Coasters and Cards for the Craft Show

Next Saturday there is a craft exhibition/sale at our church, and I have booked a large table to display my work, and hopefully sell some pieces, and also to do a series of demonstrations during the day, of things which should be fun to watch. This time my display will feature my zentangle art, of course, and this will also be my final demo of the day. I am preparing some outline drawings ready to fill with pattern and colour on the day.

I am also demonstrating backgrounds with resist and stencilling, using a variety of techniques (nice and messy), and paper flower making. I have cut two different flower shapes from plain white card in readiness for this, and the demo will include colouring these pieces with Distress Stains, hand embossing them, and assembling them with the hot glue gun.

On the suggestion of several of my friends recently, I decided to get some coasters made of my zentangle designs. I now have two sets of approximately 3-in square designs, so I have had two different sets of coasters made, at one of the online photographic companies that also do mugs and things

Design Set One can be seen here, and Set Two here.

Here are the two sets of coasters.

I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t come boxed – for the price they were, and the quality, I think they should have. It’s annoying because I had to spend quite a long time (which I don’t have much of before the craft show on Saturday) making boxes for them.

The box base was easy. I simply cut a 6-inch square of black card, scored it in an inch from each edge, snipped a wedge out of each corner, and glued it up using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive (aka Lucy’s Glue lol! – Thank you Lucy, for recommending the best wet glue on the market in my opinion). This made a 4-inch square box for the 3 1/2 in square coasters. However, the lid was a different matter. The first one I made was too big. Eventually I got it right, and I’ve created two svg files in Inkscape, which are now uploaded to my Skydrive – one for the lid itself, and the other for the lid lining.

Both lid and lining have an aperture measuring 3 inches square. The lid has semi-circular pieces cut out either side for ease of opening. To make the lid, after cutting both pieces on Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, I cut a square of acetate measuring 3 1/2 inches and glued this with Lucy’s Glue onto the lid lining. I then glued this onto the lid itself, accurately aligning the two apertures and sandwiching the acetate between the two pieces. I then scored the lid, exactly following the outline of the liner, and folded up the sides as snugly as I possibly could against the liner, and cut wedges in the corners, and assembled as for the base.

The final touch for the box was to add a printed label, and a small insert in the bottom of the box with a short explanation about zentangle.

Here are the coasters in their boxes.

The other day I also made a set of two dozen small (A6 sized) cards featuring the same twelve designs as the coasters. They also have a leaflet in the back, giving some information about zentangle. Here they are, bagged up and ready for sale.

I have also got some plastic coasters on order, that you put your own photos in. I am intending to make these up with more of the same, and sell these individually as a cheaper option, as they are not as nice as the cork-backed ones.

 

A Word about Comments

As you know, last week I had problems with Blogger not showing my comments awaiting moderation. This turned out to be due to a conflict with the latest Firefox upgrade, and for a couple of days I had to deal with them in Internet Explorer (which I don’t usually use). It’s all working properly again in Firefox now, thank goodness, but I’ve got a great backlog of comments still awaiting moderation – I like to deal with each one individually and visit the person’s blog to reply, and this takes quite a time, particularly as Blogger is up to its usual tricks of taking ages to load the blogs, and often timing out. If your comment has not yet appeared on my blog, or you haven’t heard from me, please be patient – I am gradually getting through them all, and you are certainly not forgotten! One of my greatest joys is reading all the lovely comments my fabulous Blogland friends send me – I can’t tell you how uplifting and encouraging your wonderful words always are, so please keep them coming! It means so much to me.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as I’m terribly busy this week, trying to prepare for the craft show, and I’m pulling out all the stops to keep on top of everything, and I don’t want to crash health-wise… I shall probably be very exhausted next week when it’s all over, and again, those of you lovely people who have kindly agreed to swap ATCs with me, I would ask you for your patience as I try and deal with it all! It may take some time.

Thank you so much for your understanding!