New site

We had a busy first show of the season on Saturday.  Although the crowds were light, we were pleased with the sales, and had the opportunity to chat with a few other vendors.  The day passed quite quickly.  I must say it was the first chance we had to use the Square to accept credit cards.  It was great!  Very easy to use, the ability to take a picture of the item you are selling and you can text or e-mail the receipt to the customer.  There is a small fee per transaction, but, the Square itself was free.  I was even able to order a second one for my daughter to use.  I think it arrived in 2 days.  If you are interested in an easy method for accepting credit cards in your business, I highly recommend it.  Just go to square.com.    

Her is part of our set-up from Saturday with my daughter.

I have been spending this week redesigning my website and am slowly adding items for purchase.  My goal is to have it completely set-up with new pictures of our items posted in the next week or so.  I hope you will stop by and let me know what you think.  I still have some tweeking to do though!

You can visit the site at DreamWeaversDesigns.net

Til next time, stay safe and be happy!!

Adventures in Clock Making

Well, it's almost spring and we are getting ready for our first show of the year.  Hard to believe it's been four months since our last show. 

As usual, I've been busy trying to get some new items ready.  I really want to get into making more home items and bought some wooden pieces at Michaels to use for clocks.  I made several clocks already, thinking if I made the clay thick enough, they would be fine.  What I have noticed is they tend to bend when warm.  Not sure if I need to try to bake them more, so they will get harder, or what.  I may have to try to put another layer of clay on with an old CD disc for more stability...we'll see.

Here is the first wooden backed clock I made.  I wanted to make something with a southwestern theme and used a drawing program I found on the internet {inkscape.com} to come up with a design.  The pattern looked pretty good on paper, but when I attempted to replicate it on the clock, I realized the pieces were going to be too big for the clock base.  I changed the pattern to be able to have large enough tiles.  The colors are brown, turquoise and a terra cotta type mix, with a white/ecru mix for the background.  At first I wanted to have the background under the other tiles, with a faux leather imprint {using crinkled foil} and an umber wash.  I baked this layer, though I wasn't too happy that there were areas of air bubbles.  I applied my hand mixed colored tiles, again impressed with the foil and baked.  Low and behold, there were still some bubbles.  I let the clock sit for a day and when I went back to it, I wasn't happy with the look.  I decided to back fill the entire area with the ecru mix to make it look somewhat mosaic.  Using alcohol, I wiped off the excess background that was covering my colored tiles, causing the ecru color to fill the crinkled areas of the colored tiles.  This wasn't intentional, but I kind of liked the look it gave.  Finally, I used the foil again on the background and baked one last time.

Ok.... now I was ready to paint the remaining wood and attach my clock component.  Easier said then done.  What I didn't realize was, the wooden base was too thick to allow the stem of the clock component to go through, allowing enough stem to attach the clock hands on the front.  Great, now I needed to find another component with a longer stem, which I haven't been able to find, or remove some of the wood base on the back to allow an appropriate fit.  So, I spent this morning using a box cutter and screwdriver and fashioning a recessed area on the back.  Finally, after several hours {there has to be a better way to do this}, the clock component fit.  I used terra cotta paint on the sides of the clock, with metallic copper dry brushed over top, and painted the entire back copper, attached the component and put in the battery.  Voila, finally done.          

Til next time, stay safe and be happy!