Audrey, Where Have You Been??

Hiding! Ok, actually just giggling.

Short answer:  busy!

Long answer:

Since The BIG THAW completed its wonderful, whirlwindy, nutso course I’ve been doing a few excellent things.  In no particular order… celebrated three birthdays, spent quality time with family, got really, really, really, REALLY sick, got better, got sick again, can’t hear out of my right ear for 48 hours (current), have been working on an enormous wholesale order, have been building stock for tomorrow’s craft fair (9am to 1pm at the Williston West Church, Saturday May 7th, Thomas St. in Portland’s West End) and desperately trying to clean my house… only to mess it up again very quickly with the previously mentioned wholesale order.

Bottle Cap Wine Charms, $10.00 for a Set of 6

It’s pretty cool.  A beer and wine novelty supplier out of Washington State saw my work online, contacted me, and enlisted me to make a bunch of these wine charms.  One of the really great things about making things with my hands is that oftentimes my window shoppers and customers are the most inventive with ideas for new products.  Without them I wouldn’t have made pendants (necklaces), wine charms, earrings, custom magnet and pin sets, wedding favors, alphabet magnet sets, and on and on.  This is the latest addition to my line up.  What’s next?  Mike Cunnane (of Brass Cankles, Huak, Rattlesnakes, Sunset Hearts fame) suggest ‘beer medallions’ as a beer drinker’s alternative to the wine charms.  I am so on it.

Together, at last

Talk about a whirlwind month.  After 8 years of us not being in the same room, college buddies and bestest ladies in the universe (myself included) met up in Boston.  The reason we were able to do this was that Jet (center) was visiting with her boyfriend who is the director of photography in upcoming film Bellflower.  It’s going to be in theatres in August and we got to see the flame-throwing car that Evan built for the film.  And lit it up in the parking garage outside of Boston University!  Rock.  Well, anyways, she lives in Ventura, CA and Shira (right) lives in Boston and me (left), I’m the yokel who decided to move away from any major metropolitan area.  I love Portland.  But I think I might love Jet and Shira more.

Brunch! Family!

You know what else I love?  The Good Egg.  It’s even better when, once a year, my grandmother (on the left side of the table) visits with her brother and his wife.  This year I joined them along with my aunt, uncle and two cousins who were down for the weekend from North Haven.  My cousin bought a lobster boat with his own money saved up from hauling traps by hand for 5 years – he’s 15!  Pictures of that to come.  🙂

The BIG THAW Pictures are coming soon!

I got some awesome pictures of vendors, shoppers, helpers and purchases from The BIG THAW.  The images will be up on the website shortly (finally!!) as soon as I can get twenty minutes to do it.  So bizarre to look back at them and think how smoothly and wonderfully the day went.  Yesss.

Clothes are Awesome! Share them!

That’s Kate in an awesome dress at Althea and Jay’s marriage celebration.  Coincidentally, she’s involved with a team of Portland fashion bloggers who have organized Swap Maine, a citywide clothing swap to benefit Goodwill of New England.  It will also benefit you because you get to pick out clothes you like just for donating your own!  Or paying $10 at the door.  It all goes to Goodwill and you get to fill a bag with awesomeness.  The first 250 shoppers will receive a swagbag, and included in it will be your very own Swap Maine/Little Eye Designs bottle cap pin.  I’m excited to work on this, support great writers and support Goodwill of New England.  Yes!  Please click here for more information about how you can join in the fun.

That’s all for now, I’m sleepy and I have to sell a bunch of stuff tomorrow!  Seriously.  My craft fair dream is to sell half the stock I bring… if I did that tomorrow maybe I could finally catch up on my student loans.  Which I just deferred.  For a year.  Thank you, pro-credit score governmental initiatives.  Maybe I’ll start looking at grad schools now…?

Joke!

Photo Shoot SNAFU for the ages!

Ok, ok, ok.  Quick story, this was great today.

 

GREAT afternoon. Good job, guys.

 

Kate Sullivan-Jones and I had made plans to use her mother’s AMAZING digital camera (amazing to us because we don’t have to then scan our negatives in order to get digital files to) to make new listings on Etsy.  About halfway through, Kate said “Oh my god, we’re out of frames!”

Because neither of us had made the leap to digital yet, there were no extra cards lying around so we flipped through the images (deleting the “bad” ones) to make room.  Finally we’d gone through the whole batch and got back to set.  On the first frame the camera then says “Check battery pack.”  Again – no back ups for us, we’re new at this.  So then Kate goes to plug the charger in the wall and almost simultaneously…

THE POWER GOES OUT.  Awesome!

 

Kate, modeling, before the power went out!

 

We waited for a minute or two to see if it would come back.  Right before she had plugged the charger in she was also talking about making us pasta.  Oops again, no power to do this.  So we decided to go up to the gas station to see if they had some power and samosas.

 

photo credit D.S.Lobley

 

Cool!  They had samosas, well just one actually, sitting atop the counter in the middle of a store with no power.  I bought the usual fare of Doritos, A&W Root Beer and a Snickers bar.  I can’t help myself.  Kate just went for the samosa.  The guy tallies our items in his head (no register!) and we leave.  About halfway across the parking lot Kate has taken a BITE out of the SAMOSA which instead was a doughy pocket full of rancid meat and moldy fur!  Ahhh!  No, Kate, no!!

After she spit it out I said we had to go get something different for her.  She felt really bad for some reason, although if I just had taken a mouthful of furry meat I would definitely be more angry than sorry.  I told the guy we needed to exchange it and he said he was making more samosas (grease was still hot, so it was still cooking!) and Kate was brave and wanted a new, fresh samosa that had just been cooked.

So we waited outside on the stoop.  Portland is so quiet and peaceful without power.  No usual hum and buzz of unnecessary electronics.  As we’re sitting out there I’m like “Ugh, what is that burny smell?!” and Kate’s like “I don’t know!”  Then the guy came out a couple minutes later and pointed off to the right, and ran over and started kicking this little thing in the parking lot that was on fire.  “What is it?” and he yells back  “It’s a sock full of tobacco!”  True as truth, that’s what I had smelled a couple minutes earlier.

Everything after that was pretty normal.  We went back to Kate’s with a fresh samosa, got things set up for a couple days from now when had more time, more daylight and more power being on!  Not too bad for a Sunday afternoon.

Check soon with my Etsy site:  http://littleeyedesigns.etsy.com for the work we did today!