On the 14th of December 2011, our Fibre Art class held a Christmas Craft Sale in the main building and arts department of Ballyfermot College. It started at 10am and we finished up at 4pm. The aim of this craft sale was to raise funds for our end of the year exhibition in the Farmleigh Gallery, Castleknock, Dublin 15. Fortunately, the craft sale turned out to be a great success! 
It was a busy few weeks coming up to the big day as there was plenty of preparation to be done. The class had to be separated into three different groups, where each group would focus on a particular type of craft with similar materials. I was placed in team felt, with Aisling, Tara and Kama! There was also a team thread and team print. Our team soon got started on production in making pairs of felt balls in different sizes and colours for our felt ball earrings. We decided to use mainly merino wool as it was a better quality compared to normal sheep's wool and resulted in a neater finish. We also added angel fibres and colourful threads to give the felt balls a bit more of a unique look.
To make felt balls requires very little equipment so it was cheap to make them and the process becomes easier after the first few times.
Once we felt we had made a sufficient amount of felt balls we washed them and left them to dry. The following day we set out to purchase hoops,needles and studs from the Beads and Bling store in Dublin City Centre in order to make these felt ball's into wearable earrings. When buying these items we stumbled upon small colourful material bags with ribbon fastenings which we felt would work perfectly as packaging for our felt earrings.
The actual making of the earrings was quite simple. We added beads with the felt balls and became adventurous by adding more than one felt ball earring on each earring. In my opinion the earrings with more than one felt ball on each was quite effective and if i was the customer I would be drawn to that particular type.
The other teams were also successful in producing beautiful hair fasteners, broaches, bracelets, collars, cuffs, notebooks and Christmas cards.
I found this producing and selling process to be quite a learning experience. As sellers we realised that one cannot predict the exact place and time when the most potential customers will be around. It can only be a guess from research into the best location and time schedule. There are many factors that can affect the day of selling which is why I would, if given the opportunity to do it again, organise at least two selling dates. On the day of the craft sale we had a lot of potential customers asking if we would be selling on any other days so that they could be more prepared. Although even though it was just the one day we managed to sell almost all of our earrings. I think there is some truth when people say it is very rewarding to produce and sell your own work.
