written September 16th, 2009 · 0 comments

So yesterday was a very exciting day! In the morning I was actually feeling a bit overwhelmed because I am juggling a few things on my plate right now. I am trying really hard to get my jewelry sold in a few shops in Berlin. My process for this includes walking around the city visiting shops to see if my jewelry will fit in and then usually calling back afterwards because the bosses aren’t there to make any decisions. I’ve also been trying to find some more markets to sell at, so I’ve been visiting them on the weekends. And then last week I was given an exciting offer to teach a Pilates class for 5 weeks while the regular teacher is at a training in Thailand. So I have to learn the class by heart and be able to teach it in German in 6 weeks! And then of course, there is my Etsy shop and my design work for my masters application portfolio, which has been a bit neglected lately. So many things.

Then I went to the yoga studio where I am working now in exchange for free classes and I was talking to the boss and he kind of mentioned that he might want me to teach some classes next year as the studio is expanding and doing really well. I am not getting too excited about it, but it would be a great experience! So that brought my spirits up. And then we had a huge attendance at our vinyasa class that day, when we normally have  about 8 in a class. So that was fun and the energy in the class was great! So I really pushed myself and it felt good.

After yoga I went to the art store to buy some supplies for a display stand for my jewelry. A store in my area picked out about 20 pairs of earrings of mine to sell! Anyhow, they were having a 20% off sale a the art store. That made my day even better. I got some fun fluorescent paints and some wood beads to make a crazy huge statement necklace. A girl has got to do some experimental projects once and a while!

I got some paper for my stand and started building it when I got home. I had made a really rough prototype out of paper already, but it was looking seriously weak. So I decided I would attach the Ikea frames I had for selling at the market to the front of my paper constructions. Anyhow, I wanted to do a kind of step by step process for the making of this stand for my blog, but unfortunately I have no step by step process. It was very experimental and I just made the design decisions as I went along, solving problems one by one. So here are some images. This is my very first promotional/presentation stand for my first retailer in Berlin!

The materials: Ikea frame, fluorescent green cardboard, nice hole-punched white paper for texture!

The frame had to be dismantled from its last use at the market. It used to look like this:

After gluing the hole-punched paper onto the green, very carefully, I attached the frame with a stapler.

I made my own measuring device after counting the dots horizontally.

I used this hole puncher I have for working with eyelets to punch the holes from which my earrings will hang. The wood blocks in the background were used for the weight that I needed to keep the frame stable. They are hidden in the next pic by white paper. See what I mean by not being step by step?! I can’t help it!

Oh how I love double sided tape! The whole frame is pretty much staying together because of it. And having different widths is really helpful! We’ll see if it holds up! So the frame was done. Now I needed a little folder for my flyers/advertisements and to print my flyers!

Designed these real quick and printed them on some nice photo paper.

I love my Epson:)

Cut out all the flyers…it always takes longer than I think it will!

Yeah…that is my pattern for the folder! There are no pictures from this point until the finished product, because I basically measured a few things, my flyers most importantly and how thick the pile would be and just sketched out a pattern randomly. It worked out on the first try! I am pretty happy about that cause I was running out of thick white paper.

Finished folder! Sweet eh?

Just in case my flyers are all taken people will still know whose stand this is! I actually wish my name was there too. Maybe I’ll have to redo this part.

This is how it looks tonight…just took some awful pics with the flash. I know, yuck! I’ll take some better ones tomorrow.

Et viola! Handmade DIY rocks!