Project Updates « Lotus's Workshop

New Products!

12 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by barbedlotus in Announcement, Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan Tags: barbed, barbedlotus, bead, beads, colorful, ear cuff, earring, earrings, etsy, handmade, jewelry, lotus, pretty, wire, wrapped

I’ve been having some more fun with wire and beads

Not all of these are yet listed in our Etsy shop (I’ve been spacing out the listings to cut down on our renewing costs), but they are being added. Some are already there

A Slightly Late Lughnasadh

02 Aug 2010 1 Comment

by barbedlotus in Announcement, Finds, Gift Guides, Project Updates, Written by Meghan

Happy Lughnasadh, or Lammas, or any other of the various names for August 1st. In the Northern Hemisphere the beginning of August marks the beginning of harvesting and the first day of August is a harvest festival day in many cultures and faiths. This is when you start getting all those wonderful summer crops.

Every holiday has it’s staple celebration food, and the first harvest festival’s is bread. Speaking of which, check out this wonderful recipe for sandwich bread I tried a couple weeks ago. It was some of the best bread I’ve ever had (which is saying something because I really suck at baking bread and it still came out good). Add the following simple recipe for homemade butter and you’re all set.

Simple Homemade Butter

Ingredients

2 c. Heavy Cream
1/4 tsp. Salt

Mix heavy cream in food processor or blender for approximately 10 minutes. You will know it’s ready when you can clearly see separation of butter and excess liquid. Strain out the extra liquid and mix in salt to taste.

Variation Tips:

You can make great garlic bread by adding garlic powder and other Italian spices in with the salt, or make some sweet honey butter by drizzling in some fresh honey . A great extra to really make a special sweet butter is adding in just a touch of ground vanilla beans and cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar with the honey. Oh so good on scones.

The beginning of harvest season is a time of amnesia to for me. It is right at the point in the year where it is so miserably hot that you start to wish for winter (completely forgetting how miserably cold it can get in the winter). Kids are trying as hard as they can to enjoy the last of their break, people are cramming in camping trips, and even the weather seems bound and determined to put as much summer into this month as possible. For right now though I’m going to settle down with a slice of buttered bread and cold mint tea and relax for a bit.

: Autumn Wish Apothecary Jar – $11

: Turquoise Distressed Solid Wood Bread Box – $48

: Gourd Table Lamp – $300

: Autumn Acorn and Oak Leaf Necklace – $27

: Sweet Southern Style Cornbread – $12.50

: Harvest Sun Rise Hand Spun Yarn – $32

: Strawberry-licious Dessert Stand – $20

: Blue Stoneware Bread Baker With Recipes – $26

: Minature Pastry Bread Molds – $8.95

: All Season Couture Tribal Vest – $140

: Lilac Blossoms Earrings – $26

: Super Market Tote with Groceries PDF Pattern – $5.99

: The Summer Harvest Faire Locket – $28

: Play Food Crochet Pattern – $6

: Glow Labradorite and Garnet Necklace – $42.50

: Winter Berry No. 2 – $20

: Copper and Honey Felt Flower Brooch – $23

: Hand Painted Sunflower and Butterfly Parasol – $40

: Pumpkin Basket – $35

: Stoneware Berry Bowl – $24

The Etsy artists featured in this article are:

studiotempera, AprilHilerDesigns, SparklePeach, WhisperandHush, Gamut, revivalfiber, LoveandDream, ARTintersect, Brigite, handarts, AnneMariesPottery, OnceUponAPedestal, brownpaperbagart, CircesHouse, nealpottery, GulfCoastCottagePDF, SexyStitches, CraftyAnna, turquioserollerset, and MinatureSweet

New Creations!

25 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment

by barbedlotus in Announcement, Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

So got into a new craft. I have discovered wire working!. Ok, so with the wings I was already do wire working, but I’ve always wanted to learn how to do wire jewelry making. Especially earcuffs. And just before the Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival I did just that.

These are going to be available in our Etsy shop very soon.

A Pair of Ren Faires

06 Jun 2010 1 Comment

by barbedlotus in Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

So, in the month of May we have been to two renaissance faires. The first was a local faire, the Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival just a little west of here in Marriott-Slaterville, UT. The second was the Days of Camelot south of here in St. George, UT.

The Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival was celebrating it’s fifth year running. This was our first year doing a ren faire so this was our very first ren faire as vendors. This is also a ren faire we have enjoyed for several years now as guests. The organizers do a wonderful job at putting together the faire. It’s a nice medium sized festival that everyone has a blast at, and is rapidly growing. It’s a six day faire falling on the first two Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays of May. We had an awesome spot overlooking the pond and a clear view of the jousting.

We made some new items for this faire as well, including our new bottled magic necklaces, ear cuffs, painted shoes, and tutus. The bottled necklaces are gradually being added to our Etsy shop, and soon the other items will be added as well. Another item we added to our stock that will we be selling regularly at events are these great latex elf ears from Aradani Costumes. They make wonderful handmade ears and were perfect for the ren faire. Really great quality, made to last, and a lot of fun to shade and wear. We had their mermaid ears, halfling ears, high elf ears, faun ears, small elf ears, and half elf ears. Had we not sold out we would have had them at the St. George one. Some of the ear cuffs we made were designed to be worn with these ears and we offered a piercing service along with the ears (for the fake ones, not the real ones). Made a great ear cuff/contraption for the pair of faun ears I wore (should have gotten a picture but failed).

There was another person selling some cheaper commercially made wings, but the idea they had for them was kind of cool. They had paints available to just go to town decorating these wings. I think they had wooden shields to paint on too.

Amber had a great deal of fun chasing down patrons with our wings (much to the bystanders’ delight), with special emphasis on Jack Sparrow. This guy had the character down! You had to look really close to tell it wasn’t really him. He even had a small replica of the Black Pearl. We had two pirate themed pairs of wings (yes the infamously unfinished jolly rogers got finished) and we really wanted a pic with a pirate and those wings (there are pics below too). The last day he let us finally take pics with him wearing the wings! Yay!

So below are some pics (ok a lot of pics) of the great mayhem we had at this faire and we are definitely returning next year.

Now, that was the first two weekends of May. During the faire an organizer of another faire approached us and asked if we would like to do a faire in St. George, UT. Before I continue I must say, St. George is a 5 hour drive so we really had to weigh the decision to go. We knew it would be costly, it was going to be our first out -of-town event that wasn’t just for henna. But we would be the only henna artists at this faire and when we inquired more about the event the number of attendance and all that seemed to be enough that we could at least break even and was a valid risk. I must say I hate dissing on organizers and other vendors, but this event made us mad. Unlike the previous faire in Ogden, where if wholesale is allowed it must strictly fall into the theme of a ren faire, this other faire threw that out the window. And did so, after saying clearly in the rules that they wouldn’t. They also said costume dress could would be inforced for vendors and all the other rules that you expect a ren faire to follow to actually be a ren faire. Considering we were next to someone selling sunglasses (who at least followed dress code) and across from another couple in jeans and t-shirts the entire time you can guess these rules were not enforced. Much of the entertainment was from local studios (which would have been fine if they hadn’t been performing very modern music, and some not very well). Two weeks before the event they apparently had no entertainment other than the jousters lined up so they had called up a bunch of these studios to ask them to perform. Really it would have been better to go without.

After speaking to other vendors we found everyone had been given vastly different numbers in regarding the previous year’s attendance. A few of the return vendors had complained about these things from the year before and had been assured they would not be repeated. They weren’t.

All in all the Days of Camelot was a disappointment. It was a fun little faire, but by no means was it a ren faire. It was a county faire with period undertones at best.

On the upside we met some great people there and found out about some really good faires. We’re not a 100% sure yet but some other faires we’re thinking of attending as vendors this year are Utah Midsummer Renaissance Festival in Cedar City, UT next month, that goes on right in the middle of the Shakespeare festival (which would be a blast); the Days of Chivalry in Las Vegas , NV, in October; and possibly the Kingdom by the River in Needles, CA in November. We are also planning to return to the Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival as well as probably attending their halloween faire the Sleepy Millcreek Hollow that we attended last year. It’s the second year this year, and it’s not a ren faire, but more a Halloween faire. There’s a terror trail, spooky story telling and a bunch more. It was a lot of fun last year. If we attend the Las Vegas faire we will have to miss one of the weekends for it, but will definitely be there for the last two weekends and maybe the first. We will also be attending the Ogden 25th Street Farmers Market again this year (this will be our third year doing henna there) and that starts up on the 10th of July and will continue every weekend until September 25th. While we may miss a weekend to do the Cedar City festival, we will be there pretty much all other weekends.

In other news we’re expanding onto Zibbet, 1000Markets, and DeviantArt. There is already a few items up on our Zibbet shop, and on DeviantArt we have a few more up as well as some new images from our last photo shoot that I’ve had a lot of fun tweaking. Our 1000Markets shop isn’t set up yet, but working on it.

Well that’s all till next time. Going to try and get the features/gift guides back up. All the chaos with getting ready for these events and some problems with my wrist limiting my computer time has really messed my schedule up and unfortunately pushed the blog to the back burner, but I’m working to remedy this and hope to have things back on track very soon.

Ogden 25th Street Farmer’s Market

12 May 2010 Leave a Comment

by barbedlotus in Announcement, Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

Today was our first day back at the Ogden 25th Street Farmer’s Market. Below is some snapshots from throughout the day at our booth (we were somewhat homebodies today).

Ren Faire, Photoshoot and Uh….

11 May 2010 2 Comments

by barbedlotus in Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

Okay, so the uh… is basically for the realization that I have been gone on here for nearly two months. We have been making things like crazy for the Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival, and building a good chunk of our event stock for the year so we can get a head start on Halloween and Christmas. Toss in some really busy home life stuff and the blog just kind of stayed on the back burner for longer than I had hoped.

So here’s what we’ve been up to. During the last two months we have made a crazy amount of wings. Consider that they take about 2-5 days depending on the pair and that’s if we’re working on just the wings. In the two months we made almost 40 pairs of wings, almost all of which are new designs. In addition to the wings we have started making tutus, painted shoes, bottled magics and completely revamped our henna design display books and henna kits.

At the end of April we did a photo shoot showcasing some of the new wings, tutus and shoes. I’ll be posting those up in the next day or so.

Another set of great photo’s I’ll be putting up this week is some of those from the first week of the ren faire. The faire is on May 7,8,9 and 14, 15, 16 (how cool is that, I get a whole ren faire for my birthday). You can check out more about the Utah Renaissance Faire and Fantasy Festival at www.utahrenfaire.com.

Well until then here is some work in progress photos of some of the great wings we’ve been working on.

I’m Back (Sorta)

15 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment

by barbedlotus in Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

Okay, so I’m not officially jumping back into the saddle. Things are still a little crazy, but got a chance to jump on today for a bit. Unfortunately the St. Patrick’s gift guide I had in the works has been derailed by a bit of technical difficulty (okay I’ll admit it, the spreadsheet I had all the details on, I kinda shut the laptop and then realized I didn’t save, my bad). So instead that I will be trying to get reassembled between now and Wednesday morning.

Between now and the second week of May I will try to be getting the gift guides up on a weekly basis once more. However with our first big event only 5 weeks away and the chaos that slowed the blog down also effecting working on stock the blog may have to take a back seat until I am caught up. Fortunately this means lots of new wings, some new jewelry, a delve into tutu making, and elf ears! Okay, I might be overly excited about the elf ears, but we’re going to be adding a complete line of fairy wear in addition to the wings and fae make overs to our event booth.

I also got a great surprise in my convo inbox. A wonderful customer and fellow artist shared her enchanting photo shoot featuring a pair of my rainbow wings. You can see the pics at her great blog Aura Art Creations. If you have a sec check out the beautiful work she shares there.

Speaking of photo shoot, and the people on the Critique Forum on Etsy will be happy about this one. I am FINALLY getting together a photo shoot to replace the old photos of all the wings at the end of April. I’m really excited about this because I always get the question why are there no people in your product pictures. Well, it’s because most the time I look a mess because I’m all wrapped up in painting or wing making plus bad at photographing myself, and I have an all guy house hold. Now while I would love a pic of my sweetie with pink fairy wings on to use as bribery when I want to get out of my turn to do the dishes, I think the disgruntled look that would be bound to be on his face would drive off customers (or at least distract them with laughter). So Barbed Lotus’s other half (and much more organized half I might add) has been working on getting a photo shoot organized for us. Yeah, I should have gotten around to it ages ago, but I think my head would fall off with out my business partner and friend when it comes to this stuff so I’m leaving it in her capable hands and we’re taking advantage of the time of year we will have the most ready made wings in one place. I’m really excited about this. Given the madness that is Utah weather there is no guarantee of a green spring as apposed to a white one at the end of April, but if spring does win the battle the mountains are bright and green and the rivers start coming back to full life. The waterfalls in the canyons unfreeze and wildflowers go crazy, and with any luck my grandmother’s rose garden will starting to bloom as well giving lots of pretty backdrops.

So I’ll be back in a day or so with the St. Patrick’s tribute and hopefully again this weekend. See you all then.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

20 Feb 2010 5 Comments

by barbedlotus in Finds, Gift Guides, Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

I know it doesn’t seem like it yet (especially with the whole snowpocalypse this month), but spring is on its way. There’s actually a couple trees in the field behind my house trying to bud despite the snow. I love spring. Yeah that’s cliche, but winter makes me feel a little suffocated. Maybe its all the being stuck indoors. Or maybe its the almost dead way things start to look in the winter (all the bare trees always make me a little sad). Whatever it is its going to be going away soon and warm(ish) weather and color will come flooding back. Yay!

Something I have wanted to do forever is start a community garden. The farmers market here is a pretty good sized one, and a lot of people have gardens to help with food costs and, well, because its fun. But a HUGE portion of our city rents as well and isn’t allowed to plant their own garden, which sucks because we have such a big percentages below the poverty line that a little less groceries having to be bought and a source of just better quality food could really help. So I was pretty surprised to find that the nearest one is 50 miles away. We’re in the process of shopping for our first house, and there is one that is a double lot I’ve had my eye on. If its still on the market when we get approved for a loan we’re going for it and I fully intend to turn that extra lot into a community garden. If not there are a plenty of empty lots scattered throughout the city, and it’ll just take a little longer to get started.

So this weeks gift guide is a semi-ode to “I want a freaking garden already!”.

: Golden Calla Lily Wall Decals – $39.95

: Garden Dibble – $18

: Orange Glass and Copper Bird Bath – $48

: Secret Garden – $32.95

: Ceramic Tile Butterfly Mosaic – $80

: Tropical Bird Garden Art Scupture – $145

: Peace Metal Garden Poetry Word Sign – $7.95

: Leafcutter Bee Nest Block – $23

: Grow Your Own Food Gardening Army Field Bag – $20

: Robert Kaufman Hot Blossom Retro Full Apron – $30

: Graptoveria Gilva Scculent Cuttings – $3.25

: Organic Heirloom Chinese Red Noodle Long Bean Seeds – $4.50

: Heirloom Tigerella Striped Tomato Seeds – $2.50

: Scarlet Amaryliss Hippeastrum Seeds – $2.99

: Birdhouse with Rustic Appeal – $32

: Bird Pots – $8

: Desert Sunset Stained Glass Pottery Mosaic – $45

: Mosaic Garden Tool – $30

: Recycled Stiletto Heel Aloe Planter – $69

: Silver Spoon Flower Bouquet Markers – $27

: Hand Painted Garden Stone Vegetable Marker – $5

: Heirloom Gloriosa Daisy Flower Seeds – $1.50

: Herbs in a Box Gift Assortment – $20

: Butterfly Glass Copper Orb Cascade Suncatcher – $16

: Recycled Cedar Long Cottage Garden Bench – $115

: Smokey Brown Hanging Wall Pot – $15

: Wild Red Raspberry – $2.50

: Dryad Birdhouse – $75

: License Plate Birdhouse – $24

: Indoor Citrus Tree Kit – $5

: Freestanding Beach Stone Stained Glass Copper Windchime – $127.50

: Sea Foam Green Butterfly Plantable Paper Favors – $12.50

: Vintage Silverware Garden Makers – $22

: Gardener’s Soap Gift Set – $15

: Raised Herb Garden Planter – $45

: Lovely Purple Beauty Bell Pepper Seeds – $2.25

The Etsy artists featured in this gift guide are:

walldecors, SoapalayaSoaps, PulpArt, TerraceHill, SevenAcreWoods, azuredandelion, TheSucculentGarden, mulberrymudd, ArtHorizonsStudio, TRUECONNECTION, Thebearfootshaman, GardenPathDecor, thisfromthat, happyfamily, tskDesign, metalgardenart, DragonflyDreams1, mamasinsanity, dkpottery, monkeysalwayslook, saltylemon, simplyrustic, giddyspinster, myvictorygarden, seamstobe2, favorcreative, andrewsreclaimed, SmokymistGardens, jandmspecialty, NewDominionBlues, GloriousGlassGarden, WoodElements, liltinpurse, DanaCarreraDesigns, gardencandy, and daisychestnut

Shadow Puppets!

17 Feb 2010 2 Comments

by barbedlotus in Finds, Gift Guides, Project Updates, Rambling, Written by Meghan

Hey everyone! If you haven’t already noticed, we have a new look. And to randomly celebrate here’s a mini gift guide and some great shadow puppet videos.