My husband bought the hardware himself when he happened to be at Home Depot. I'd say he did a good job picking it out!
As I said, it's been finished for a few weeks and has been in my craft room. I re-rearranged my craft space today, so I'll need to take some pictures of the desk in it's final spot to share!
Notice that Luna does not look particularly interested in following me to the water.
Whatever...I LOVE the water! My mom tells me that I could literally swim before I could walk. Even though the water was pretty chilly, I could have stayed there most of the day!
Luna, however, is not a huge fan of getting wet. She can swim, but she just doesn't prefer it if she can help it. That doesn't stop us from trying though! (I know what some of you are thinking..."Poor puppy! Your mean owners made you get wet!")
I think she still loves us anyway!
I didn't have any redtailed hawk plushies, but I did have a few owls that I cranked out specifically for this show...since owls are raptors. And owls are pretty popular right now.
There were a couple venue issues, but the whole day went well overall. It was raining buckets in the morning when I got there for setup at 7:30AM. It was supposed to be an outside show (I'd even bought a EZ-Up 10x10 tent for this event!) But the show was moved inside the lodge due to the heavy rain. So instead of 10x10 booths, we had 8 ft tables. Then the lodge had gotten double booked, so we ended up sharing a room with the demonstations instead of the animal demonstrations being in one room and the craft vendors being in the other. So we got to watch the live bird demonstrations up close (I REALLY wish I could have used my good camera!). Even with all the things that went "wrong", I think it ended up working in our favor. 
I didn't make a ton of sales. The adverse weather certainly didn't make for ideal craft show crowd conditions. It seemed like I was only going to make $20 for the day until one of the fellow vendors visited my table and bought $101 worth of stuff! She loves plushies, and she just kept picking stuff up that she wanted to buy! She was such a sweetheart. It made my day!
Who's a pretty kitty?
Anyone who knows me is not surprised at the last shot. I have a thing for eyes. It's actually surprising that it's taken me so long to get a shot like this.
For some reason, I always think purple and orange are complimentary colors...but it's purple and YELLOW that are complimentary. It's BLUE that's orange's counterpart. I always get it mixed up and think that yellow is blue's compliment and orange is purple's compliment. But I do have a fondness for pairing orange with blue as well. Personally, I think they color compliments should be interchangeble.
I enjoy going to these meetings. I like meeting other artists and learning helpful tips about running my business and Etsy shop. But it's mostly that I like meeting the fellow artists face-to-face (or IRL...in-real-life) rather than my only connection to them being online.
To be fair, it's not really the monster's fault. It was my fault for trying to sew through too many layers (and not learning my lesson when the first needle broke!). The body has 3 layers (since this monster has a pocket mouth), and the ears (which are what I was attempting to sew on) are 2 layers of sweater fabric, and 2 layers of batting. So that makes seven layers total. Plus the multicolored sweater fabric is pretty thick. No wonder my poor needles broke! My hubby was kind enough to pick up some more needles on his way home from work...and he included a package of "heavy duty" needles in addition to regular sewing machine needles.
But even with as much trouble as it was creating him (birth is always painful right?) I love the way he turned out. He's pretty big (the body is over 15 inches tall), and I love how his limbs kind of flop around. He strikes me as the kind of toy a kid will love to cuddle with and drag around everywhere.
I'm painting it, giving it a few coats of polyurethane and I'm going to get some new knobs for it as well. (If I've learned anything from HGTV and Design*Sponge, it's that a coat of paint and some new hardware can do wonders!)
I used to make flower hair barrettes all the time as a teenager. I would buy fake flowers at the dollar store, deconstruct them, then reassemble them onto a hair barrette with hot glue. I did make a few of my "old" style barrettes this weekend, but I also made a few out of fabric, which I like even better!
I cut petals out of fabric swatches (the kind you find in the home decor fabric section at Joann's)
I was inspired by a video tutorial from Threadbanger about making fabric flowers. Again...I didn't follow the tutorial exactly...but I used it as an inspiration point.
A tip I took from the tutorial is "scorching" the edges of the fabric petals carefully with a lighter or candle so that the fabric doesn't unravel or fray. (you can kind of see the scorching in the close-up pic)
This red flower I made out of fabric left over from my bridesmaids' dresses from my wedding. (to clarify, the dresses were made by a friend and I had leftover fabric...I didn't cut up any dresses!) 