Free Tip for Craft Show Vendors

 

If you are an artist, like me, and if you take your work to shows, like I do, I have a great tip for you!

You know those parents who bring their kids to the show and let them run free, grabbing and poking at whatever they like while Mom and Dad chat and browse?  Yeah, I bet you know them all too well!

At my last show I came up with a brilliant solution to the art-molestation problem.  I took a cute little vintage frog cup I had found at an antique shop.  I filled it up with dum-dums (little suckers) and I topped it off with two little sock monkey cupcake toppers which peeked out over the dum-dums.

I placed the frog and it's child-enticing contents next to my checkout area (just out of the reach of children), and each time a grabby child visited my booth I offered a dum-dum.  Now the child has a treat, AND she has to hold on to it with one hand.  This usually solved the problem 100%, however in one or two especially grabby cases I offered TWO dum-dums, one for each hand, and that did the trick.

I realize some parents might not like their children to be offered candy, I'm one of them, but if  parents can't keep their children's hands busy...I will!

Have a fun and prosperous holiday season,

Waxela (wa-shay-la)

Tip for Polymer Clay

I'm so excited to share this little tip. I was at a going out of business sale at a little local food store, and I found the most amazing tool. It is called a bench scraper or pastry scraper and is normally used for cutting pastry dough and cleaning work surfaces. It was marked "50 cents" so I picked it up and put it in my cart, not knowing what a treasure I had just acquired.

Later the same day I had some clay to roll out in my pasta machine. I looked at my new tool and realized it would be perfect for first chopping my clay into nice manageable slivers before rolling it out. This worked like a charm! Then I used it to cut long slices of rolled clay, to clean my pasta roller, and to scrape clay off my work surface.


I have used my bench scraper daily since I got it, and now I think I need two, one for cleaning surfaces, and one for cutting clay. If you work with polymer clay, you must get one, or two. They cost under $10.00 new, and in my book, they are priceless!