Bohemian Mermaid Palace

That's right, people. At long last a new Mermaid Mobile is born. AaaaaahAAAAAAh (that's my imitation of angels singing). After maybe 2 years of whining and hoping and hunting and discussing , yesterday we brought home my baby. A shiny 1999 Chevy Express cargo van. This is by far the newest vehicle I have ever owned. It has running lights and air bags! Never mind that, CUP HOLDERS and air conditioning! I'm fairly bursting into the nineties here. And see my birthday-ipod radio adapter? Oh, I'll be traveling awesomely this summer alright. You bet. I might hyperventilate. I don't think I could be more excited. It really has been like bringing home a baby. OK maybe a new pet. All kinds of new toys and we just want to play with it obsessively. I already have new tires, oil change, a paint touchup pen, washer fluid. We're discussing how to outfit the back for shows... liners, storage. Whew. Barney keeps poking at stuff. I can't wait to clean it. And I'm thin...

I'm working on my booth display some. The Mermaid jewels are a relatively new addition to the booth ... and displaying them has been a challenge. So far, I've been putting them on hooks. I've tried more hooks, shorter hooks, horizontal bars, that little board. I do sell them, and they do catch people's eye. But, they are still too hard to see. All bunched up with no fabric behind them. So, recently I made these lovely boards. Tada! Nice huh? I got some big picture frames on sale, covered the mats with batting and some fake raw silk fabric, and I think they look fabulous! I still want to add some swirlies with a silver paint pen... but they really give the jewels some presence. I think when they were bunched up they looked kind of cheap. Now they are in a showcase and so they look a bit fancier. I just had to accept the fact that I don't need to display every necklace I have at once. That whole backstock concept is hard for me. Oh, and I finally got some of those ni...

Yep. I'm pretty sure that THIS time I really AM getting a new van. One that looks very much like these photos. Possibly by week's end. Why now? (you might be asking yourself).... when shows have barely started and you must surely be broke as hell, Bekki?? Yeah good question. Because, the (ugly) reliable van I have been using for the past couple years needs some work. Barney took it in for a pre-craft-fair checkup and found it needs at least $400 worth of repairs to safely leave town. Tie rods I think. Plus it needs some other work soon, brakes I think. Yeah. Not stuff you let slide when you drive 200 miles of winding mountain roads to get to work. So, we decided it would be best to take that $400+ and put it toward a new van, which we've been hunting for anyway. It's exciting. But also a little stressful. I had to cancel my show in Oregon this next weekend (ouch)... I'll have 2 more weeks until the next one in Bodega Bay. So, hopefully this van thing will pan out a...

Yep. Confirmed for my first show with my new Stamp Art print your own T-shirt booth. Ha. I'm a little nervous... just because I want it to go well, and it's so different from my usual booth. But, I think it has real potential. And the Spring Fever Festival at Redwood Acres (apr 26-27) is the perfect first show... not too busy, but lots of children. Heehee pretty exciting. Here's how it will work. To start, I'll have bandanas for $5, baby onesies and kid's T-shirts for $10, adult T-shirts up to 3x for $15. Eventually I'll add black and dyed shirts for an extra few bucks. For the money, you choose one awesome rubber stamp and one ink color, extra stamps or colors are $2. The key will be having cool stamps to choose from. I'm making them myself. The ink will be water-based and non toxic, so it will have to be heat set. For this show I'll probably have an iron for that... outdoor shows will need a take-home instruction sheet. It only needs like 1 minute of i...

At long last... it's time for the craft shows to begin. It's been a long dark winter in the depths of the sea here at the Palace. But now it's time to rise up to the bright surface and do some serious Mermaid work. I am SO ready to get moving! First round of shows begins in 2 weeks, here's the confirmed line up so far: March 28-30 - Spring Fair - Douglas County Fairgrounds, Roseburg, Oregon. This is my firs time at this show. I didn't do spectacularly well my last time in Roseburg . But, it's a nice drive and an indoor show so at least I won't get rained on. I plan on having lots of little girl dresses and clearance items at this show. April 12-13 - Bodega Bay Fisherman's Festival - Bodega Bay, CA. I've been wanting to do this one for the past few years. Last year I heard it poured rain... but maybe I'll be lucky. Looks like an awesome festival right on the bay, boat parades, boat building, kite flying, animal parade. Sounds like fun! April 2...

Check out the Pancake video ... I tried to embed but I don't think it worked right. Wait, let me try again here... maybe it's my crappy computer, but mine keeps stopping. Go to youtube and it works great. lol. I enjoy this video every time I watch it. Yay Pancakes!

I think I'm just about ready to get going on some festivals. Lots of planning and purchasing going on here at The Palace. This weekend though, I mostly hung out with Barney. He started working in the bay area, so I only get him on the weekends for a while. Sigh. We did lots of movie-watching and snuggling... and I made so much jewelry I got a blister. I'm a machine, I know. Well it really started with a flower garland I made to decorate my booth. The wire in the flowers was hard to cut and I worked on that thing for like 3 hours. I was having so much fun I didn't care that my hands hurt. Then I made jewelry for 2 days. I can't help myself. I got a couple of neato packages yesterday... one full of hats! I'm excited to have found these cotton hats to dye. I want one of each. I also got my first shipment of shirts from the Buz finally. They are sweet! I'll get a photo at some point...

Last saturday was my birthday. Barney had a training thing in Benicia on friday. So, I went along and afterward we headed over to Reno for a visit to my little bro and his wife. It was lovely. Weather couldn't have been nicer, sunny and wonderful the entire time. Let's see... it took about 5 hours to go from here to Benicia. No problem. The drive to Reno, according to mapquest , takes about 3 hours. Hm. 3 hours got us just through Sacramento. Bloody hell. It actually took 5 hours. We could have driven home in that time. Anyway, that's life in civilization...I don't know how people can live that way. Blech. We mostly hung out at the house there... went out for birthday sushi. mmmmm it was good too. And got some ice cream afterwards. Perfect. Otherwise we laid around and watched movies, drank beer and visited. Oh, we did visit Pam & Jim and their two little kids, which was neat. I had never seen the kids awake. Of course I didn't take any pictures. Trust me, the...

Ok. Let's see... I posted my first 2 skirts onto etsy.com before I left for the weekend. Yesterday, I posted 4 more. Today I sold one. I'm in shock I think. Woohoo! Thank you Pamela in SoCal!! I'm totally excited. Of course, I hoped the larger sizes would win some hearts... I notice there aren't many larger sized things there. Nor much hand-dyed clothing really at all. Let's hope this is a sign of things to come. Woopie!!