FaerieWorlds Wrap Up

Okay, obviously  bad at this whole blog thing. That video sums up the awesome of FaerieWorlds pretty well!

In a nut shell, we sold almost half of our mask/crown stock as well as some key chains. :) We grossed $1,100 which came to a little over $200 each for profits (after the booth costs and what not). We did the best on Saturday, despite the rain! :)

Got a couple custom orders too, which we have finished and just need to ribbon and send off.

Considering our next festival, FaerieWorlds Harvest, is in the throws of the Halloween season, I expect we'll make a LOT more!

An actual Oak Myth!

I found this to be a very interesting and quite awesome tale of the "Oak Myth" :)
(In all honesty I didn't know there were Oak Myths out and about! The name came from the combination of Eve's username and my own, Oakwitch and FeatherMyth.)

So soon *twitch*

Ashley again.

Thursday morning, 6:00AM, Me, Eve, and our delightful boyfriends leave for faerieworlds. 9 hours of driving. A total of 43 masks and crowns (I'm laughing right now, thinking about our goal of 135).

Are we excited?
Yes.

Are we nervous as fuck?
Yes.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Our last official work day! All that's left, really, is to touch up a crown, paint a dragon, varnish, ribbon, and fire proof the tent. Everything else is set.

Eve bought a cute little subaru wagon. Bessie! I trust her with my life... and our business (Bessie, don't you fucking dare mess this up for us. Just kididng I love you. But seriously).

It's scary and thrilling. I'm pretty sure we (as in, Eve) spent much more money than originally anticipated. Like, $300 just on extra vending passes and camping for the four of us, and two friends who are helping out.  Oh and our required extension chord was another $130 (10g 100ft...whyyy). But, if we sold every single mask and key chain, we would not only break even, we would each profit considerably. Good news! I just hope we don't sell out too quick.

I'm planning on taking as many pictures as possible. And of course, they will end up here :) Probably won't update again until after the festival is over. As always, thanks for the continued support.
Have a new mask design:

Time, where are you?

Oh yeah, the blog. Ashley here:

We have little over a month left before our first official vending adventure. Are we ready? Haha.... oh that's funny.

Well, we're close. Ish. Our inventory is small. At this point we have close to 30 masks completed and in the works. The tent has been secured. We have our staff. We JUST got our mask displays, which look completely awesome. Custom made! f-yeah *power fist pumpage*

At this point, the list of things to do before we are ready for FW:
-Make a lot more masks. A lot more.
-Get a fire extinguisher
-Get fire retardant spray
-Get an extension chord and a serge protector
-Invest in some sort of mirror(s)
-Invest in some bamboo flooring? That roll up kind that you see on beaches.
-See Harry Potter
-Kiss our boyfriends some more
-Make more masks
-Train ze staff
-Make masks
-Make key chains
-CAR
-Oh and more masks. That would be good.

Soon, I'll be cutting out some significant boyfriend time (sad face) to add another Mask day to the schedule. Eve and I are pretty awesome about picking vacation time haha. She has her 3 year anniversary with Mike next week, and 2 weeks after, I'm going to Vegas to celebrate Frank's 21st b-day. Then we have about a week before faerieworlds.

BUT HEY I QUIT MY JOB! So that should open up more time.
Still, I sort of have this strange mix of "omgfuck what if this doesn't work out" and "omg yaaay! Yippie skippy! Nothing can go wrong in the faerie realm la la la la la *skips over a rainbow*"

Really, we're going to rock it no matter what.

Oh heyyy, so in other awesome news... People are starting to invite us to vend at their festivals! The Berkeley Pagan Festival is on our list for next year! We went this year, but just sort of showing off the masks on our faces. They got a LOT of attention. As in, we'd be looking through booths and people would come in the booths to check out our masks instead of what was being sold at the booth. I left early, but Eve stuck around with our buddy, Keenan. A woman approached them and well guess what? The masks are tentatively going to be appearing at the Berkeley World Music Festival! Sweet. Could it get better? WHELP, I THINK SO. Keenan and Eve hit up the Berkeley Hat Shop, and the manager want's to buy some masks to sell in the shop. 


Hokay, what. We're seriously not even trying. These masks are like magnets. Magical, beautiful, delicious, magnets of amazing.

See why I quit my job?

Anyway, have some new mask designs:

Gorgeously modeled by Eve! :)

Woops

It seems this blog has been rather neglected. No bueno!

Here's the latest since oct 1:

Ashley (me) is in a fantastic new relationship.
Ari is now flying solo; working on his own mask business.
WE'RE VENDING AT FAERIE WORLDS!

Yes, oh my gods. The vending tent just arrived today! Ebay is the way to go, folks. We got a 10x10 pop up with walls and carrying case for $100! Mind you, when I was trying to pull the contraption out of it's tightly packed box, the darned bag ripped. It's fairly small though, so I think I should be able to patch it up. It weighs a total of 45 pounds. Luckily shipping was free.

My dad is having a fold out sign ("A line"... kind of like the real estate signs you see at street corners) made for us, with our business name engraved into the wood. Sweeeet. "Oak Myth Masks and Leathercraft" So thrilled.

And to top it all off? We've set a goal for ourselves of 135 masks. So far, we have:
6 Masks of the sun
1 Peacock Mask
1 Dryad Key Chain
1 Tree Mask
1 Octopus Key Chain
1 Masquerade Mask
1 Raven Half Mask (not pictured)

We need a lot more key chains and a hell of a lot more masks. But! We can make this happen. Every day, I'm doing more research on what we need and what we have to do to make this work. From now on, I'll be blogging my findings :)

Also, CHECK OUT THE PEACOCK MASK! *thrilled*

The October Rush

Ash again. So far, the October/Halloween season seems to be doing us well. We've sold 5 masks in the last 3 weeks or so, and expect more soon. I'm half wondering if the whole 5 week custom mask thing is going to hurt our sales in the end, so some Etsy descriptions might have to be rewritten. Especially since we've been getting faster ;)

Yesterday, Aurelius came back into town and we had a group mask day for the first time in a few months. He designed an AWESOME logo! So we ordered new business cards, came up with a fantastic care sheet to include with shipped masks, and updated our banner/icon on Etsy. Things are coming together!

Vending wise, it looks like a lot of art fairs are happening in the area soon. However, what the junk, vending canopies (10x10 pop ups) sell for close to $300?! Whyyy. I found one used on craigslist but it sold before we could even take a look. And it was $65 and greeen! Sighz. If anyone is following this and has a canopy they want to sell TELL MEEEE. Us. Somehow. We're poor mask makers, haha.

Oh wait, ebay!

Okay hope is not lost.

In any case, we're taking things up a notch. Initially, FaerieWorlds 2011 was going to be our big vending adventure (haha that sounds cool, vending adventure... *dork*), but the more interest seems to be spiking, the more we want to get out there and vend as much as possible.

Next we just have to figure out how to get in touch with these local art shows, get a pop up table, and kick this business into overdrive.

HELL YEAH.

...I'm not funny.

haha ♥

Post numero uno!

Man, I can't believe we haven't been blogging.
SO much has happened since we started making masks last December (2009).

I suppose I'll start by outlining some of the highlights of our kick off year:

• Reserved the name Oak Myth (a combination of both my and Eve's usernames, "FeatherMyth" and "OakWitch") on sites like Etsy, Gmail, Blogger, DeviantArt, and Twitter.
• First mask prototype completed December 19th
• Aurelius joins the team moments after the mask is uploaded to Facebook, as Product Photographer and co-designer.
• Realizing that the eyes are too close together and making a successful new template/pattern.
• Apollo mask sells for $75 to Diane Arms, a producer for theater company "Poison Apple." First mask sale! April 2010
• Business cards arrive May 6th.
• Crashed the Pagan Festival in Berkeley, May 8th. Sold our second mask, a remake of our first prototype for $40.
• May 10th, Launched our Etsy store full of beautifully photographed masks! Launched our Facebook fan page as well.
• First Etsy sale, May 26th. 
• Aurelius moves to Oregon, June 3rd. Contemplation follows about how the business will run.
• The masks make a trip to the FaerieWorlds festival in Oregon with Ashley (still not vending officially). Total of 4 sales! The Sun & Moon pair went to a dear friend for $60, the Dragon sold to a wonderful woman we met there for $130, and our very first prototype (pictured above) went to a new friend for $25. 
• September: After returning from a trip to see Aurelius in Oregon, Ashley decides to move up to the Portland area this winter. Moments later, Eve announced on Facebook that she too will be moving up to Portland as soon as possible. The team will be united again!
• September 17th our two most expensive masks sell on Etsy to the same person. The Dragon and The Forest masks. By far, the biggest sale yet ($280).

To date, we've sold a total of 13 masks! Our facebook fan page has 171 followers and is growing all the time. We have plans to vend at the Saturday Market in downtown Portland, as well as FaerieWorlds 2011.

While all of us had good feelings about going into this, I don't think any of us really realized how quickly this would take off and become something we could all potentially live off of. Excluding the festivals, we haven't been putting too much energy into advertising ourselves. Everyone on Etsy just found us; they're all strangers!

It's amazing and thrilling and exciting. I love this craft and I know my partners in crime do as well :]

-Ashley