Craft fair! Web shop! I’m a crafter and a business owner!

As most of you know by now, I have been hunkered down for the past couple of weeks preparing full-steam for the First Annual FabMo Art Exhibit this Saturday. FabMo has been around for about a decade and is the work of one couple from Palo Alto, who collect samples of designer fabrics, wallpapers, and trims from local firms and shops. Every month they pick up these samples and distribute them for free to local artists, schools, churches, and other organizations. It’s an incredibly environmentally-friendly, super-affordable way to get crafting material, and I have been going to FabMo since spring of this year, picking up the most gorgeous and inspiring fabrics and wallpapers to play with. When FabMo announced it would be holding an event where artists could display and share their creations with each other — which soon expanded to include selling to the public — I took a deep breath and signed up. I thought it would be fun and low-pressure.

At first I didn’t think too much about the FabMo exhibit; I figured I’d make a couple of things and that would be it. But as the exhibit rapidly became more and more of a big-deal, well-organized, public event, I got correspondingly deeper and deeper into it. The first step was figuring out what to make. When I started going to FabMo, I was still a beginning crafter, so I registered for the exhibit without even really knowing what I would be doing there. Before long, I was actively looking for ways to use my FabMo materials, from braiding rugs with long strips of fabric, to sewing eye pillows, to putting together intricate Japanese pouches (these are thanks to Tina, who opportunely — and totally randomly — sent me this great book). I’ve been thoroughly absorbed in these activities for the past few weeks, and that has been interesting, frustrating, and gratifying all at once. I basically had to learn to sew while I went, and all these projects were new to me, so there has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of very slow going while I figured out how to do things. But I’m getting a lot better, and now, 10+ totes, 20+ eye pillows, 6+ Japanese pouches, 2 rugs, and a lot of smaller projects later, I feel infinitely more comfortable at the sewing machine, and just working with fabric in general. After the FabMo exhibit, I look forward to perfecting all these projects, and undertaking new ones (especially clothes!).

The crafting itself has been an insane learning process: after doing it full-time (and then some!) for several weeks, I now know that making anything by hand takes a long time, that it’s satisfying on a very basic tactile/creative level, and that it’s very very bad for the body. I’ve taken to stretching regularly (sometimes every hour, which feels much more frequent than you’d think) and lotioning my hands constantly (rug-making is astonishingly rough on the skin!), and have been clinging to my usual enough-sleep, healthy-food, daily-exercise routine with as much force as I can muster… which has translated, at least this last week, into ordering more vegetables when we eat out, getting half an hour less sleep than usual, and exercising every other day! All my regular projects have been set aside while I’ve been preparing for FabMo, and I’m itching to get back to them: the family history, the writing and drawing projects, the garden, even non-FabMo crafts. But it has been a really good “intensive,” making such a crazy volume of crafts in such a short time.

Almost as soon as I started doing all this crafting, it became apparent that the mere process of crafting was only the beginning. In order to sell my creations at the exhibit, I would have to get a seller’s permit from the state Board of Equalization. I also intended to use the exhibit as a way to jump-start and publicize my Etsy shop (which just launched yesterday!), which required a lot more official stuff: a business license ($100/year), a fictitious-business-name license ($30), and more. I spent a lot of time on the phone, online, and in the public library trying to figure out all the regulations. Besides all this, there have been a thousand and one other details to think of, and decisions to make, before selling online or at the exhibit; it’s been like wedding-planning in that respect! Do I accept credit cards at the exhibit? How about checks? How will I ship my Etsy orders? How can I package my creations so they’ll travel safely, while remaining as eco-conscious as possible? One of the books I read said that I should expect to spend about 80% of my time on managing my business, and only 20% of it on actually making the items; I am coming to believe this is an accurate estimation, which is disturbing (and yet it’s reassuring to know it’s not just me). And I’m not even doing this as a serious, full-time business! (Well, I have been for the past few weeks, but after this weekend I intend to return to regular life with gratitude!)

That I’m still sane after all this is thanks to many things. At one end is stuff like the massive yard/estate/garage-sale and thrift-shop craft supply hoarding I’ve been doing since our move (thanks to my avid yard-saling, I’ve had dozens of boxes, fabrics, and spools of thread at my disposal, for low cost), and my constant decluttering of my bookshelf through PaperBackSwap, which has familiarized me with packing and shipping items for someone else’s use. At the other end I have the tremendous support of my family and friends, especially Jackie, who is flying up from LA to assist me and provide moral support at the exhibit, and Erik, who has been just the most extraordinary partner this week as I’ve been spending 12-hour days working away at my sewing machine. You could call some of this luck, but I prefer to think of it as synchronicity, a concept Julia Cameron emphasizes over and over again in The Artist’s Way: when you send earnest wishes and goals into the universe, the universe sends you back just what you need to fulfill your dreams (however large or small!). I have seen synchronicity at work time and again since embarking on my creative life, and I’ve become a total believer. As Cameron puts it succinctly, “Leap, and the net will appear.”

The FabMo exhibit is in 36 hours, and I still have many things to do before then. But I’m feeling good. It’s always a gift to know there’s something big and ambitious I wanted to do, and I jumped in and found I was capable. I’ve been discovering this about myself so frequently lately, I find my fear of big undertakings just gets less and less. I’m thinking bigger, crazier, and more impossible, and I LIKE IT!