Craft Show Season is Over

 

.  The craft show season is over for us for this year.  Next week I will more than likely start getting ready for next season.  This year the craft show season for us was just OK, not great but OK.  At all the shows we did this year the major issue was folks just are not buying in this area.  Now with that said, we still averaged over $200 a show which is OK for us, again not great but OK.

   This craft show season did make a nice Christmas for our family.  We do the Holiday Craft circuit in this area solely to pay for the expense of Christmas and my kids and wife did have a nice Christmas.  For those that read my blog and are not family I have 2 beautiful daughters, a great son in law and a beautiful wife of 31 wonderful (most of the time) years.

   I take partial responsibility for the sales being low.  I did not have enough of the right stuff cut.  I knew this going into the shows and still chose to do nothing about it.  OK this is a change I am making for next year.  Another change I am hopefully making for next year is my wife will be sharing some of the cutting.  I just set up a scroll saw with her name in it and I am trying to get her involved in the cutting also.  I have a feeling there will be some items that she is much better at than I am.

   The pictures above are:  1.  My baby and I all dressed up to go Stocking stuffer shopping the week before Christmas.  This has been an annual tradition where we get all dressed up and go out and tackle the malls and shopping centers just looking for that special stocking stuff for the family.  Our travels took us to Albany New York this year, I prefer to go places where probably will not run into anyone from work for obvious reasons. 

   The next picture is me opening up a Christmas present, a new book for woodworking, how did they know that is what I wanted?

   The last picture is the family on Christmas morning at approximately 5:00am.  If they look this good at this time imagine how nice they all look at a reasonable hour.

Well only a few days left in this year.  I am finding that the older we get the faster time flies by.  I am looking forward to posting more pictures and letting everyone know how things are going here for the next year. 

Happy New Year to one and all.

I must have been a good boy this year.

I must have been a good boy this year.  I came home to find a new craftsman band saw in the empty space in my basement last week.
 We are planning on changing the way we do ornaments next season.  We have been cutting our ornaments out of oak or birch 1/4 plywood.  I believe we are changing to brown maple.  Around here it is relatively cheap and with a band saw I can resaw and plane the rough lumber down to 1/4 inch and make the ornaments out of that.  I have been using maple to make the name ornaments for the past three months and that is how I have been doing that. 
   I was using the table saw to resaw the wood.  Anyone who has ever tried that knows it is not a good idea, especially if you want to keep all of your fingers.  Mrs Clause found out I had a near mishap and I think she may have helped with the band saw.  Thank you Mrs. Clause.
   If anyone has any tips on the best way to resaw lumber I sure could use some help.  Right now I am doing it free hand and it is working OK but I am always up for some good ideas.

Halfway Through The Holiday Craft Season

Well here we are halfway through the Holiday Craft season and it just seems to be getting crazier each year.  This year I started making name ornaments and those have been keeping us busy, busy, busy.  We are having fun doing it but I believe both my wife and I are really looking forward to the end of the holiday craft season.  We picked up 2 more shows this year.  Both of the shows are in Glens Falls NY, one of them was at the Catholic School and the last one is at the Methodist church a few miles down the road.
Here are some pictures of our latest set up.  The top picture is of our bi-fold doors.  They seem to make a

great ornament stand for all of our holiday ornaments.
The next picture is of my lovely wife setting out some fingerless gloves and old fashioned hand warmer muffs that our youngest daughter asked us to sell for her.   She is trying to get into the craft show circuit with her own talents and tastes.
I have been working on our son-in-law trying to drag him into the scroll saw business with me but he does live to far away so he helps me out part time when he and our oldest daughter have the time.

This year our newest endeavour is wine bottle balancers.  They have been slow to sell but everyone who walks by us has to stop and take a look or three at the display.  When they ask how do they do that I tell them "my wife says it physics but I believe its magic"  Most folks just smile but I did have one physics teacher tell me it was simple physics.  Some people just don't have a sense of humor.   I took a few different patterns and combined them into the wine balancers.  In the area we live in, covered bridges are a big thing so those are our biggest sellers to date.

Well Mom is on her way to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.  I have an Aunt and Cousin who will be here for the big day also so I have to cut this short and get to cleaning and getting ready for the festivities.  Have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

First Craft Show of the Year

We had our first craft show of the year.  It was in Schroon Lake, New York.  I did not take any pictures of the craft show but we did some leaf peeping on the way.  This is a picture about 1/5 mile from where our show was.  Sometimes you just have to stop and take the picture, I guess that is like stopping and smelling the roses.
    The craft show went very well despite the lack of vendors and buyers.  I believe maybe 250 folks toured through and we still did what we call a good show money wise.  Our next show is in Glenns Falls New York and that is in 3 weeks. 
   Unfortunately our family reunion was the same time as our craft show and we had committed to this show early as we always do so we had to miss our family reunion.  I was told everyone had a great time as they should.  We are hoping to make it next year.
    There was no big seller for our show just slow and steady, and a good mixture of everything we had.  Like I stated before for the size of the show we did well.  Now I have to get back to the basement and fire up the saw and get readier for our next show.

More name ornaments

I have been busy cutting more name ornaments.  I have had quiet a few orders and this has been keeping me relatively busy.
Last Saturday was a pretty good day for me.  My son in law came over and we sat in my shop shoulder to shoulder cutting name ornaments out.  He had some friends and family he wanted cut out so I sat him at my second saw and he got busy.  He did very good for just getting started.  I wish he lived closer so he could come and play more often.
   In the next week or so we will start working on Christmas presents for the family.  We decided on what we are going to do, now we just have to get busy and start the projects.  I believe I will be planing down some wood this week to get it started.
   These ornaments here are cut out of 1/4 inch brown maple and the ornaments are approx 4 inches in diameter.  I cut them out and my wife sands them, then I put four coats of lacquer on them and finish with a brown paper bag buff.

More Name Ornaments

Here are some more of the name ornaments that I am currently working on.  I put a order sheet out at work and the next thing I know I have become very busy cutting these out.  They seem to be great sellers.  I have asked everyone to get their orders in as early as they can because I will be bust starting in November with craft shows.
   I will work on getting some better pictures in the future.  These are all cut out of 1/4 inch brown maple.  they are relatively easy to cut and should last a life time.  I expect these to become some nice ornaments passed down from generation to generation.
My mother has ordered a few of these and she said she will be taking orders from her neighbors.
  I have been cutting since early this morning.  I have to take some time off this afternoon due to its finally football season and I really want to be able to sit down and watch a game or two and have a cool adult beverage.
Steve Good from the scroll saw workshop http://scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com/ gave me the idea to get busy on these ornaments so a special thank you goes out to Steve for the inspiration.  Thank you Steve.

Its getting to be that time of year again...

Here are some ornaments that I cut this morning,  I have been working with Paint Shop pro and some good directions that someone was nice enough to give me to make my own name ornaments for friends and family.  Three of the ornaments were cut out of walnut and the other two were cut out of brown maple.  Brown maple is one of my favorite woods to use.  Its is grown locally here and has a wonderful grain to cut all kinds of nice things.

I have not been keeping my blogs updated like I should, I will try to improve on that.  I enjoy sharing my work and showing everyone what I have been up to.  We are trying to get ready for our craft shows.  We are trying a few different and new shows this year.  We are also starting in October this year.  This way we will be able to add a few extra shows on to our already hectic craft show schedule.  We have added a show or two down in the Glens Falls area of New York this year.

I have been cutting ornaments and earrings out to fill our stock up.  I hope to get time to get some of these posted in the very near future.  Our earrings are selling quickly.  I never would have thought to cut earrings so I guess I am glad my youngest daughter asked me to cut her some last summer.  I have a display of our earrings at the college bookstore where I work. 

OK the saw is calling me.  Time to get busy again.  Have a great day and take care everyone.

How about a Little "Wine" with that cheese

This is what I have been working on for the past week or so.  I ordered a few patterns from ScrollerLTD and went to work.  I have been looking for that little something extra to bring to the craft shows this fall and I believe this may be it.  I also scoured the internet to find wine balancing patterns.  It is hard to believe but there are a lot of them out there to be found.  I have found them for wine bottles and for the 2 liter soda bottles.  The first picture is a wine bottle balancer that I found on the web and cut out of maple.  The next picture is a walnut glass holder.  I have had a basic pattern for this but really like the fancier one.  The third picture is a wine glass holder that is cut out of maple. The forth is a pattern that I bought from ScrollerLTD.  The web site is http://www.scrollerltd.com/. I changed the inside to better suite my needs.  My wife really likes this sunshine pattern so I incorporated this into her wine bottle balancer.  The fifth  picture is a simple wine bottle balancer that is cut out of walnut also. The last picture is several balancers that I have cut in the past week or so.

   The area we live at in the northeast is quickly adding more and more local wineries and I am hoping to make a tour through some of them with a box of differnt wine bottle holders and balancers to see how thay are accepted.

Wooden Braclets

Happy Easter everyone.  I have not been in the shop doing to much lately and the worst part is I really don't have a good reason.  I have made a few of these wooden braclets that I found a pattern for.  The ones pictured are made from cherry-upper left, Lower left and upper right-black walnut and the lower right is made from spalted oak.

It is Easter Sunday and we are having My aunt and cousin over for Easter Dinner along with both of our daughters and our son-in-law. I am planning on it being a great day.  The weather has been unusually warm for upstate Ny.  The frist part of April and the temps are in the 80's.  The snow is all gone for now and things are looking up.  

I have a small load of walnut to get busy with and hope to be cutting more and more.  I just ordered a few patterns to help jump-start my "wanna cut" list and get out of the no cutting funk I have been in.  Here it is April and the holiday season is not that far off.

  Well this is a start again.  Hope everyone has a "Hoppy Easter"

My life may get back to some sort of normal

For those of you who know me or follow my blog, I have not been able to do to much lately.  The bridge I use daily was condemmed in October and blown up in December.  I have to either cross or drive around Lake Champlain.  Either way it extended my drive to work by way to long.  Driving around is a 95 mile drive each way.  The second option is catch a ferry across that is only 25 miles extra but takes the same amount of time.  The states of New York and Vermont have been working on a new ferry where the old bridge used to be, and they have told us that the new ferry should start this Sunday.  That means I can do the happy dance.  It means a minimum of 2 extra hours will be added to my life each day.  One hour for beauty sleep and one hour for me.  This mean more time in my basement doing what I like to do.  Cutting wood into little pieces. and making wicked cool stuff.
I have not done much in the basement due to weather also.  For those of you not familiar with upstate NY it get cold this time of year and my basement is not heated well.  Ok enough excuses, I have to get to the basement soon and get busy.  I am off today to go pick up a load of walnut which I hope is nice and has some nice color to it.  Walnut is a great motivator for me.
OK have a great day.
Gene