Year: 2017

Today, we’re speaking with Ngaire from Burnt Offerings, based in the Wairarapa (NZ). Ngaire creates unique, practical art pieces for everyday living by etching glass, mirror, stone, granite, tiles and burning onto wood.

Tell us a bit about yourself, Ngaire!
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“Hi, my name is Ngaire, and I live in the beautiful Wairarapa.  I have two gorgeous daughters with a wonderful husband, and a loving extended family who have all encouraged me to take my “art” to the next level.
Each item is hand done, there is no computer laser. I use a pneumatic pencil grinder with a diamond tipped tool, which I use to draw onto the glass, stone and tiles, and I use a hot wire to burn the design onto the wood.
​Most of my items are second hand finds, that I either etch or burn to give them a new lease on life.  This also means you won’t find them elsewhere – they are unique, one-off pieces.”

​Ngaire has donated a beautiful, etched mirror, worth $150, as the centrepiece for the Outpawed fundraiser raffle at our August market.

Here’s the story of how it was made:

“The process starts with the mirror, which I normally put next to my work station. I leave it there for a couple of days until an idea comes into my head.  This idea came about when my daughter wanted to colour in a kitten!  I then draw it up and transferred the outline onto the mirror with carbon paper. Then, I put on a mask, gloves, a heavy over coat and ear muffs, to prevent the glass dust getting into places it shouldn’t!  The noise is quite bad, as the diamond tip bites into the mirror to create the design.  It is easy to miscalculate where to etch as it’s all reflected back at you!
Most of the time involved in creating one of these pieces is taken up with designing and thinking about what to etch. Once the plan is created, to etch this mirror probably took 30 minutes.”

Find out more about Burnt Offerings here:
https://www.burntofferingsnz.com/
www.facebook.com/pg/burntofferingsnz
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Tickets for the raffle will be available at the August Petone Winter Market, 10.30am to 3pm, 19th August, at the Petone Baptist Church, 38 Buick Street, Petone.
www.facebook.com/PetoneWinterMarkets
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The Petone Winter Markets are the place to buy locally made creations, snack on tasty treats, and fuel up with coffee from Ripe. Drop off the kids at the fully fenced play area while you browse our 30+ indoor stalls and take in the stylings of some local entertainers. There will be all kinds of winter woollies, magpie treasures, tasty treats, and fantastic gift ideas for all! Bring a carry bag – we’re a plastic-bag-free event.

In the weeks leading up to each market, we will be running a gold-coin-entry colouring competition, featuring poster artwork by Cat Drayer from Copper Catkin. Proceeds from the competition will help local charity Outpawed with the care and management of stray and feral cats (and KITTENS) in the Wellington region. The prize is a fantastic play-date with some Outpawed kittens. KITTENS! 

Join us and help brighten these wintery weekends with some family-friendly handmade goodness!
​And did we mention KITTENS?

Enter our colouring competitions or buy some tasty treats on the day to help raise funds for our chosen cause, Outpawed!

​“Outpawed is a NZ-registered charity dedicated to the care and management of stray and feral cats in the Wellington region. 

We provide shelter for wild cats and kittens, and aim to desex, socialise, vaccinate, microchip and find homes for as many of these cats as possible. We are also involved in trap-neuter-return (TNR) for cats that cannot be integrated into a household environment. Where TNR is necessary, cats are released into managed colonies where they are fed and monitored.

We aim to work with local government and other animal welfare organisations to obtain the best outcome possible for the feral cat population. Our goal is to reduce this population over time through desexing and adoption.“

​Nini Mulyani is the wonderful woman behind Things Unseen. One of the things that I find most charming about her products is how each and every one is different, and assembled from pieces sourced all over the globe to be given new life as fantastic jewellery. Another striking thing about Nini is that, while most stallholders have fully-loaded station wagons, Nini can pack her entire stall into a suitcase and catch the bus, or walk. She was kind enough to chat with me about her special skill of travelling light.

Cat: Thank you so much, Nini, for coming to chat with me about your experiences in the world of craft markets. Let’s start off with a bit of background. You trade as – tell us a bit about what you make, and how you got started!
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Nini: I am a self taught vintage-inspired jewellery artisan based in Wellington. You’ll find pieces that you will not find anywhere else. I selected all the materials myself locally and throughout the world. They not only beautiful, but many of the older components would surely have interesting tales to tell if only they could speak!

Nini: It all started with my love affair with the idea of a treasure hunt. The desire to source vintage jewellery material inspired me to sell some of them as finished pieces to support my need to rescue more of the sad and neglected tokens and trinkets of the past.

After some research, I decided to sell at craft fairs. There’s something about the feeling of having someone admire your product, pick it up or try it on, and then pay you for it in front of your eyes that selling exclusively online just can’t match. Call it connecting with your customers or getting a crash course in retail, but giving craft fairs a shot can be a rewarding experience when you prepare for them in advance and set your expectations wisely.

​Cat: Copper Catkin Consulting came about when I noticed that I just kept getting asked for ideas and tips on how I set up my stalls. Part of the reason that you have been invited to guest post is that you are clearly awesome (obvs), and part is your distinctive style – the way that you really kill at packing light. So tell us, Nini, – how did you get so good at it?

​​Nini: As a market goer, my biggest challenge is not having a vehicle. I have to be creative with my displays. They need to be effective, attractive, compact, and reasonably light, so that I can take public transport or not take up too much space if another kind stall holder offers me a ride.

Cat: I think it’s too cool how you rock at carrying your stall on your back, so to speak. Did you have lots of trial and error, or did it just sort of happen organically?

Nini: I often find old wooden boxes, foldable displays, ornate frames, feathers, and a vintage suitcase as my display these days. I stick with two or three dominant shades. I try to avoid plastic but somehow, I still have a soft spot for an ‘ugly beautiful’ plastic object. I like layers, order, and a balanced arrangement to exhibit my delicate jewellery.  

Cat: I’m offering a free mini-makeover for stallholders through Copper Catkin Consulting, to help people focus their stall offering.
I emphasise 5 major principles:
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•             Dress (your stall) for success
•             Keep it Fresh
•             Layers
•             Flavour
•             Hook
 
As someone who’s so good at keeping your displays portable without losing that je-ne-sais-quoi that defines your displays as yours, I feel that one thing in particular that you will have some advice about is ‘Flavour’.

The idea is to use the ‘Flavour’ principle in order to give your stall a real point of difference.

Do you have any advice or comments on choosing the right ‘Flavour’?

​Nini: For my displays, I play and experiment with objects I find at the op-shops. Pre-loved stuff is perfect and suits my jewellery. I rescue and show them off for their nature of perfectly imperfect material that has travelled through time. They are common objects that you see around, familiar, and yet you can’t just buy them from any shop. It is somehow a Things Unseen kind of thing.​​
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Cat: What would you say to someone who is new to selling their own creations?

Nini: It takes time, effort, and money to succeed in selling at craft fairs, so be sure to cut yourself some slack if things don’t turn out exactly as planned. Remember to keep your head high, learn your lessons, and keep experimenting until you find what works for you and stick with it.

Cat: What about if someone who’s been selling at markets for a while, and their sales are dropping or have hit a plateau, any thoughts?
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Nini: ‘Stickability’ is the power of perseverance. Most entrepreneurs understand that first comes a dream, then a struggle, and finally we gain achievement. ​When we are willing to do today what others won’t do, we will have what others won’t have in the future.

Cat: Nini, thank you for your wise words, and for sharing your beautiful creations with us. See you and Things Unseen at the markets!

#WorkYourQuirk

I have recently launched the consultancy branch of my business – Copper Catkin Consulting. I noticed that I just kept getting asked for ideas and tips on how I set up my stalls, so I decided to do something about it!

Sometimes, it’s just too hard to get started on something you know you need to do – and I seem to be good at helping people with that, so here I am! 

To start with, ​I’m offering a free mini-makeover for stallholders, to help people focus their stall offering.
I emphasise 5 major principles:

• Dress (your stall) for success
• Keep it Fresh
• Layers
• Flavour
• Hook

At the end of the course, which consists of 5 days, stallholders have the tools to give their stall a powerful, sales-boosting makeover. 

The course is delivered by means of a series of 5 daily emails. In an ideal world, people do the exercises for each day as they arrive, and then post their results in the purpose-built Facebook group for discussion. We know that this isn’t an ideal world – life gets in the way, That’s why the course isn’t structured on a Monday-Friday format. When you are ready, you post your next day’s exercise in the group.  If you want to see what everyone else has been up to, just search the group by that day’s hashtag. 

The flexibility means that anyone can join at any time, and people can post when they’re ready. It also means that I can dip in whenever and add another thought for that day’s hashtag – so if you’re in the group, you can keep checking for different days and get new material 🙂

I know that once the ideas are flowing, it can be really hard (and counter-productive) to stop – which is why I have designed a couple of quick solutions to help people get to the next stage – a 30-minute online brainstorm, and a photo essay called the Flavour UP! package. For each of these, I do a short, sharp burst of ideas, and then the stallholder can go away and process. 

I get a bit obsessed when an idea is forming – and I think that’s a very normal thing for creative people. When someone removes whatever block was in the way, you can hardly dam the rush of exciting thoughts and plans. That’s why I also have an hourly consulting option, for people who just need to crank through it and get that one-on-one time. 

I’m going to start offering other things – guided shopping trips, stall display coaching sessions, sales training (including my own sales process), and other coaching classes. I have a lot of other ideas, too, but they’re still incubating 🙂 
​Follow me on Facebook for more updates!

My very latest drawing, Mānuka, had its very first outing at Eat, Drink & Be Crafty 2017 yesterday. This drawing was inspired by my interest in Rongoā Māori (Traditional Māori healing), and will be the first in that series. 

​I drew the Mānuka from two samples snipped from one of our own trees, and used it as an exercise to time myself for future commissions – this was about 7 hours’ work, all up.

It’s really thrilling when people recognise the plant from my drawings – I was so pleased that several friends and customers knew exactly what they were seeing, even when the flowers weren’t to scale.

If you’re keen to buy my Mānuka designs, you can get them on Spoonflower as soon as I can approve my samples:

Or on RedBubble (plenty of products available in each design):

​It’s hardly been the summeriest of summers in Wellington, NZ, but we have still managed to be very productive, here at Copper Catkin HQ.

This last fortnight, George and I have spent every spare minute working on new designs, several batches of new jewellery, putting together a new stock management system, building new displays for the new Miss Match range, designing and printing new ‘matchbook’ packaging, designing and ordering our fancy new gazebo from Hercules Gazebos, uploading new products to our Etsy store, gradually making around 200 of our Spoonflower designs available to buy directly through Spoonflower, creating new designs for RedBubble, and coming up with lots of new product lines (watch this space) to incorporate even more of our creative ideas.

​​The hardest part, actually, has been choosing which of our many ideas to pursue first. What’s the opposite of a writer’s block? A writer’s flood? An overwhelm? Anyway, that’s what’s been happening in my brain over the last month. I still have a reserve of about 20 designs waiting to be given the time to emerge, and there’s so much other stuff I want to make, too… It’s wonderful 🙂

Problem statement:
As a customer, I want to be able to pick things up and look at them without having to ask or open the packet – but I also want them to have cute packaging, that will protect them and make a nice gift. I want to be able to grab and go without waiting for packaging.
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As the owner, I don’t want to spend hours untangling loose earrings; I want the majority of my stock to be packaged and ready to hang. I want packaging that won’t look foxed too quickly, and won’t be damaged if there’s a little drizzle.

​Solution:
We will offer three level of access to earrings!
Loose – we hang the earrings out where they can be handled and fondled easily.
Miss Match Matchbooks – no barrier between the customer and the earrings, but they can quickly be folded up and popped in a bag for purchase.
Packaged – we hang earrings (and pendants) on cards in cellophane packaging, so they are protected from the elements, and customers can just grab and go.

Initially, I wanted to incorporate LED peg fairy lights into my design – but as the pegs dwarf the matchbooks, we decided to use them to hang fat quarters as ‘bunting’ from the gazebo. Another unexpected side effect of the large pegs was that they squash the earring hooks and make the earrings sit weirdly – but my clever husband came up with an ingenious solution – a second line, complete with mini-pegs, behind the main line. So the matchbook hangs over the main line, and is held in place by the tiny peg behind it 🙂

And here’s a bit of a photo essay on how we made them.

One of my personal quirks has always been which things should be matchy-matchy (cutlery and other homewares – I hate when my knife and fork are from different sets), and which things should be more eclectic. There are still rules, though; I need a unifying theme – for example, when I wear mismatched shoes, they both have to be sneakers, and the socks need to be from the same set (so that the thickness and fit isn’t weirdly different).

Part of the joy of the hand-making process is all the little imperfections that result from human intervention. I have deliberately embraced the fact that the images in my earrings will never be perfectly aligned, and now I’m taking it to a new, conscious level with the ‘Miss Match’ by Copper Catkin series. 

Designing the logo was quite a process, but I always had a strong idea for the final product – a matchbook that could flip open. I liked the idea of a matchbook from the very start – as well as the pun, it’s a different way of selling earrings. I haven’t seen anything like it, and combined with our new display units, it made the packaging much more accessible for people to pick up than our previous earring display, which was popular, but a little intimidating. People need help to unhook earrings from it, and that takes away some of their agency – no one likes to ask for help to look at things while they’re still browsing. It works really well in combination with our new earring displays, though – we also have Greg, the original display unit, where people can unhook ready-packaged earrings and pendants, which completes the set. 

I mocked up the matchbooks as I saw them, and with the help of Cat from Byte Design, I sent them out to get printed (very reasonably) at Wakefields Digital. 

I spent several hours folding the packaging and punching earring holes, then hanging my brand new earrings, and adding them to my new stocklist.

Look how great they looked on the new displays! <3

And here are some fan photos from a happy customer: