After having one minor bad experience consigning to an arts and crafts shop out of state, I decided to amend my personal consignment rules to only include local Kansas City area shops. I thought that this way I would be able to keep an eye on things and make sure that my items were taken care of, displayed well, and that the payment checks were on time. In hindsight, I realize that it was wishful thinking on my part.
It is an understatement to say that for the past year, I have been busy. Let's see... I had a baby (life changing!), opened a new Etsy shop for my stamp designs, opened a new ArtFire shop, and added fiber supplies and kits to my line of products. That is just hitting the highlights too. It doesn't even include the day to day events of life that can sometimes be overwhelming. Why am I bringing this up? Well, it is just to say that my mind has been preoccupied. I hadn't really thought much about my locally consigned items. That brings me to my recent horror story of local consignment.
A while ago, I got an Etsy conversations message from a fellow local artisan and friend of mine asking if I knew that a local consignment shop had closed its doors. My fellow artisan also asked if I had gotten any of my items back or payment for them. Honestly, I hadn't thought much about this local shop. I was "friends" with the owner on facebook, and she posted quite often to her page there - never mentioning closing up shop once that I remember, but rather talking a lot about traveling, going to the gym, and losing weight. Well, she not only closed up shop, but she apparently liquidated all her consignor's items and pocketed all the money from what I can gather. My fellow artisan and myself have lost hundreds of dollars in merchandise and display items. Not to mention what her other consignors might have lost. It is angering and frustrating to say the least.
How convenient that the store owner can not be reached! My fellow artisan had no luck at all in contacting the store owner. The store owner responded to one of my emails stating that she'd return my items and the monetary value of the merchandise that wasn't accounted for, but I never heard from her after that one email and never received anything in the mail. It has been a few weeks now with no response on her part and no merchandise or payment. It is just shameful too that
her store's website is still up with my stolen merchandise and display items pictured for sale on
the "gifts" page. I also believe that she is still may be doing business as
a balloon artist in the Kansas City area. She's even had
articles written about her as if she is reputable. It is all quite disgusting if you are seeing it from my my point of view.
Where does that leave me you might ask? Plainly spoken, up a creek without a paddle.
I have a signed consignment agreement and merchandise list, but that really does me no good at all if I can not contact the store owner. And, it really doesn't help if the store owner is dishonest as in this case. You might wonder why not seek legal action. There are two main reasons: expense and time. I have a good case to collect from the fraudulent shop owner, but the court costs and other fees involved would probably be more than the actual cost of my items. The entire situation seems very unjust to me. It is not fair that someone who represents themselves as a reputable local business person in reality is nothing more than a thief and criminal. Ah, but no one said that life was fair...
Now what can I do? I can learn a valuable lesson and make wiser business decisions in the future. Therefore, I personally will never consign again. This is not to discourage others from consigning or to say that all consignment will end badly because I know that there are honest business owners out there. I recommend doing what works well for you and your arts and crafts business. It obviously does not work well for me to consign so I will focus my time and resources elsewhere. I just wanted to share my experience to hopefully benefit others.
Even though I live near Kansas City, it is still difficult to find local sources of wool roving, spinning equipment, and fiber classes. There are several yarn shops and chain hobby stores that carry a wide variety of ready-made yarns, but there are very, very few places to find actual wool roving and spinning supplies as well as classes.
I will be a vendor at this local upcoming event. Join myself and several other handmade artisans at the Westport Flea Market on Saturday, February 13th, from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. It is the ideal place to buy something for those that you love or just a little something special for yourself! I will be selling my handmade needle felted heart jewelry there as well as my needle felting kits and new line of note cards and tags. There will also be some of my nuno felted scarves and other fashion accessories available. Click here for driving directions, a list of vendors, and complete event details. I hope to see you there!
A couple of months ago a local freelance writer, Kristin Maun, contacted me about doing an article that featured my felted creations and techniques. She came to my home and interviewed me. Then she wrote a wonderful article. Just this week, I was informed that her article was going to be published in the Arts Section at PresentMagazine.com, a local area Kansas City online publication. I was thrilled to be featured in their latest article about local area artists. A big thanks to Present Magazine and Kristin for their stellar work! Please click here to read the entire article.
Above you can see my table setup before the No Coast Craft-o-rama show in Minneapolis began. It was stocked full of items of which many, many sold. I wish that I had an after photo, but I don't. I was too busy both days to take many photos. It is rare that I see fellow artists and crafters share many details about their shows, but this one was such a good show that I've decided to share some of the wonderful positives about it including some selling statistics. Below you'll see a list of the show highlights. I hope that you find them interesting and useful.
I just wanted to share my latest ties dye creations. I am having a lot of fun felting basic white merino scarves then dyeing them in a kettle. I use rubber bands and marbles to create the stripes and dot patterns. I'd like to also use a needle and thread to stitch some patterns into the scarves before dyeing them, but that will take a little more time to do. There is an instant gratification when just using the rubber band method. It is quick and pretty easy to tie dye this way. It takes a little longer to make the hand felted wool scarves though. I will be listing this new tie dye collection of scarves for sale in my Etsy shop this week and next week, and I'll probably be making more soon. You can also see more photos of them in my flickr photo gallery. If you have any good color suggestions for my next batch of tie dye scarves, please do leave a comment! I really like most of the colors so far, but your opinions are greatly appreciated.
This past Saturday, my husband and I woke up early (well, early enough for me anyway) and went to a local area art festival. It is called the Plaza Art Fair and is a long standing tradition here in Kansas City. It is considered one of the top five art fairs in the country with highly competitive jurying for artists to participate. And, it gathers over 200,000 visitors during its three days. The mood and quality of artists and their work is very upscale and professional in every respect. Of all the wonderful things that there are to do here in Kansas City, the Plaza Art Fair is one of my favorites that I look forward to every year. It is inspiring and intimidating because of all the extraordinary displays of art from ceramics, to textiles, to mixed media, and beyond. I don't know that I'll ever be that caliber of artist to compete for such a coveted spot in a show like the Plaza Art Fair, but I certainly love to go see who this year's artists are and what exquisite things they make.
