. that will be interesting, well-designed, and protected. It will not however, get you traffic or sales. It is simply too easy and the bar too low for most people to be effectively heard online at this venture. Even with buying advertising on google, facebook, or starting a blog is generally useless for getting direct sales. So where can you be heard? In general there are three main selling platforms: Amazon, eBay, and Etsy for an artist to be heard on from a financial aspect. Of these, Amazon and eBay are so big, they are controlled mostly by larger corporations. 38% of eBay's income comes from a mere 14 companies. That leaves 1 place for an up and coming artist to be heard effectively: Etsy.
      No system is perfect, of the available platforms, this is the best at this time for getting traffic if you make unique or handmade items. Two years ago, a person needed between 25-50 items in their shop to make consistent sales. Today most people have increased the number to 100-300 items in a shop to sell effectively. I would place the number closer to the 200-300 mark if you want daily sales. For many part-time designers...this may represent a year or two of work, but still doable if you are willing to be patient. Etsy is a great place to get started and I highly recommend it. Alright, stop in Sat for the full lecture if you want specifics. I will have hand-outs with websites, names, and contact info for people who are looking for details. Hopefully this will help some of my fellow artists in the area. I won't claim to know it all, but am happy to offer up some wisdom from what has and has not worked for me. Please be aware that there are much more talented designers and artists in the area making a lot more than I am on Etsy at the moment. If you want to know more, I suggest talking to/contacting some of the other forum members if you want to find a good mentor or coming to one of our Tuesday night meetings.

Visual Art Exchange
309 West Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601

Jan 10th: Linus Foundation from 7-10 pm

Location: Conference Room of Techshop RDU
               5905 Triangle Drive Raleigh, NC 27617
Time: 7-10 pm

Hey Everyone from the Acorn to Oak Handmade group, this coming week we will making quilts to donate to the Linus foundation for the children at Wake Med Hospital, Duke, and children of soldiers who need blankets during deployment. We will have lots of fabric and quilts in various sizes to finish. The three sizes we will be making are:

Baby 30" by 36"
Child 40" by 60"
Teen 45" by 72"

No prior experience is necessary. You are welcome to take home any quilts you do not finish and bring them back by Febuary 7th completed if you would like to finish extra details. We will be taking the first hour of that meeting to handsew together any remaining quilts that need it. We will be monogramming the names of everyone who works on each quilt in the bottom before giving them to Susie Holmes so the kids can know who gave them this gift. We will be focusing on making the larger blankets, specifically for boys and teens with cars, animals, and other applique motifs.

Please feel free to bring a portable sewing machine from home if you have one. We will be doing 2 primary things during the event.

1. Hand-sewing some of the blankets that have already been cut and sewn at 4 inch intervals so the blankets will hold up to repeated washing. This is important for parents and hospitals who have sick children, the blankets need regular care.
2. Taking fabric that has been pre-cut and making it into blocks that we can sew together into children's blankets. Given the huge need for boy's blankets, I will be trying to focus on things like xbox controllers, popular sports, videogames, travel, etc.

A warm thanks in advance to everyone who participates. We are accepting extra fabric/yarn or batting donations for anyone who would like bring their extra stashes from home.

Check out the local chapter website here: http://projectlinusraleigh.blogspot.com/

Day Sixteen: Acorn to Oak Holiday Craft Show

We're back from the show this past week and wanted to show you this fun video Melsie Glass took of the Acorn to Oak Handmade Etsy Team Craft Show. I'm going to start shortening Etsy Team Craft to ETC for laughs. We loved everyone who came out and made us laugh and can't wait for the next one in the spring right before Mother's Day.

It was so much fun to have you.

I can't believe we're at 670 members for the year. We have grown so much. We started with just 16 good friends at the beginning. Glad to have met each and every one of you and so looking forward to seeing what the new year brings.

Nash Page: Blacksmith

Today, I'm headed down to the forge to show you some fun pieces from my wonderful Nash who just did of armor for an Avalon Event. While most people know him for his fun wire jewelry, he also teaches blacksmithing as well as doing a fair amount of custom work. Nash is awesomely fun to hang out with and goof around. I hope you get to drop by and create fire with him at the forge. You can watch him at work this Saturday, September 17th from 5-7 pm.

Chuck Frank: Master Jeweler and Woodworker

Jack-of-All-Trades is what pops to mind when you think of Chuck. He is heavily involved in teaching woodworking classes at Techshop as his second career. His first having retired from being a master jeweler after 30 years of hard work.

I am so pleased to have him come talk to us twice at the DIY meeting in a few weeks. The first is about something...frankly...I just agreed to it because it was awesome. Chuck will be demonstrating wood turning on the lathe from Saturday September 17th from 1-2 pm and you may enter the raffle to win one of the bowls he will be giving away on site. Each bowl is made from reclaimed timber from local wrecks right here in North Carolina along the coast.

Because PIRATE WOOD is awesome. (The bowl on left is made of this cool wood.)

You can also drop in on his guest lecture from 4-5 pm on how to make high-end jewelry. This is a 30 min slide show presentation Chuck put together for his masters. If you are familiar with jewelry making or want to learn more, he will be taking questions. I hope you have a chance to learn from this wise elder.

Have a great day and we hope to see you next weekend.

Mike Natale: Master Brewer

Some people, you know just because they make you smile. Mike is one of those guys for me. While most brewers will tell you about the age, the season, or the complex history of beer, Mike doesn't do this when you walk in the bar. Instead, Mike will smile at you, slide a glass of his Raleigh Red across the table and tell you he makes a beer for people to drink. And that I think is what draws people to ROTH night after night.

A beer made for you to drink.

We're incredibly lucky to have him come talk to us Saturday, September 17th on micro-brewing and hand out free drinks. And you're welcome to wander next door afterwards enjoy the beer, food, and laughter. He's running a special all night just for us of $2 Raleigh Reds. This is probably the point to mention to you that it's my favorite.

To good beer and better friends. Can't wait to see you all next weekend. And if you get a chance to talk to Mike, tell him, "Hi, and that Dara sent you."

Evan Daniel: Metalworker

There's something magic about creating metal scultpure out of soft sand. I love watching Evan spin his wizardry. You never know exactly how your piece will turn out. There's an element of surprise in all good creations. The hold your breath moment. Evan has completely mastered it. I love going to his public pours once a month where he takes the rest of us uneducated types who come tottering out with a sculpture to make a mold of in random assortments of wood, clay, or plastic, and in a few minutes you have wonder.

He will be demonstrating pieces for the pour, September 17th from 7-9 pm and telling you how to create items that pour well. I invite you to come watch him and perhaps take home a piece of your own. We will have clay available to craft your own creation. You may come back for the next public pour Tues, October 11th for the Etsy Meet-up when we make them into metal sculptures.

Note: In his spare time when not doing metalwork, Evan is busy teaching and working in the area.