Collaboration is Key

When it comes to my writing, design, and generally most things in life, I tend to work alone. But my desire for independence can sometimes leave me in a rut, which is the worst possible thing for anyone trying to use their creativity. Thankfully, I've found a few key people I work well with, and those people both inspire me and challenge me to try new things.

One of the people I love to collaborate with is Teresa Roche, an artist and gallery owner in Greenville, SC. A few years ago, she started carrying some of my fiber art pieces and handmade jewelry in her gallery, Art & Light. It was a good partnership from the start, but things really started to go places when we began collaborating. If two heads are better than one, two artists working together are unstoppable! 

Teresa had the idea to incorporate some of my needle felted animal heads and birds into her assemblage pieces, and I was so pleased with how our combined efforts turned out. My fiber art had always been a stand-a-lone type of thing, but it really shined when paired with Teresa's eye for texture, form, and balance.

I felted the bunny head, Teresa did the rest!

This video explains a bit more about our process, and how our different backgrounds mesh well together. 

Recently, we started collaborating on something completely different. I had been wanting to add some painted pendants to my Curious Cameo line for awhile, and had done some trial pieces that just weren't looking very good (but I kept trying, and was good and stuck in that rut for a few weeks). I'm not a painter. I've never been a painter. So why did I think I'd be able to paint these glorious pendants I was envisioning? It dawned on me Teresa Roche would be the perfect person to collaborate with - she's an amazing painter, her color sense and brushwork is so unique - and by incorporating her original work into this new jewelry line, it became something truly special that showcases her art in a way anyone can enjoy, even if they don't have much wall space or the budget for a larger original painting. Each pendant is one-of-a-kind, capturing a tiny work of art in a 1"x1" or 2"x1" frame. The pendants in the image below are the latest edition to this blossoming collection, (my favorite ones yet, I might add!). They're available exclusively at Art & Light Gallery in Greenville, and are launching this weekend in conjunction with Open Studios. 

Hands off! I already claimed the one on the far left ;-)

Alpaca Dreams

One day, maybe five years from now, or perhaps twenty five years, I would love to live on a small farm and raise alpacas. They are by far the sweetest animal I've ever encountered. They're fairly small, the tallest ones are about eye level with me, they hum, have long long eyelashes for flirting, and they each have their own unique hairstyle, it seems. But, the real reason I want alpacas in my life is because they are the source of one of the many materials I use in my fiber art. I spend a few hundred hours each year needle felting, and truly enjoy this tedious but highly rewarding form of fiber sculpture. It would be a joy to raise the creature that provides what I need to make more "felted curiosities", so I hope one day my alpaca farm dreams really do come true.

Sweet alpaca face

For now, I live in the burbs and sadly cannot keep an alpaca in the garage, so I get to visit the animals and buy their fiber from local farms at events like the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Asheville, NC. I've attended the festival for the last four years, and always come home with a couple of pounds of raw material, felting tools, and sometimes other things too. This year was no different! I scooped up several ounces of my favorite wool: corriedale, finn, and romney. I also got some alpaca fiber, which is a lot softer than sheep's wool, but is wonderful for felting and spinning. My big investment was a 24 needle holder, which looks dangerous (and it is, if you're not paying attention when felting!), a single needle holder, and a few fun things like a handmade ceramic alpaca magnet, alpaca socks, and a sweet ram sculpture made by an artist local to Asheville. It was a pretty good loot, a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, and I got to indulge my dreams of one day having a farm of my own, sourcing the fiber I need from my own backyard. 

Click through the gallery below to see photos from SAFF, my loot, and some more alpaca pics (okay, there's quite a few llamas in there too!)

Recap: Indie Craft Parade

Last weekend was the 5th annual Indie Craft Parade here in Greenville, SC. This is a top notch festival of all things handmade, and is always my best show year after year. With a record number of attendees this year, nearly 7,000 people, it’s no wonder it was a huge success for all involved.

A lot goes into preparing for a major show like this. I worked all summer making inventory and still felt like I didn’t have enough by the time September rolled in. The week of the show, I mainly focused on tweaking my table setup, and finalized some new additions to my display to ensure my booth would look it’s best and function well for the crowd of shoppers. I always do a mock up prior to this show (that’s what the dining room is for!) and that, plus carefully packing up what is essentially a miniature store, is a several day-long endeavor. The checklist is never ending!

The day before the show, I got an unexpected opportunity to appear on Studio 62 with Jamarcus Gaston to talk about the festival and my handmade business. This was my first time on TV and I was shaking like a leaf, but I’m thankful for the chance to plug this amazing event as well as share my work. Here’s the video clip. 

Friday September 12th was the day of set up. All the vendors showed up at assigned times to unload, and the anticipation was there from the get go, long before the VIP Gala kicked off that evening. I did a series of live posts throughout the day Friday to give a behind the scenes look at what all goes on before the doors are open. Click here for photos.

To say the show was a success would be a huge understatement. I’m not just talking record sales or attendance. Everything about the event was extremely well organized, widely publicized, and I felt energized even though I was utterly exhausted by the end of it. Below are some of my stats from the weekend, but I’ll just point out, this show is a complete anomaly - I DO NOT sell almost 800 items at every craft show I do!

Not only did I sell a lot, but I bought a lot too. That’s half the fun, right?  

Here’s a peek at my Indie Craft Parade loot from some of the most talented regional artists. I could have bought something from just about every vendor. I had a hard time narrowing it down to these awesome items!

1. Ring from January Jewelry

2. Print from Chris Koelle

3. Felted Flowers from Muncle Fred Art 

4. Brass Earrings from Olivia de Soria Jewelry

5. Bone Pendant from Exterra88

6. Turned Walnut Bowl from Turning South

7. Trivet and Feather Ornament from Crave Studio

8. Owl Print from Joe Engel

9. Turned Muddlers from Slab

10. & 11. Paintings from Candy Pegram

12. Bowl from Bean & Bailey

13. Tiny Vases from April Swhingle

14. Porcupine Pendant from Spectrum Handcrafted

15. 2015 Calendar from Paperform

Thanks to everyone who made this event so special!

Indie Craft Parade: The Milestone That Changed Everything

Indie Craft Parade is a festival of handmade goods held every September in Greenville, SC, that features top makers from all over the southeast. So ... it's just a craft show, right? Well, no. Not really. It's a whole lot more than that. This show changed everything for me.

Once upon a time, in the summer of 2011, I applied to a craft show for the very first time. My Etsy shop Once Again Sam was still fairly new, and trying an event seemed like a reasonable goal for growth. With zero experience, I submitted my application for the “To Wear” category, and hoped my handmade leather jewelry would make the cut. As an after thought, I decided to also apply for the “Fiber Art” category. I had just learned needle felting a few months earlier and thought showing the judges a range of work might help me stand out.

My expectations of being accepted were low. A few hundred people applying for 75 spots = not great odds. The day the jury notifications went out I was bummed my jewelry had been declined, but not shocked. Then, I read the email again and realized my fiber art had been accepted. I believe my exact words were, “What the crap?” I had just learned how to felt, and the photos I used for my fiber art application were some of the only pieces I had ever made. 

That summer, all I did was felt felt felt. Looking back, I can see that having to improve my skills quickly and develop a substantial amount of inventory in only a matter of weeks was a pivotal point for me, a crash course in this obscure craft that helped elevate my techniques in a very short time period. I felted every day for as many hours as I could manage, till it hurt. 

The show went very well, much better than I expected (because I didn’t really know what to expect). I later realized just how well organized the whole thing was, and what a great group of people are behind it all. After that first show, everything changed for Once Again Sam. Countless doors were opened. I began selling in local shops and saw a dramatic increase in my repeat customers. I started taking my handmade work more seriously, as a real business, not just a hobby.  As terrified as I was to stand behind my table and talk to total strangers that first time back in 2011 (hardcore introverts can relate, I'm sure), I got through it somehow, and it paid off in every possible way. The positive response was incredible, I felt overwhelmingly encouraged, and realized I could actually make a good living this way.

Since then, I've been lucky enough to participate in Indie Craft Parade each year, and not just with my Felted Curiosities, but also with my new & improved handmade jewelry (starting in 2012). This show has become one of the major highlights of my year. I use it as a launching pad for new collections, a deadline for improving my booth set up, and a chance to meet other creatives and connect with local customers. I love preparing for this show, I love being there, and I actually feel sad when it's over. There's a sort of a magical, inspirational atmosphere to it all, as funny as that may sound. 

Here's a look back at my last 4 years of Indie Craft Parade application photos. I can definitely see improvement, my earlier work isn't my best now, but it was my best at the time. I still have a lot to learn, a thousand new things I want to try, and I’m sure I’ll cringe years from now at the work I’m most proud of today. It’s the curse of every artist, right? 

This year, my husband’s shop Tree & Laser, will be right next to Once Again Sam at the 5th annual Indie Craft Parade in downtown Greenville, SC. There will be an amazing range of hip hand-crafted goods from regional makers, and you won’t want to miss out. Everything from screen printed t-shirts, to pottery and fine art, and of course, handmade jewelry & felted curiosities brought to you by yours truly. If you’re in the Upstate of SC, come on by!

A Rebranding Story

I’ve always been a DIYer, even when it comes to graphic design, an area I have very limited experience in. My Once Again Sam logo was something I had developed with my husband years ago, when I first started the business and didn’t have much money to invest beyond basic supplies. The template I used to create the red "amoeba flower" logo was actually a drafting template I had left over from a landscape architecture course I took in college - I was using tools that were literally laying around my studio.

The logo worked for awhile. One of my very earliest jewelry collections featured layers of leather in the shape of my amoeba flower, but they didn't sell that well so I eventually dropped them, leaving the logo without much lasting meaning. I started to wonder if there was a better way to brand my growing business, and the tools laying around my studio in more recent months weren't offering any inspiration this time around.

I had been wanting to update my look for quite some time, but couldn’t come up with any fresh ideas in the graphic design department. I was stumped and I didn’t want to go through the major process of rebranding until I had something I really really loved, something that would take me through the next phase of my entrepreneurial experience. I kept waiting for that one good logo idea to come to me, but the good idea never came...except this one: hire a professional.

Chris Jones, the Creative Kingpin of Popcorn Initiative had some good ideas. Some great ones, actually! The first round of logo mockups were 1000 times better than anything I could have come up with. It was easy to see the difference between my DIY attempts and the work of a true professional. Chris developed several options, and I had a really hard time deciding which direction to go, because I honestly loved everything he sent. Each logo shared a different part of the Once Again Sam story (and there are a LOT of parts and pieces to the Once Again Sam story). I make a broad range of handmade items that have little to do with each other, which can cause problems when it comes to defining a brand with just one icon. How can you relate needle felted fiber art with handmade jewelry? The only thing they have in common is the person who made them.

In the end, after a few rounds of logos, I decided on one that would last, no matter how many new things I learn to make in the future (because I could take up woodturning tomorrow, and painting the day after that, and who knows what else the day after that). My new logo is simple, it’s just me, not a representation of what I make, or tools I use, or even a symbol that embodies my handmade business. Everything I create comes from the brain inside my head. Chris was clever with the typography too, because professional graphic designers are good like that - the little upward arrow on the end of “Sam” is a reference to where I got my start, using recycled materials, giving them new life, ONCE AGAIN, in a whole new way.

I couldn’t be happier with my new logo and branding package, and I wish I had done this a whole lot sooner. A huge thank you to Chris Jones of Popcorn Initiative for bringing Once Again Sam to this new level!