Hope everyone is having a wicked Wednesday. Even though it is still technically Summer, Fall is just around the corner and the Halloween decorations and pumpkin spice everything is already here. These last couple months have had some unexpected turn of events. We attended our first ever vendor market at the end of July for the Ocala Oddities Market. It was a great stepping stone getting to meet a few of the other vendors and seeing how our market display was received. While we were at the Oddities Market we got a surprise invitation to attend another market for the following night for a different group! I had almost forgotten that I had applied to be a part of Girls Night Out which is an event that promotes woman owned businesses back in May. Feeling the excitement from being at our first market we said yes and headed to our second market the next day! I'm happy to say that we were able to sell a few things but more importantly I learned so much just from attending those two events. Now heading into Fall we have more markets to attend to and a lot more to learn.
One of the big take aways from those markets was diversifying our products. With that being said, I've finished up a batch of nightlights to add to the collection. At first I was a little intimidated about soldering the clips to the glass pieces but I absolutely love how they turned out! Even in the daylight they bring so much character and color to a room. Another new addition are keychains. These were actually pretty fun to make too since the design was simple and it was a test into the world of lead free solder. If you are unfamiliar, most stained glass is made by using solder that is a combination of Lead and Tin. These materials are easier to work with but shouldn't be used when making items that are handled regularly. Hence why the keychains are made with lead free solder (these specific ones are made with Tin and Copper/Silver). This solder combination is supposed to be a little easier to work compared to standard Tin and Copper solder with but it's still trickier than using my normal 60/40.
The butterfly keychains did turn out pretty good and I'm looking forward to using more of the lead free solder in the future. Next week we will be getting ready for September's Oddities Market so stay tuned to hear how it went!
