A sampling of Isa Creations

I created a little sampler of some of my favorite Isa Creation items. 

Pin Cushions

House Coin Purse

House Pillows

Dominoes Pendants with Vintage Dress Patterns

Birds

and

 

Garlands

all types

Vintage Embroidered Linens

Vintage Hankies

Vintage Doilies (white & dyed)

Chalkboard

Paper

Fabric (Seasonal Prints)

I am not alone in loving Garlands/Buntings

in 2014 I sold 124 Garlands!

For this 1 person company,

that is huge!

After a couple of grueling days, I finally finished entering my sales data and generating reports telling me how many items I sold, when and where.   Creating seasonal items, especially Halloween & Christmas is a big part of my business,especially in 2014.   I just did not realize how big until I reviewed by sales data for November and December.

 A huge thanks to all my customer and all who supported  Isa Creations during 2014!

 The laser-cut paper garland flags is a preview of what is to come.  Since it is paper and they are delicate, I created a protective layer by putting the laser-cut paper inside clear vinyl. I stitched it all around and added eyelets.  I plan on selling these as individual garland "flags" so customer can customize their garland to their preferred color and length. 

I love incorporating vintage linens to create my little House coin purses.  The purple trim is vintage trim I dyed purple (my favorite color).  Purple vintage chenille bedspread combined with bits of vintage embroidered linens for the door and window.

 Another favorite material is truly vintage rick rack!  You can't beat the colors and the texture in the truly vintage rick rack.  I am happy to say I have acquired a huge collection of vintage rick rack at numerous estate sales.  

Fantastic Sales at Sugar Plum Bazaar

As Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I am especially grateful this year.  I am grateful for so much!

My Family

My Friends

I am also grateful for all the people who have supported me this past year with my little business,

Isa Creations

This past weekend, I was a vendor at Sugar Plum Bazaar.  Each year, I hope for better sales.  I am grateful that every year, my sales have grown from one year to the next.

This year, not only did my sales grow...

I experienced a phenomenal growth! 

 Last year's Sugar Plum 2 day's sales were well exceeded just in Saturday's sales!  WOW!

Grateful to all my customers who came to Sugar Plum Bazaar.  I recognized many faces!  Thank you, thank you for your support.  I appreciate all of you!

Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!!

 I sold about 50 of these paper houses.  Thankfully, I had plenty of inventory and kept replenishing it throughout on Saturday.

 Another Popular item, my new lace trees:

 My view from my booth space at Sugar Plum Bazaar held at the McNichols Building, the State Capitol.

A Paris Street Market Booth -Saturday May 3rd

This past Saturday, I had many firsts at A Paris Street Market in Aspen Grove.

First time I had to rent a U-Haul van to take all my stuff to the market since we no longer have the Ford Excursion and still dealing with insurance on a replacement vehicle (rollover accident on the Excursion over Spring Break March 22nd). 

Thankfully, my friend Lisa was able to drive me to pick up the U-haul van and helped me load it up at home while Alex, David and Laura were at the school (GRE Elementary) carnival Friday evening.  Laura was volunteering (needed the hours to fulfill her Honor Society community service hours). 

Since Laura was taking a practice AP test on Saturday, she was not able to help me at the market like she has in the past.  David, my husband, came with me and helped me unload and setup the booth.  He left around 8:00 a.m. so he could be home with Alex and Laura could leave for her test.    Thankfully, my friend Lisa came late morning to help me.  With Lisa there, I was able to take a needed bathroom break and she went and got us both lunch.  It's great to have a friend at the show!  Laura came to the show the last hour, she helped me pack up my booth.  Around 4 p.m. David and Alex came over and helped me load the U-Haul van.  Usually, at A Paris Street Market it just Laura and me...this time with was the entire family.  Very grateful for their help.  Lisa is like family so she I include her in thanking my family for all their help.

I want to thank all the lovely ladies who shopped at my booth. My new vintage illustration altered dominoes were very well received.  I appreciate all the positive feedback!  Thank you to everyone who came to support all of us at A Paris Street Market!

Lots of dyed doilies ....lots of new colorful dyed buntings...

White Vintage Hankies ... makes me think of wedding dresses.

 

My next show is this coming Saturday, May 10th.  I will be at Horseshoe Market.  Here is the info and the link.

More Vintage Dress Pattern Ilustration Altered Dominoes Pendants

Isa Creations will be at Sugar Plum Bazaar  this Saturday and Sunday at the Parkside Mansion in Denver.  See Sugar Plum Bazaar postcard below for more detials.

More pictures of Vintage Dress Pattern Illustration Altered Dominoes Pendants...

 

  

       

 

Last Friday and Saturday finally got around to sewing more lined zippered bags to fit iPads and Nook/Kindle Fire tablets.  Along with pencil pouch bags/cosmetic lined bags.  Unfortunately, my sewing machine started to fail on Saturday.  I had to switch and use my daughter's starter sewing machine.  Rather loud but at least it works, unlike mine.

I had it repaired in the Fall but now it has other problems.  I will probably buy a new one on Wednesday and hopefully get more bags (Vintage Linens) sewn so they can be available for Sugar Plum Bazaar.

I will post pictures of the bags tomorrow....I hope!

Altered Domonies Pendents - Vintage Dress Pattern Illustrations

More photos of my newest handcrafted items.  Altering these dominoes was a learning experience but one that I enjoyed.

I have several shows coming up.  The first one is Spring Sugar Plum Bazaar, April 26 & 27 at the Parkside Mansion in Denver.  See postcard with details below.

Following weekend will be A Paris Street Market, May 3rd  in Aspen Grove in Littleton.  Then, the following weekend will be Horseshoe Craft & Flea Market, May10th at 46th & Tennyson in Denver.


Here are more pictures:

Vintage Dress Pattern Illustrations Altered Dominoes Pendants

In less than two weeks, I will have my first show of the season.  Spring Sugar Plum Bazaar will be at the Parkside Mansion at 1859 York Street, Denver on April 26 & 27, 2014.  I just finished packaging my newest creation of

Vintage Dress Pattern Illustrations 

Altered Dominoes Pendants.

I have created many more than I anticipated, I will explain why in a minute.

Believe it or not, the photo above is just a sampling.  I think I created about 80+ different designs and about 240 in total.  Crazy, I know!

I love old vintage dress patterns.  Whenever I see them at estate sales, I get them.  I have also found some at the thrift store.  More recently, I purchased 3 Vintage Home Catalogs on Ebay.  I started by scanning all of the patterns.  Editing was done as many of  the patterns or illustrations were in less than pristine condition.  After editing, I cropped the image to fit a dominoes; then I re-sized them to print in a 2 x 1 image.  I know, it was a lot of steps and time but I wanted the original images onto my altered dominoes pendants.

I had collected many more patterns than I realized.  I had so many that I only scanned 1 of the 3 Home catalogs because I just got tired of scanning and editing....I wanted to get to the really fun part, altering the domonies.

The reason I ended up with so many altered dominoes is the first batch of 100+ were done using a dimensional glaze by Ranger.  Turns out, overnight out of nowhere, bubbles formed on the dominoes.  I was not happy with the results at all.  In fact I was very disappointed because when I applied the glaze, I either had no bubbles or had popped the few bubbles I could see.  The fact that the glaze developed all these bubbles overnight was deflating.

Despite the setback, I was determined to find a way get these altered dominoes done right!  A little bit of research and bit of faith in my skills, I decided to apply resin to the altered dominoes.  For best results, using the resin also required I purchase a mini gas torch.  That was actually scary.  However, it's the carbon dioxide in the gas torch that eliminates any bubbles in the resin.  So I continued to move forward with resin and mini gas torch and created ANOTHER batch of 100+ altered dominoes.

I am very happy with the resin results.  The initial batch of 100+ dominoes with the glaze really looked bad next to the resin dominoes.  Not wanting to waste anything, I salvage those dominoes by re-doing them and this time using the resin.  So, although I started out with a goal of 100+ altered dominoes for the Spring Sugar Plum Bazaar, I ended up with twice as many.

Initially, I was just going to create the pendants and have chains available for sale separately.  I thought I would place the altered dominoes pendants in bowls or trays at my booth.  However, my space at Sugar Plum Bazaar is the smallest one I have ever had.  The spaces are assigned and I never know what size I will end up with.  So, taking into consideration the limited booth space, I decided the best way to display these pendants is to clip them to one of the my display door frames with chicken wire.  This meant, I needed to package each pendant in it's own little clear bag.

I was going to cut white card-stock and attach the pendant to it.  Then I realized, I had all the vintage patterns already digitized!  I decided to take the extra step and take the time to print the pattern image on card-stock.  This final step was more time consuming that I thought, but almost everything I do is that way.  The packaging and the altered dominoes MATCH!  What do you think?

These are vintage patterns to create wedding dressed for Barbie!

Sometimes, I do think I take more time than I should when I create many of my hand-crafted items.  I have high expectations of myself and I hope my customers can see that and appreciate that extra step and effort.

So there you have it, the story behind my Vintage Dress Pattern Illustrations - Altered Dominoes Pendants.  You can find them at my next show, Spring Sugar Plum Bazaar.

While I get back to sewing more items I want to have at Spring Sugar Plum Bazaar, I will continue to post additional photos of my new altered dominoes the next few days.