Thursday's Party

You've all been asking about how my party went on Thursday - after cleaning and baking (I have dozens of cookies left over and sitting in my freezer!) and organizing and planning and delivering over 100 fliers - I had a total of 11 people show up - and three of them were my kids! This is what my living room looked like.


I set up three tables and draped them with tableclothes and then some of the pretty scarves that Dirk brought me from Afghanistan or else pieces of fabric that I picked up from the remnant table at wal mart.

I did sell a few necklaces and thought - well they all seemed to like the many different styles and how well they were made....

but since then the interest has really grown - phone calls and more orders and compliments galore. I love seeing my 'designs' showing up on people different places...it is sooo fun!
Wednesday evening as I set the tables up I realized that I had so many 'illusion' style necklaces that there were too many to lay them all out - but I couldn't decide which ones to display and which ones not... so I ran to wal mart Thursday morning and bought some racks for cupcake tins and cookie sheets and set them upside down with another little rack inbetween and that gave me a fun place to hang them all!!!
The only illusion necklaces I didn't hang on this rack was the "mommy and me" sets (two necklaces made alike for mother and daughter) and then a couple others that I wanted to highlight. It worked!





Kristanne has been unsure of what color or design she wanted her necklace to be like. So she bought her own beads!!!! WOW!! (For those of you new to my blog spot she is one of my five daughters or daughters-in-law that I made my first necklaces for - I practiced on them and they told me color and I made the necklaces! They were my first sounding boards and I learned alot from them). Kris picked a soft red swarovski crystal and bought both large and small beads. I have posted a picture of her necklace above and below this paragraph - the others will be jealous that they didn't wait too, because I have gotten better. Kris also bought 14k gold spacer beads and earring wires and they are beautiful. If I were to make and sell her set it would run $35 to $40 just because of the cost of all the materials! I use nice beads but not as many of the Swarovski crystals and not 14k gold!


This is still one of my favorites -

-
Again - you get the idea of how I laid some out flat and set others up on boards. Actually I had to get creative here too - I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of cheap 8 x 10 picture frames and draped them with fabric or shawls and put s hooks or some real pretty shower curtain hooks on them and hung the necklaces from them

I had necklaces that ranged in price from $8 through $40 but offered atwenty percent discount so I felt like the prices were reasonable while the quality was good.

The ladies that came were excited over the fact that for no extra charge I would hand make their necklace to THEIR SPECIFICATIONS!

So anyway the ball is rolling and my business has begun! Amee and Terrie are having an open house in their back yard on the 30th of May - they will have displays from several different vendors (it is fun thinking of myself as a vendor!) in their huge back yard there in Syracuse . I feel like my little party here was a good practice for their party. I learned alot about setting up and taking down and displaying the items. I will probably try and do an open house every couple of months!!!

One thing I WON"T do again is take all of the necklaces off their displays and put in them in one container thinking I can sit and watch the news and put them in their individual plastic bags - talk about a mess. In ten minutes time they were a tangled mess!!! Mostly because of the magnet closures that all stuck together. LIVE AND LEARN!!