Lizerati

I feel thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

Leave it to me to use Tolkien and a robot in the same post, but both of these things describe how I’ve been feeling lately. Stressed. Rushed. Mechanical. Floating through the world without being engaged in it. It’s certainly been the hardest year of my life, and I have a terrible sneaking suspicion that 2010 isn’t done with me yet. For these reasons and many more, ICE is going to be the last show that I do for quite a time. Considering that everything craft-selling based comes to a screeching halt about a week before Christmas, I’m not exactly making a huge leap here. Most crafty types have a break coming up, but mine is likely to expand in to spring and perhaps all the way to fall 2011. I need to recharge and participate in events without being responsible for them.

One very basic and concrete example is food. I’ve been gaining weight, choosing the easiest instead of the best meal, and I can’t think of the last time I wanted to cook something because it sounded delicious. All my food is easy, almost none of it is awesome. How nice would it be to sit around, think about what I’d really like to make, and spend a couple hours really putting something together? Pretty nice, I tell you what.

I’ll still do any custom orders that come my way, and I’m sure there will be one-offs that come up. I’ve got a plan to make some holiday cards to send out this year, and there’s a metal smithing studio out in Marietta that offers classes that I’d love to take. I’m pretty sure no one reads this blog, but I needed to say it out loud somewhere. Crafty Liz isn’t dead, she’s just hibernating and waiting to wake up with new ideas.

Jump back! I’m updating the blog!

Sadly, it’s just two pictures this time. I’m making a few Halloween goods, and here’s some hasty and poorly staged pictures of two of them…

Halloween!

Halloweeeeeeeen

A friend of mine was nice enough to send me a Bead Spinner that she wasn’t using and Lori and I took it for a test drive. Here are the results(chaos)!

Festival season is upon us, and I got an email from a friend today asking for any tips & tricks I have for dealing with 2 day festivals. I went a little crazy writing things down and I decided to post it here for anyone who might need it.

I Tent and display
1. Ez Up tents can technically be put up by one person, but it is by no means EZ. It’s more like “moderately difficult” Up. If possible, bring a friend to help you put up the tent, or make friends with your neighbors to help you get the tent up.

2. Weigh down the tent with something – sandbags or jugs of water attached at the corners can really help, especially overnight when you’re not there to make sure things are stable.

3. Test out your display beforehand. It’s hard to change things around when you get all set up and are trying to sell merchandise during the fest.

4. Bring extra everything – hooks/chain/wire/twine etc. Not a ton, but enough to cover you if something breaks or you need more than you thought.

5. Cover the tables with tablecloths. It looks nice and if the cloths go to the ground, under the table is a fantastic storage space for unsightly things you need to store.

II Merchandise
1. Price everything before you arrive. It’s a pain to price things at the last minute.

2. Think about how customers will carry/deal with merchandise they have purchased. Bag? Wrap the item? etc.

3. Make sure you have enough change and a variety of change. This is especially important if you add sales tax because the total is rarely a round number.

4. If you don’t accept credit cards, know where the closest ATM is.

5. Have enough business cards on hand.

III Personal comfort
1. Bring water or be prepared to pay $3 or so a bottle.

2. Bring toilet paper and hand sanitizer since most of the facilities are porta-potties.

3. Bring a cooler with some food – festival food is expensive and two days of eating that kind of food will leave you feeling miserable by the end of day two. Snacks with some water in them (snap peas, apples, etc) will help you feel hydrated.

4. Sunscreen!!!!

5. Wear comfy undies & clothes. It sounds absurd, but something that is minorly uncomfortable at the start of the day will be making you really angry at the end of the day.

Small changes

One of the most common reasons that folks think they can’t do anything to help the environment is the cost. Greening your home, office, and life can seem daunting and expensive if you feel you have to do everything at once. Solar panels, a hybrid car, buying a low flush toilet etc, pay for themselves over time but represent a significant up-front investment. With that in mind, here’s a quick list of 5 no/low cost things you can do right now that will not only have an impact but also save you money!

1. Don’t use paper/throwaway items for household cleaning. Paper towels, paper napkins, disposable wipes, disposable dusting cloths… the list goes on and on. If you total it up, paper products can contribute a significant portion of your grocery bill per week. Buying a pack of cloth washcloths or kitchen towels can cut down on this hugely. Target, for example, sells a pack of 12 washcloths for $3. You can use these for any sort of cleaning/dusting or as napkins and then just wash them at the end of the week so they are fresh again.

2. Shop local markets or grow your own food. Most grocery chains import their items from the cheapest source. This means your produce can come from any place around the world and your meat comes from large factory farms. Local markets (usually run once a week) bring local farmers and local shoppers together and cut out the middle man. You can buy directly from the farmers and items are usually fresher and cheaper than any chain could offer. Growing your own is the ultimate in low-impact eating. The transportation costs are simple: a few steps from your door to your garden and the packaging doesn’t exist!

3. Pack your lunch. Having lunch delivered or getting take out is very common in offices. If you take a step back and count the number of items used to package your lunch, you’ll be amazed. A sandwich at a local deli can come packed in a styrofoam container with a thin sheet of paper and a toothpick wrapped around it. Your side dish might be in a separate plastic or styrofoam container and all of that is put in to a plastic bag with paper napkins and plastic utensils that are also probably wrapped in a smaller plastic bag. That’s a lot of packaging just for one lunch! Bringing your lunch in reusable containers saves you a ton of money ($5-10 per day!) and there’s no packaging waste. Grab a set of metal utensils and some cloth napkins and you’ll never need to throw any lunch-related items away again.

4. Reuse your junk mail. Even if you opt out of credit card offers and ask companies to refrain from sending you junk mail, chances are you will still get some unsolicited mail. Take advantage of this to reuse what’s sent to you. No need to buy a notepad to make shopping lists! You have the backs of all those envelopes! Need to leave a note for someone at home while you run to the store? How about the flip side of that pre-paid credit card offer letter you got just yesterday? There are a lot of different ways to put that sort of thing to use.

5. Walk, use public transit, and carpool as much as possible. Here in Atlanta, public transportation is not ideal, but it is available. With a little bit of planning, you can often take a train or walk to your destination. If that’s not possible, try and catch a ride or offer to take others with you if you have to drive. With the steady climb of gas prices, one person per car per trip is getting less and less practical and the environmental impact is huge. The example of the peppered moth is well known, but it’s still incredible to me that because of pollution produced by humans, an entire species of moth changed color due to natural selection over time.

I love behind the scenes type stuff. I’ve taken the rooftop tour at the Biltmore House, I’ve been behind the scenes at the Atlanta Zoo, and I love Kyle Cassidy’s Where I Write project. I’m just fascinated by the process of getting from there to here, and the things people do.

The other night, I found myself in a fairly absurd situation, so I took a picture of it. It was 11pm, I had just finished making a couple pieces of jewelry for a show the next day, and I wanted to take pictures (I often don’t photograph stuff, but I’ve been trying to get better about it). There was only one stumbling block – the sun had gone down hours ago and wasn’t coming back till the morning. Since I am a very amateur photographer, one of the best helpers I have in getting decent product shots is natural light. The flash is your enemy, especially with jewelry, and harsh direct lighting isn’t much better. So without any natural light, I trained two lamps on the “stage” and then bunched tissue paper around the lamps to diffuse the light. I had to work fast because, um, the lamps were hot and tissue paper is flammable. So without further blabbering, here’s my extremely sophisticated and specialized setup:

Join us Sunday afternoon at my house for a little shopping, wrapping and cookie eating! Works from Mallory & Marzipan, Lizerati, ScurvyDog Photography and Lorigami all available with no mall crowds!

The ultimate local shopping experience! Email Lori or I for the exact address and directions!

The lovely ladies from ICE were kind enough to feature me on their site as one of the two crafters who have participated in every single ICE. That’s 10 of them!

Check out my interview here and read up on Becky from Glue & Glitter here.

Also, come visit Lori and I at ICE this weekend! It’s always a great time!

Note: If you want chili, arrive earlier rather than later – it gets crowded and runs out fast!

Howdy!

Candler park was a ton of fun, and the weather even cooperated both days! I took almost no pictures, but Cody managed to get a fantastic one: