Year: 2018

 As a market event organiser, and a stallholder with a few years’ experience under my belt, I often get asked for advice by people considering giving markets a go themselves. 
I have watched small businesses come and go over the years, and had several first-timers at my own events.
I like to use the life cycle of a butterfly as a good example of how things can work out for a nascent business – as long as the caterpillar stallholder stocks up on plenty of knowledge, planning, and products before taking its shot at butterflydom, they have a reasonable shot at success.

To help identify levels of experience, we classify our makers according to the following criteria:

Level 0 – Caterpillar – not approved to sell at Wrought but has potential
Level A – Chrysalis or other new sellers – approved to sell on half-sized stalls
Level B – Butterfly – Standard approved sellers
Level C – Sellers approved for showcase spots – experienced makers who have the capability to stock and fill a showcase stall space professionally and attractively, and who can demonstrate a skill or give workshops onsite.

​Some of the questions I hear a lot as an organiser are:

• Will I have enough stock?
• How do I choose my price point?
• Can I be sure that I will cover my costs?
• How do I set up my stall?
• How should I interact with my customers?

​We can help you with all of these questions and more through the Copper Catkin Consulting Caterpillar Courses. 

​These courses are bite-sized online classes, delivered in a 5-day email series, that culminate in a quiz and two physical workshops where you can try out your stall design and fine-tune your sales skills before your very first market.

​BONUS

Stallholders whose displays meet requirements will also receive their Wrought Chrysalis ticket, which gives access to the 3-market Chrysalis package.  Stallholders who complete their goals and then meet requirements will also be eligible for the Chrysalis ticket upon completion. Please note that putative stallholders who do not complete the course (including meeting their goals), or who do not pass the assessments, will not be eligible for the Chrysalis package, and may not be approved as Wrought sellers.

​An American friend of mine has been struggling through some pretty tough times recently. She’s dealing with serious family illness, and all the horrible internal politics that go with it. I’ve been watching developments helplessly from here in NZ, wishing there was something I could do – but there simply wasn’t anything more than giving support through the internet. 

She comes from a place called Lake Havasu, Arizona. A local publication there runs a column called ‘orchids and onions‘, where residents can express their gratitude or vent their frustration by assigning orchids or onions to someone. Since she has been back home with her sick relative, she has used the format in her own Facebook posts, and it caught my imagination – mainly because I have a tendency to have a black thumb, and no meal I make is complete without at least one member of the onion family! It’s rather a lovely motif, though, and the imagery kept coming back to me as I thought about what might be a nice thing to cheer her up.

Although the orchids represent the positive, and the onions the negative, I chose to combine them in a philosophical “when life gives you lemons”-style design. You take the good with the bad, and you try to make something pretty out of it anyway. That’s kind of her signature move. She’s a tough chick, and she handles a lot of difficult things without losing touch with what makes it all worthwhile.

I wish that I could share some photos with you of her lovely home – she has been doing an inspirational job of decluttering her life, and her carefully-curated home reflects her efforts beautifully. As a result, I know of her passion for teal turquoise shades, and her love of orchids – so I had both subject matter and colour scheme covered. I hope very much that my designs will fit with her aesthetic!

After consulting my friend’s husband, we decided to go ahead with a design to match one of her favourite orchids on a teal background, and that I would send it to her on one of Redbubble‘s throw pillows – so I got started with a plan in mind.

Onions posed no challenge – I have drawn them many times, and as most people would be, I am intimately familiar with their structure, so the only thing I needed to do was decide what kind of onion to draw, and what colour. I settled rapidly on red onions, to go with my friend’s favourite orchid (photo credit to her husband).

After a lot of research and practice (including actually tracing some photos to try to learn more about how the flowers worked), I managed to gain enough of an understanding of the structure of the orchid flower to make some decent sketches, and the design evolved rapidly from there. 

Once the colours started to work, the design really came together quickly. I couldn’t decide on the best background colour, though! The turquoise is wonderfully lurid – but what if it’s not the right shade? But the moss didn’t quite pop enough… 

Once I used the Redbubble mock-up feature, it became abundantly clear that the turquoise was the best choice. I decided to give her a set of two cushions, and as a result, I now also have a new stripe in my arsenal – win/win!

The cushions are already winging their way to her place as we speak – one of the things I love the most about working in the digital medium! A day’s work and a site like Redbubble, and custom-printed cushion covers can appear on the doorstep of a friend to give her the comfort that I can’t give from the other side of the world.

UPDATE: They’ve arrived!!! And they look amazing!

My husband and I work very hard. When we’re not working on Copper Catkin stuff, or Wrought stuff, or Petone Winter Markets stuff, or any of our other projects, we’re doing housework, working on our lifestyle property, looking after our pets, or working at our actual day jobs – I’m between contracts, but George works full-time hours as well as everything else he does!

We’re not very good at taking time to just enjoy each other’s company and have a break – so for 2018, we have decided to make sure we have regular dates.
​
One such date was a trip out to Pauatahanui on January 13th. We had brunch at a local cafe, then we went blueberry picking at a PYO (pick-your-own) orchard. Neither of us has done PYO blueberries – we’ve both helped harvest fruit and veg from large family gardens, but nothing on this scale. It was a lot of fun, and we highly recommend it!

We got home, and made many things with blueberries in them, and then froze the rest of our considerable haul – it took 2 hours to pick them in the incredible summer heat, but we have savoured every berry since!

I have had a couple of practice runs with my new time lapse set-up, but I decided that this was going to be the big one – the end-to-end process time lapse, from photo ideas all the way through to finished jewellery items. 

Before I got started, I made sure that I had the right kind of audio – I knew from previous experience that the length of this clip was going to be much longer than most of the audio tracks I would be able to source, so I spent some time on the free music archive looking for some good matches, and I was lucky enough to find Ian Sutherland’s “Behind The Lines (Alternate Version)”:

The next step is the easiest to explain, and the most time-consuming to do – I scanned, tidied up, and coloured the images digitally. Then, I used the initial drawings to build fabric repeat designs.

Because I didn’t film or record this part of the process, I had to create a little animation (my first!) to represent the process. I made a separate clip of it to test it, and then incorporated it into the final video once it was up to scratch (my standards aren’t too high yet, as you can see!) #closeenough

I absolutely love the way it has come out – the earrings look amazing, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the fabrics come out!

After a great many more hours of battling the application and my own very steep learning curve, I had a rough cut to show friends. I took their feedback into account, and tweaked it as best I could. Here’s my ‘final’ version – I hope you enjoy it!