My First Stall Experience

I looked into local events around Bedford in hope to try and start selling my designs and cards. I used to do car boots with my parents when I was a kid but nothing like selling handmade crafts. It was the Wootton Fun Festival and it was a mixture of stalls from crafts, cakes and tombolas. 

It probably wasn't the best place to start as it seemed like a fun, cheap event and my products are slightly more expensive than an average village fete. About 3 hours went by with no luck but eventually I ended up selling £19 worth of cards. I had many people comment on how beautiful my paintings were and also a few people comment that they looked printed. I guess people assumed I just printed out some designs, bought some cards and tried to resell them when in fact I'd made them all myself. Every person that bought something from my stall was incredibly nice and kind.

In all honestly I was glad after just selling one card but when I got home and counted the earnings I'd made I was so surprised. The next day I had a lady contact me that had bought one of my cards, she ended up buying an original painting and another couple of cards. So from the one fete I'd earned £35.50 which for a first time really isn't all that bad!

I've learned that I need to make a sign or banner that states I'm an artist and my crafts are handmade, I'd also like to get an extra table that allows me to paint at the same time so that people can see I do create my art work. A good first experience and look forward to the next!

Birthday Cards

I just received my order of birthday cards that I designed, I created five different watercolour designs and sent them off to be made into greeting cards. They feature different designs, including flowers, cakes and a fairy.

They are now up on my Etsy shop for sale! Please feel free to have a look at

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SophiekIllustrations

 

Summer Card Project

I got notified of this event on DeviantArt called the Summer Card Project. It involves creating a card or two with the theme of summer but also a get well/ thinking of you card. The purpose of the cards are to be sent off to hospitals and given to those who are ill or injured from young to old. Summer is my favourite season and I enjoy creating cards so I thought it would be a nice idea to join in.

I wanted to create a card that wasn't purely summer themed (i.e not a bucket or beach) so I decided to pick a sunflower for the element of one card and a bumble bee for the other.

The Bee card is just coloured card stacked up with a hole through two players to reveal the white. I did this with a circle cutter. I then hand drew the bee and coloured with Pro Markers. I used foam stickers to make the bee "float" and did a speech bubble pun related to the bee. The idea is not to say "Get Well Soon" but provide a message that's uplifting. I drew the dotted line and the final card I was pretty pleased with!

The next card I designed involved using watercolours and just doing blog shapes which would then be drawn over with a black fine liner. The "blobs" of paint just suggest the shape of the object with the fine liner defining the shape. The idea isn't supposed to be perfect in-the-line picture but more childish and still looks good. I also have plans to reproduce this card theme and sell them on my Etsy shop!

I'm very happy with both cards and I included my website for whomever receives my card, hopefully they let me know as I'd be excited to find out who receives it! If you want to find out more about the SCP the link is below. It closes on the 31st July so it may be too late for countries outside the US but it happens at Christmas time too so you could participate then as well!

http://madizzlee.deviantart.com/journal/Summer-Card-Project-617277123

Updated Christmas card #3

I finally got my main design finished for my Christmas card and it's now available for purchase! I re-done the lighting on the card and made some small tweaks, like turning the lamp on. I'm very happy with the outcome and I know have it for sale on Etsy!

Click here to purchase or view on my Etsy shop

 

Leather bound book - Bookworks

My new project is based around making and the history of books. My brief is to pick a book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and then take inspiration from it and move in a certain direction. I chose the book "Sir Nigel" which is the story of Knight from the Medieval period. This lead me to research what books looked like that were made from the Medieval time period. I then created my own book based upon my research, so this is my second attempt at a leather covered book. It still needs work but I'm quite happy with the final look, especially the leather bound strap!