Clockwise from top left: Harry Potter Gryffindor Bead Kit in A Bead Just So; Creative Sparks before and after pottery design; Button art by Paint-n-Gogh; and Paint-n-Gogh’s painting lesson (photos provided )
“When we had to close in March, we wanted to know what we had to do to make ends meet,” said Angelina Valente, owner of Creative Sparks in Saratoga Springs, and her mother, Annie. Said Anne Valente. “We have seen some companies provide kits online, which makes sense.”
Valentes’ 15-year-old store offers people the opportunity to paint pottery, such as cups, vases, bowls and even lamps that the store will light.
“Before all this happened, we had all kinds of parties, wedding showers, walk-in weddings, and we could do whatever we wanted. Then with the virus, we had to disinfect. It affected the business to a large extent. But we were We started using these kits in May for emergencies. Then in the summer, we started some in-store courses,” Valente said. “But we thought these courses were like Russian roulette and stopped them. But these kits are a good thing for everyone and they are very popular. They are very cool.”
People can choose from a variety of items, including figurines, decorations, piggy banks, various tableware and vases. These kits cost $15 and come with five bottles of paint, enough for two. Once completed, the store will fire them. Since then, the Valentes have expanded their kit products to include mosaics, which include a form, small pieces of glass, and require grouting to fix them.
Nowadays, the whole family has bought a toolkit, or sometimes one person comes to find something to do, because they are going crazy and just want to be creative.
The focus of her business is to give people—many of whom have never painted before—the opportunity to draw Hiegl’s drawings on an elongated canvas. In the past, groups of children or adults gathered in the classroom. However, once Hiegl is closed, she mainly provides children with a button kit with a picture on which children can stick buttons, such as a tree, where the buttons are leaves.
A few months later, she added a step-by-step painting kit with stretched sketch canvas and paint, as well as a kit for painting wine bottles, special glass paint, and fairy light cork with batteries to light up the bottles Stuffed from inside.
In August, after obtaining a small business loan, Hiegl reopened a small internal course with no more than 8 people. She started the course from Thursday to Sunday.
“Usually no more than four people, they are a group of people. I have four tables, six feet apart,” she said. “They must register online in advance and they must wear masks.”
“I have a burlap wreath at Christmas, but now people are asking for more crafts,” she said with a smile. “I always try to come up with new ideas. And I still have only 25% capacity. I hope there are more people in the class, but…”
Kate Fryer, owner of Ballston Spa’s A Bead Just So, can’t wait to be told that she must close in March. She began to provide tool kits.
“This is a new adventure,” she said. “I have designed three patterns to match the beads, so I took photos of the finished products and posted them on the Internet.”
The response was very good, and she began to design more, such as bracelets, necklaces, anklets, jewelry, bookmarks and pins. Now she has 25 patterns and “a lot of new children’s suits”. All of them come with beads, all necessary materials and step-by-step instructions. Special flat nose pliers need to be purchased separately. Recently, Fryer started a YouTube tutorial introducing basic project-specific beadwork.
The provided kit is a far cry from the typical kit. As one of the few bead shops in the capital region, she offers thousands of different kinds of beads, including Japanese seed beads, natural stones, lattice glass and Chinese crystals, as well as all fixtures, tools and gifts for discovering and making jewelry like Soap is like candles, and she said her store is more like “a small gift boutique.”
It has always been a mecca for bead lovers, who can also take part in a large number of in-store courses, repair jewelry or just stop to make their own pieces. There is no such course now, and there can only be five people in the store at a time.
Fryer remains optimistic and continues to write new models for her toolkits, which she said can be shipped, delivered by the roadside, or picked up. Check www.abeadjustso.com or call 518 309-4070.
However, knitters and crochet knitters have been at the forefront these days because they are always looking for another item. This is one of the reasons why Nancy Cobb, one of the six owners of the Altamont spinning room, should not worry too much.
“Tuesday and Sunday, we are still doing social weaving on Zoom, with 5 to 20 people showing up,” Cobb said. “We also have an online learning group that is divided by topic on Zoom every month. We will start from February 7th and have group meetings from 1pm to 3pm. We have a sweater Knit A-Long on Zoom. We know the designer and know that the pattern is a successful pattern, and it is well written and tested. It has been completed countless times. All of this adds to the social connection.”
(The pattern of the sweater can be purchased on the fiber art social network www.Ravely.com. The Love Note sweater is available in 14 sizes.)
She said that this included a virtual fiber tour/show, which inspired the store to open an e-commerce website, which “is a real fulcrum.” In addition, yarn companies, especially Berroco Yarns in Rhode Island, began to provide a free model and provided information on the yarns used in this store and other yarn stores (such as Common Thread in Saratoga Springs) on the website. Line recommendations.
“They are really positive. This is new to them and the key to their retention of employees. We order and they ship. This is a win-win situation,” she said.
At the beginning of June, the store opened for a limited number of customers and found that although the number of people in the store has decreased every time, many of them are new faces.
“If you watch TV frantically at home, you’d better do something with your hands,” Cobb said.