Christmas Craft Fair

The Christmas Craft fair for our junior high Destination Imagination teams was December 11th and 12th. What a relief to finally have it over!

Instead of pricing everything individually, we priced them by "table" and had $1, $2, $3, $5, and $7 & $10 tables. That worked out extremely well for us.

Surprisingly enough, our most popular sellers were the $1 gift card holder ornaments pictured on this tree. I'm not sure which batch this is because each time we'd finally make enough to fill the tree again, a new person would come in and buy all of them! One customer purchased the 13 that we had in stock and special ordered 7 more!

We had tons of the little mini portfolio gift card holders in stock, but the ones that hang from the tree beat them hands down. We also sold quite a few packages of the reindeer food that's pictured on the left. It wasn't ready until the 2nd day, and I think we'd have sold a lot more if we'd had it ready the first. Several people came and bought stuff from our $1 table to give out as Christmas presents for their children's day care and elementary school class mates. We sold all of our pillow boxes filled with M & Ms for that reason--before we even had a picture of them!

Although the students really enjoyed making these Sizzix boxes, they didn't sell as well as we'd hoped. Part of the problem was that the heater in the gym foyer got too hot the first day and the adhesive in some of the boxes started "melting" and those boxes deflated like balloons! We sold the majority of the whisks we'd made and will probably offer them again next year. I'm not sure how many of them actually made it home as Christmas presents and how many were quickly emptied of their candy by hungry students!

These were the altered frames on the $7 and $10 table. We sold most of the large ones and received several special orders for the word frames. I don't have any pictures of the frames on the $5 table because we couldn't keep them in stock, either! The small frames were sized to hold 4 x 6 pictures, and some customers were snapping up two and three at a time. We'll definitely be offering them again. Instead of wearing the DI team members down, this craft fair seems to have pumped them up! They want to have another one in the spring closer to Mother's Day and Graduation. Since our DI competition is February 28th, we'll have plenty of time to get ready!

Craft Fair

I spent the weekend working on craft fair items. This is one of the picture frames I made. It uses Bella Rose DSP, Old Olive Ribbon, and one of the Hodgepodge Silver Ribbon Slides. It looks better IRL than it does in the photograph.


I also tried my hand at coaster calendars. This one uses Summer Picnic DSP, Old Olive CS, Real Red Striped Grosgrain ribbon, and Old Olive ribbon. I also used Real Red Classic ink around the edges.


If it were sitting on someone's desk, this is the side that would be facing outward. I can't decide if I want to do anything else to it.

Back from the Retreat

Just returned from the retreat at Highland Lake Lodge. What an awesome weekend!

French toast, Oriental chicken salad, grilled pork loin--the food was to die for. Plus I completed 40 pages.

The bad news is that my camera battery conked out again, so I didn't get pictures at the retreat or pictures of the Crew Kids Boy pages without pictures on them. As soon as it recharges, however, I do plan to post a few pics of the completed pages.

The Simply Scrappin' Kit Club has met twice (next meeting August 24th), so I had 5 Summer Days double-page spreads, 5 Crew Kids Boy double-page spreads, and 5 Crew Kids Girl double-page spreads to finish as well as the page kits from the Scrapbook & Card Buffet back in May.

My wonderful friend, Carol, made each attendee a name frame. The one pictured below is mine. Thank you, Carol!

Future Fund Raiser

Now that DI competition is over, it's time to focus on more fund raisers.

My team this year was made up of hard workers. They came in 7th place--up from 16th place last year--and made a perfect score on their Instant Challenge.

When we brainstormed ways to raise money for competition next year, they suggested taking over the annual craft fair that has taken place at the junior high the past 13 years. The wonderful woman who ran it was ready for a break and donated all her left over supplies for us to use in competition and to make crafts.

One of our first tasks will be making coasters with the tiles left over from a previous mosaic table top project. I made these using Staz-On black ink and the Baroque Motifs set from the Spring/Summer 2008 catalog and the Friendly Flowers from the new Occasions mini catalog.

My team members really liked how they turned out but want some ideas for masculine coaster sets as well. Yesterday on SPC, I saw coasters in the gallery made with the Bronc Buster set in the Spring/Summer catalog. I think the kids would really like those.

Hush Heart Success!

Would you believe we sold out of the extra hearts we'd made at home during the first lunch period yesterday and had to rush to make more?

By the time it was all over, we'd made 720+ of the hearts. We were amazed how the kids took to the challenge. Sometimes it's hard to get them to buy into something "new," but once they saw the prize baskets, the 7th graders were on board, and once they found out 7th graders were winning, the 8th graders jumped in to take over!

The 7th grade boy who won the Hush Heart King prize had over 50 hearts he'd managed to earn by making the girls who had bought them talk. The girl who won the Quiet Queen prize had over 120 hearts.

We definitely plan to do this fund raiser again next year and to start more than three weeks ahead of time to make sure we have enough hearts made to last the week!

Happy Valentine's Day!

One of the groups I sponsor at school has been involved in several Valentine's Day fund raisers. We've made white chocolate pretzels to sell and started a new Hush Heart tradition.

When we were brainstorming ways to raise the money to get our teams to competition in March, one of the other sponsors told us about a Hush Heart fund raiser they did at her high school.

The group made decorated hearts to sell the week of Valentine's. Girls buy the hearts, and on Valentine's Day, if they talk to a boy, they have to give him one of their hearts.

At the end of the day, the boy with the most hearts is crowned the Hush Heart King and wins a prize. We also decided to reward the girl who keeps the most hearts and crown her the Quiet Queen at the end of the day.

I donated the SU! Real Red cardstock, basic black ink, white craft ink, and SU! stamps needed to create the hearts. We originally made 425 of them, but we ran out today and had to crank out several hundred more. I love the way they turned out and wanted to share the idea in case anyone else needed a fun fund raiser for Valentine's Day in the future.

We sold them for fifty cents each and left the backs of the hearts blank so that the girls could write messages on them.