Sundays are for stuffing my face

One of my favorite things to do is use the ingredient search function at allrecipes.com to use up the random stuff in the kitchen. I happened to have a stray jalapeno, half a container of cream cheese, a plain bagel and some mexican blend shredded cheese. Even though I didn't really follow any of the recipes I came across on allrecipes, I did get some inspiration.

I toasted the two bagel halves in the oven (because Lou set fire to our toaster oven when he unsuccessfully tried to toast some bread, ugh...boys). Then I layered a generous helping of cream cheese, diced jalapeno and a mountain of the shredded cheese on top. Might I recommend NOT scratching your nose after chopping the jalapeno. You'd think I'd learn to remember that by now. But instead, my entire nose is on FIRE. Anyways, I left it in a 350 degree oven until the cheese got nice and melty on top. And wow, it tasted just like a jalapeno popper, except it was easier to eat! Am I the only one that takes one bite of the popper and the whole jalapeno slides out and burns my bottom lip? Or I take a bite and all of the cheese squirts out the back and burns my hand? Yeah, those little poppers are live hand grenades if I've ever seen it.

They might not look award winning, but trust me, freakin delicious.



Aside from food experimentations, I managed to finish up most of my craft show table display. Everything is tagged, bagged, mostly packed, organized, printed, blah blah blah, etc etc. I just have a few loose ends to tie up, a few more supplies I need to buy, and everything will be ready to go! I can't believe it's only a week away. Will I be ready???? I hope I don't forget anything.

Spike was more than willing to help with the table cover fitting, which I think came out pretty good! Folding it was a nightmare though. I hope it stays wrinkle free in time for the show! I hate wrinkly tablecloths.

craft fair preparations

I finished my banner for the craft fair the other day. My lovely friends helped me tediously cut out lettering which I then ironed on with some "stitch witchery" stuff, which annoyingly enough was just as tedious to deal with as cutting the letters out themselves. I'll have a photo of the banner soon. And some others of my other craft table display elements. It's coming together super cute!

For now...here's a photo of just a hint of the things I'm working on to sell there. I have a TON of goodies that I haven't listed in my Etsy shop. I also plan on bringing my Etsy stock with me, so if you're reading this and have seen something in my shop that you were thinking of buying, now's the time to buy before someone else possibly snatches it up!

one month until the craft extravaganza!

It's going to go by in the blink of an eye. I've been really slacking with my promoting and blogging and marketing, etc etc, so on and so forth. There's so much to do in preparation for this craft fair I'm going to, that I just haven't had the time to do much of anything else! I'm thankful I have three wonderful friends who have agreed to come and help me. The craft show is December 5th, so I'm assuming after that date is over, I'll be able to get back into the swing of things.



These are the promo items I made that all of the vendors were asked to contribute for little grab bags to be handed out to customers who come to the craft fair. I have my business card, a teeny button, a little Plini head charm, and a special coupon. It's a secret!

Aside from my craft fair prepartations, I FINALLY got my website up and running. It still needs a bit of work, but it's definitely to the point now where I can show it to people and not feel the need to have to tell them "oh don't worry, I still have to fix that" "don't look at that page" "that'll look different, I'm still working on that". I have to add a few more links and fix the background...maybe rearrange my little gallery page. But I'm really happy with it! Thanks to Lou, of course, for all of his help and patience with my dumb questions about html and ftp.

http://www.jamieferraioli.com

craft fair action

Crafty Balboa....I'm in it. You coming?

a new painting

cupcake girl
Originally uploaded by magicbeanbuyer

Very few times do I end up happy with the painted results of my ink drawings. I guess I get so satisfied with the black and white version and how "just so" all of the lines are, when I transfer the image to canvas and paint it, a lot of times I feel like the drawing lost something along the way. Some kind of character that only the inked version retained.
But I'm really happy with how this painting turned out. I actually think it looks better than the ink drawing!
I guess you should say it's based off of my Plini figurines with the little cupcakes on their heads.
I still have to seal it, but I'm nervous as there's some ink and marker for parts of the black lines. I don't want the ink to run. Hey, you never know. I've had it happen before with other things. I'll do a test run first.....if I'm not lazy or not feeling very brave.

I have a butterfly themed girl in the works next to paint. It's kind of inspired after my nana who's going through some terrible chemo for leukemia.

craft show research....ready go!

I've been doing a lot of research lately until my eyes fall out of my head and roll under the coffee table every night. I'm trying to get my act together and try my hand at some craft fairs. I've always been so intimidated by the whole thing, but I really think my Plini figurines would do well if people could see them and hold them. I've had lots of customers say their purchase was even better than the photos had showed. I believe em.

So I'm gathering information on where to sell, what I need to sell, how my table should look, yadda yadda. Also, worst-case scenarios and horror story lessons. And god, there sure are a lot of those. I've stumbled on whole blogs dedicated to the horror stories fellow crafters have experienced. I'm trying not to dwell on the things that can go wrong, but it's also nice to see how other people handled difficult customers and situations.

I've been spending a lot of my time trying to build up my inventory now. So my Etsy shop probably isn't going to be updated as often as I'd like in the next month while I work. More like 1 for Etsy, 2 for craft fair, 1 for Etsy, 2 for craft fair.


Even if I'm not adding to the shop as regularly as I normally do, I'm still accepting all custom orders. I can never turn down a request! (Unless there's a time restraint that I can't uphold. So sad. I really wanted to make that second Totoro wedding set, but there just wasn't enough time). Tonight I also finished a custom Plini pendant. Isn't she cute? I made a few more for the shop (or the craft show..I haven't decided) that have the classic tan bottom. I'm wondering if it's better to sell them as pendants only or with a necklace included. Or maybe just with the option to add on. I think the thing I like best about the pendants is they can be used as charms for keychains or zipper pulls or anything else that you can hook them onto. I had a customer that used them with her Blythe dolls too. I thought that was really cool. I've never seen a Blythe doll up close, let alone heard about them until last year, but seems to be that my Plini pendants are the perfect size for Blythe!

I'm also working on an "army" of bird earrings. (finished product w/ wire hoop) Hot pink at the moment. I've also finished blue. I'm curious what other colors people would prefer as bird earrings. Yellow (canary) and red (cardinal) are clear choices, but I'm also thinking black would be nice. Easy to match any outfit. I just have to order more wire and my army will be good to go.



I also plan on using these bows I just finally figured out how to make with some of the bird earrings. And also some ADORABLE cupcake and brass pendants I'm working on (just you wait..). They're so simple, but for some reason I could not figure out how they were made. It took me a pile of ribbon, some burnt hot glue fingers and way too much sewing thread, but I definitely got it! I can't wait to buy myself more cute ribbon and go bow crazy.

Oktoberfest, Delaware-style

This weekend Delaware had their very own "Oktoberfest". Yes. I'm aware it's September. Tell that to Delaware.
Any-whoo...a group of us went to the festival Friday after work. We drank beers, ate bratwursts and played games. Oh, and we bought comically large mugs from which to drink. For $20 we each got a mug, plus a complimentary LITER of beer. It was heavy, but lots of fun lugging it around while we perused the souvenirs and arcade games.





At some point in the evening our group managed to make friends with one of the owners of a brewery, Twin Lakes, that was there selling his beer. Somehow Yesenia kept getting free beer from him. And everyone was swarming around him trying to snag a job. I'm sure he won't remember any of us, as he was drinking his own beer heavily as well. But it was fun times.

The rest of the weekend I've been spending working on some illustrations and a logo for my parent's flooring business.



I'm hoping one day I could have a nice collection of all the Katamari cousins. Or at the least, a handful of my favorite ones.