In the Works . . .

School is out! June 11th was my last day teaching after-school classes for the year, and as much as I enjoy teaching, I am really excited to have a little more time and not have to spend my evenings planning for the next class. It has only been a little over a week so far, but here are the projects I have been working on:

I have an order of several ribbon bags for a wedding party. I have finished weaving the ribbons and am now working on the bag construction. Here are a few in process photos.


The puppet show is my biggest project of the summer. I don't have any exciting pictures yet, but I did get the puppet blog all set up and ready to go. You can check out the design now, and I will let you know when the first post goes up.

The other thing I am working on is FINALLY getting our little studio all unpacked and organized. The story here is that we had a HUGE studio space before, but we moved out in Dec. because the building needed lots of repair that the landlord couldn't/wouldn't take care of. We decided the best choice for now was to move our studio into our spare room, which is pretty small. Lot of stuff + small space + no free time = still not all unpacked. I am determined to get it done in the next few days though.

Here is a picture of the room at the start of the day yesterday. I should have thought to take a picture at the beginning of the week so you could see how disorganized it was to start.


Here is a picture now- it is getting better everyday. I will post again when it is all done and beautiful, and maybe have a little party for myself when it is finished!

Pile of Puppets

I thought I would share some pictures of the hand puppets I am making for this week's craft fairs, especially since they are what is taking up most of my time this week. Here they all are lined up next to my sewing machine. I stayed up really late last night and got all of the bodies sewn, except for a couple orange ones on the end there. After that comes stuffing and attaching eyes and ears and such, which is really the fun part. I think this is a new record for the most puppets I have ever made at a time (31 in all), and I am excited about getting a picture of them all set up together when they are finished. For now though, I have scraps of fleece all over the place.

Bags + Busy, Busy

Ooops! It has been a while since I updated. A big part of the reason it has been so long since my last post is that I have been really busy with lots of exciting things lately. So here is the quick run down of whats new.
I have starting teaching puppetry classes in after-school programs at two local schools. One is a high school, and the other is an elementary school. It is lot of fun to see the students learn and enjoy themselves, and it is also interesting to see how the different age groups work with some of the same materials.
I have been doing lots of craft fairs lately, and they have been going pretty well. The only downside to that is all the new stuff I have made has gone to the fairs and I haven't been able to add anything new to my etsy shop in awhile. The upsides are that I don't have to spend as much time on marketing when I sell at fairs, and I really like meeting the customers face to face and seeing them enjoy my work. I have two, count them, two fairs coming up this week. Here are the details, please stop by if you happen to be in the area.

Indian Orchard School
95 Milton St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
12/4 6pm-8pm

Farmington River School
555 N Main Rd
Otis, MA 01253
12/6 10am-4pm

The classes and fairs are taking up most of my time, but I am also still working on some other puppetry projects and hoping to make some Christmas gifts for friends and family. I also haven't been the best about taking pictures of what I am working on, but I do have these pictures of ribbon bags in process.

Blues and greens:And reds and browns:

I like the way they are coming along so far, and if they don't go at the craft fairs you can probably see them in my shop next week. I should get back to sewing, so that is all for now, but I will try and update again later this week.