Last year, I participated in an art fair and attended a few as an observer and I got some ideas that I wanted to try for this year. A lot of the types of art fairs I was attending had more of a craft atmosphere rather than a fine art feel. At the start of this year, I had two main goals. One was to create more fine art, both for potential exhibitions and art fairs. The second was to create some craft items that might be easier to sell at art fairs because of their price range.
I noticed that people at the art fairs I was attending were selling smaller and cheaper fine art prints or craft type art. The idea of doing craft art intrigued me because I wanted to create something that I could sell at a cheaper price range and something I could have a little fun with.
Sometimes it’s nice to do a new type of creation. When I get tired of painting but still feel creative, I usually pick up my color pencils. I decided to take it a step further and do something new. For this year, I focused on three different craft arts; bookmarks, coasters, and decorative wax flowers.
I was the most comfortable doing the bookmarks and they probably made me the most excited so I started those first. I used color pencil to create a small scene that was the size of a bookmark. Then I took a picture of it, uploaded them to photoshop to touch them up a bit and then I printed them through Visiprint. With this process, I could make art and sell multiples of them for a cheap price. Below is a picture of the five designs I currently have. I’m selling them for three dollars a piece or ten dollars for four of them.
The next thing that I started creating was resin coasters with alcohol inks. It took a lot of trial and error with these to find the best way to mix these and timing of things but I finally feel like I have the process down to a science. Below is a picture of some of the styles and colors I have so far. These are eight dollars individually and twenty-five dollars for a set of four.
The last thing I created were was flowers. The process to make these are probably the most involved and time consuming. They don’t take as long to cure as the casters and so I can make more in a shorter time frame if I have the energy. I have a bunch of different flower molds and I just melt some wax down, pore the wax into the molds and then put the molds in the fridge to set up quicker. Then, when they are hard I pop them out, rinse and repeat with a different color. Then I put them in jars with some essential oils so they look and smell pretty. Below are some examples of what I have created and I am selling these for ten dollars each.
All in all, I have learned a lot in the last few months and I have really enjoyed creating some very different things. I am excited for this summer, which is looking like it will be very busy for me, so that I can hopefully start selling these. Stay tuned to follow my journey with these art fairs this year and if you are interested in buying any of the things above, contact me below.
Amanda Thompson's Art 