Barry's Farm

We had a great time at the Maker Faire in San Mateo this past weekend! We met some really awesome people and saw some of the coolest contraptions I've ever seen. Here's some pictures:

Our set-up at the Bazaar Bizarre:


A new display for the card wallets:


Some cool stuff from the Maker Faire:

Giant cupcake & muffin cars!:


EepyBird.com Mentos & Diet Coke display:


An amazing Steampunk Bike:


The Neverwas Haul (a driveable Victorian house):


There were so many amazing things and we only got to see about half of them since we had to man our booth most of the show. Hopefully, we'll go to the Maker Faire again in the future and have more time to check out all of the cool stuff we missed this time around. We probably won't hit any craft shows until September, but I'll try and keep this updated through the summer to let you know whats new!

First, an apology. We went out of town last monday and discovered our website went down tuesday morning right before our flight out of the country! We didnt have access to the internet, so we couldn't fix it or respond to any emails, so I want to apologize for that. Hopefully it didn't inconvenience anyone, and it's back up now, so order away!

Second, I wanted to announce our first craft show of the year! We will be at the Bazaar Bizarre, which is part of the Maker Faire, in San Mateo, CA the first weekend in May. The show runs both Saturday, May 3rd, and Sunday May 4th and I will post more details on it before we go! We're pretty excited to make our debut on the west coast craft show circuit!

We have some new laptop sleeves up on the site! There are 3 new styles, made out of durable canvas and lined with flannel and foam. They can be found here:
Owlie: http://www.barrysfarm.net/store/single_view/46

Unicorn: http://www.barrysfarm.net/store/single_view/47

Rockin' Keytar: http://www.barrysfarm.net/store/single_view/45



Hopefully, we'll get a chance to get some new stuff up in the shop soon. We're battling colds from hell right now so our motivation is definitely lacking! Thanks for checking us out!

Come check it out!! Do some holiday shopping and see a fashion show and meet some awesome crafters!

I finally got all the new fabrics up on the site last night! I realized I have like a bazillion (yes, thats a technical term) fabrics and I finally got them all organized last night. Here's a pic of them all neatly put away:



And here's a sampling of the new fabrics:










Check them out!!

We'll be at Handmade Arcade in Pittsburgh November 10-11! Saturday, November 10th 11-7 and Sunday, November 11th 11-5 at Construction Junction, 214 N. Lexington Street. Come check it out and stop by to say 'hi'!

More details at: www.handmadearcade.com

So, we're back from Chicago! We had a great time at the Renegade Craft Fair this past weekend. It was Saturday and Sunday from noon-10 pm each day and despite the very chilly weather on Saturday, it was quite pleasant. Here are some pics from the weekend:
Here is Barry setting up:



We just got new banners printed and they turned out really awesome! Take a closer peek!:





Here is a shot of the booth all set up:



The fair seemed to go on forever:



And at the end of the fair (severely depleted stock!):



We stayed in Oakbrook, which is about 15 miles away from where the fair was held. The hotel was the Hyatt Lodge, which is on McDonald's corporate campus! It was a really nice place but you could definitely tell there was a McDonald's presence because there were weird pictures on the walls, like this one:



Our hotel was nice and modern:



and it had a bridge that connected it to:



Overall a pretty cool experience. Now only a week and a half til we leave for DC for Crafty Bastards! Yikes!

This weekend, check us out at Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago! We'll be there, braving the chilly fall weather and the long hours! Oh, and I promise to get some new stuff added after we get back from Crafty Bastards in October!

Washington DC September 30th from 10-5!! Check it out!!

Yes, I do occasionally get asked to do an awesome custom item, and I am always welcome to any suggestions! I did this cupcake tote bag for a lovely lady in Australia. It has three smiling cupcakes on the front and then the inside is lined with pink fabric that has desserts on it! So cute! Here's a few pics:




The lining fabric:




The inside (including a pocket with a heart button closure!):



If you think we should sell this purse in the shop, please leave a comment! Also, if you're interested in something custom, please email me at katie@barrysfarm.com to work something out!

Whew! Long time, no post! Things have been pretty busy around here and I never got the chance to post about our trip to Milwaukee! It was our first trip to Milwaukee and we found it surprisingly easy to get around, except for all the pesky road construction! My parents went along, too, so luckily, they gave us a heads up on what to watch out for! So the show was Saturday and Sunday, July 7&8, and it was held in this big conference room at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. We were a little nervous since it was our first show, but things went really well! We had lots of great shoppers and plenty of compliments which is always awesome! Barry sold quite a few shirts, including some of a new design, which we will be adding to the shop in the near future. I sold a few laptop sleeves and quite a few wristlets, card wallets and mini pouches. Overall, a really great experience. It was blazing hot and thankfully, they had a little ice cream cart going around, so we ate popsicles all weekend! It was awesome! We forgot the regular camera, so we only snapped a few on Barry's shiny new Iphone:
Setting up:




Our rack, and yes, a cute new owlie purse I hope to put in the shop soon!:




A mysterious Z that appeared on my shoe..( I was on the lookout for a sneaky Zorro all day!):




On the way home, we stopped at the Jelly Belly Center, which is where you can tour the Jelly Belly warehouse and shop their huge store! Jelly Beans, yay, tour operator with the most sugary sweet, annoying voice, nay. We left there with massive headaches, but also with a big bag of candy! Here's a couple of shots of portraits made entirely of jelly beans!:








We had a great time and hopefully, we'll be a part of upcoming Art vs. Craft shows!

We'll be at Art vs. Craft in Milwaukee July 7-8! Check it out!

Whew! It sure has been a busy month around here! We're doing a much better job of staying on top of orders and I think I've gotten into a groove that allows me to stay caught up and not have to work constantly! We just bought a nice professional button machine, so the buttons are being made much quicker and look more professional. Hopefully we can come up with some new designs to put it to good use! I purchased a bunch of new fabrics both online and on trips to Chicago, so I hope to add them soon. Also, I was able to score decent yardage of several fabrics so I hope to make some prototypes for a new case that would be fabric with vinyl handles for the ladies out there! I'm also working on some purses that i would like to debut soon, as well as ipod cases and notebooks made out of children's records.
We're getting ready to apply for 2 upcoming big craft shows- Renegade Craft Fair (Chicago) and Crafty Bastards (Washington D.C.). Both would be in September, but if we end up at Crafty Bastards, we'll probably take a nice road trip up the east coast! We were accepted to Art vs. Craft, which is in Milwaukee from July 7-8, so if you're in the area, stop by and say hi!
That's about all for now. Here's a pic to show evidence of progress (and our fuzzy monster army!)!

We were on Business Week Weekend this morning. It's a national news program that mostly runs on ABC. Around the midwest it airs at 5:30AM, but on the east coast it's on at 11:30AM. They took our monster sleeve and the 9-5 sleeve out on the street and asked people if they'd carry it! Totally Cute.

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/index.jsp?fr_story=3a46f9f5dbb64a91e70c0105823606b052b6de4e

A couple of new mentions:

• Adorn Magazine's Blog:

             This month for our Sampler picks, I had everyone choose a favorite. Here they are, in a clockwise fashion.

Meredith loves the Cupcake Clutch from Barry’s Farm. It’s really playful — the face alone makes me smile, and there are even more smiling candy treats on the inside lining! I would have had a blast using this as a pencil case to gaze into while sitting through a long (i.e. boring) class back in school.

• Craft Magazine's blog:

      

April's Sampler Goodies

April's Sampler proved to be a cool array of fab goodies. Here are some featured new items that I'm loving (Clockwise from top):

• For the Birds stationery by Ephemera Stationery - Link.
• Button holder frame by Button Collective - Link.
• Wolfie and the Sneak Say coloring card - Link.
• Sublime Stitching's Lucha Libre embroidery patterns - Link.
• Silver Swirl pearl necklace by Beadoodles - Link.
• Barry's Farm Ice Cream vinyl wristlet - Link.
• Jill Bliss + My Favorite Mirror Set of 6 beverage coasters - Link.

The Sampler is a great way to promote your crafty business! For more Sampler news and info on how you can contribute, visit The Sampler web site.

Now to think of what to contribute to next month's Sampler!

In other news- I just ordered one of those cool new Bind-it-all machines, so look for handmade journals/notebooks in the near future!

My first week in self-employment went really well! It's so nice to be able to work from home, with the windows open and music playing! Sure beats the hell out of my previous cubicle imprisonment!
So, here's what's new and exciting at Barrysfarm:

• We're going to be on another TV program! It's called Business Week Weekend and it's going to be on Sunday, May 6th. Around here, its on CBS at 5:30 am (we're so Tivo-ing it!), but on the East Coast, I think it's on at 11:30, so check your listings!
• We're working on some possible wholesale and consignment deals with awesome people.
  
• We've almost sold at least one of everything in the store now! I've been waiting for someone to buy one of the tree sleeves forever, and it finally happened! Hooray!
• We've had some really nice mentions on a couple of blogs in reference to what we submitted to The Sampler last month:

• Modish had some nice things to say: A cute little pick me up clutch by Barry's Farm- the one I received is vinyl with a happy little strawberry ice cream cone on it.  It's well made and I must say, cute enough to eat!  Yum!

• Craftypod's comments were super nice!:

  

  There’s no coincidence to this: yesterday the sun made one of its increasingly-rare appearances in Portland, and The Sampler arrived.

  There’s so much amazing stuff in this one, I’ll likely do two posts about it. So for this first one, I’ll share:

  This cute-cute-cute zippered bag from Barry’s Farm. There’s machine embroidery on the cupcake! And the envelope it came in is so pretty - and also machine-stitched.

  

  . . . But then when you look inside –aah! There’s a flannel lining, complete with smiling candy. I adore this bag. And you must go to the website and see the t-shirt with the marshmallow roasting the man over a campfire.

• Finally, lots of orders from all over the world! We've had orders from Sweden, France, Singapore, Australia, Argentina, Germany, UK, and many more! We have some awesome customers! Thanks everyone!

So, since the debut of the "9-5 laptop sleeve", we have been very busy! There's been a lot of comments about the style, but probably the one that we like the best is "Dress your Mac up like a PC"! I guess I hadn't thought of that when I first sketched it, but it does make a lot of sense, especially with all of those Mac commercials! So, there's definitely been an influx of orders recently thanks to the awesome bloggers around the net! (thanks everyone) Here's a shot of what I accomplished over the weekend:


We took the pics at Barry's office in their amazing conference room. I guess this is what a board meeting at a major PC company would look like- a sea of ties and white shirts! All this work has led me to make the decision to work from home from now on because it has really become a full-time job. It's a scary leap, but I'll have some freelance work to fall back on, as well. So, if anyone has any new product ideas, leave a comment!
-Katie

Here's a screenshot from here, but in babelfished english. I especially like "Thus you nevertheless probably land a direct hit with each business date."

As you may have seen the new site is live, which is very exciting for us.

This new launch represents many new things for our tiny business. It means a new identity, a new store front, and an easier to navigate site. But also, it marks a change in how we handle products. Everything that we make that's handmade (like the laptop sleeves & purses) is still made by hand, and in the same place by the same person. Nothing has changed there.

What has changed is how we handle our shirts. When we started BF we were silk screening them in our apartment by hand on demand which took up a lot of time, and made our apartment smell like paint thinner. Somewhere down the line, we didn't want to deal with that anymore, so we went with an on-demand shirt printer, which worked out pretty well for us. That is, until we started selling the handmade items, then everything became a logistical headache for us. We figured if we we're going to do dedicate all of our extra time to this, that it was an all or nothing decision.

So, now we go through a local printer and buy our shirts in bulk. They're all silk screened on high quality American Apparel shirts, because we weren't going to go half-assed on it. All of the handmade items are high quality so why not the shirts? We didn't have the capital to get all of our shirts printed up (we had around 30 designs!), so we went with two that we were personally attached to (and that sold well), and one new one. If there is enough of a response to get some of the older ones printed, we'll concider it.

What this 'all or nothing' decision basically boils down to is an emphasis of quality over quantity.

Our new site is scheduled to go live in the next couple days, so I thought it was time to set up a blog. I don't know if anyone is really interested in what we have to say, but they seem to be interested in what we sell, so we'll give it a shot.

I'll do another post when we launch around the reasoning for the new site/ new identity and what it all means. There's going to be some changes, pretty much for the good on both our end and our customers, so we're both pretty excited.