Greetings FNO Artists and Craftspeople,

Sorry this is so late this month.  What can I say, we're having too much fun this summer!

This month, Rob Goyette writes on ways to enhance your craft to increase your sales.  Check out his online resources.

This month's featured FNO artist is Julia Masaoka from Asheville, NC!

Learn about how you can make money when you refer people to FNO with our affiliate program.  Also if you have a website and link to FNO we will place a link to your website on our member's links page!!  Interested?  Let us know!

Happy Summer!
Julie
FNO Marketing Chick
Festival Network Online
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When you look for what is hot and what is not in the craft show world, sometimes you will come across a familiar catch-phrase: “build a better mousetrap”. Hey, anything that can catch more mice than I do with my current mouse traps is a good idea. So, why not apply that logic to some of your crafts?

When you ‘build a better mousetrap’ this essentially means that you can make a craft show item out of something that has already been around for years – but now you can just make it a little better. Another way to look at it would be to just add a twist to something that already exists. For example, you could purchase an unfinished piece of pottery and paint it or add mosaic art to it – to create more value as a craft.

Whether it is an improvement –like adding a self-feeding mechanism to your bird houses, or just painting them for appearance sake, there are a lot of different items that you can apply this theory to. It doesn’t take much. You could probably find a lot of new craft ideas just by looking at some of the stuff around the house and thinking to yourself – how can I make that better.

This approach does have some caveats – because you never want to cross the line of copyright or patent infringement. Most of the time any new creation is worthy of your own copyright – but just in case here are a couple of rules of thumb:

• Original designs – If someone has come up with an original design (ie: they make something completely new) it probably isn’t a good idea to try and make that better. Items that have been designed recently might have a copyright and you could face a lawsuit if you infringe on those designs.

• Original ideas – Even if you take someone else’s idea of making an improvement they can cause a stir over copyright infringement. It’s always best to come up with your own original ideas for building a better mousetrap. Ideas are someone’s property these days and are also protected by law.

Building a better mousetrap is a catch-phrase that a lot of different crafters use when they are trying to find a new idea. They might see an item that has been around for a long time and then find a better way to build it – or make a simple addition to it and you have a craft that people could flock to.

People have been improving things since the beginning of time; there’s no reason why you can’t take something and make it better in order to find new crafts for your craft show business!

"Trashformation - new life for thrown away items and the creative surprises that emerge." 

I found Julia Masaoka's website through correspondence associated with her Basic FNO membership.  After quickly becoming fascinated by her artwork, I found out we're in the same city of Asheville, NC!  Julia makes shrine art in hubcaps and sardine cans.

The irony of a shrine in a sardine can is satisfying enough, and her use of color, symmetry, and intricate placement of shiny objects around ancient iconic figures is mystic and fabulous.  She uses discarded items on her pieces, giving rubbish a new life as art, thus evoking a sense of afterlife for the shrines.

Please visit Julia's website

Email Julie Cochrane if you are interested in appearing here.
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