Today, we’ll be kicking off our annual clearance sale at the Bargain Hunting event in Portland! We’re bringing freshly discontinued designs, one-of-a-kind products, seconds that didn’t make the cut, the last of our fused glass jewelry, and a whole mess of other things. We’re planning to price everything at least 50% off, and then slash prices in half again (or more!) during the last hour of the sale.

Lots of other local shops and designers will be selling sweet deals as well, and you can grab a cocktail and some pizza while you’re shopping.

Starting tomorrow, Feb., 7th, I’ll be listing the remainders of our clearance items online, so check back here or our Etsy shop if you can’t make it to the event.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still reeling from the holiday madness that struck our business and household this winter. My list of blog posts and updates to share keeps getting longer, and I just couldn’t wait any longer to share our biggest news ever: we’re having a baby! In case you didn’t know, Bread and Badger is simply the two-person team of my husband and myself (with the help of a regular independent contractor and volunteer friends when things get really busy). Sean and I have been married for 7 years, and we’ve been business partners for 2 (after B&B became too big for me to handle alone) and this will be our first child.

I’m four months along (approaching 16 weeks!) and our little bundle is due at the end of June. I thought we’d be able to breeze through the holidays since we were really well-stocked, and I’d been feeling great at the beginning of the pregnancy. Of course, life and biology are unpredictable, and we found that we were quite unprepared for the influx of orders we were receiving, plus my all-day “morning” sickness and fatigue. It’s been a rough few months, but things seem to be settling down as I continue to expand.

In addition to our new addition, we’re also remodeling our extremely outdated kitchen, which we’ve been planning to do since we bought our house a year ago. What does this mean for Bread and Badger? Well, it means we’re getting a bit of a slow start on the year because of our chaotic home/studio situation, but we’re going to be so massively pumped for the end of the spring!

We won’t be able to take custom orders anymore, since they are extremely time-consuming, and time is becoming a more precious commodity each day. We will be trying out a new concept of releasing a number of limited edition design sets throughout the year, which I’m currently working on. More designs = More exciting gift ideas! If you guys like the limited edition designs as much as I think you will, then we’ll keep up the practice so we have new glassware at least every few months. I don’t think we’ll be adding any new glassware products this year, but we will be retiring a number of less popular designs so we can always have room for exciting new things. The big clearance sale will take place in Portland on Feb. 6th at Bargain Hunting 101 and continue online afterward.

I’m still deciding if we’ll close the shop for maternity leave during the summer, or if we’ll try to get out a few orders every week anyway. I’m constantly thankful that Sean and I are able to work from home, so this new baby transition should be pretty smooth for everyone. I can’t tell you how happy we are to be able to live out our dream like this, and it’s all because of the support of fabulous people like you!! We really have the best customers any shop could wish for. Thank you for making it all possible, and lots of love to you and yours this year!

We will be here! Not only is it your last chance to buy holiday gifts from us (since online orders placed after Dec. 10th are not guaranteed to arrive by Christmas Eve), but it’s also a super fun local event with lots to do. Please note

Come shop from over 120 handmade vendors, and be one of the first 100 shoppers in line to get special swag bags each day. We’ll have a great assortment of glassware for sale, plus recycled glass soap dispensers and oil bottles, fused glass jewelry, and a bunch of sandblasted ceramic mugs and art tiles (these sell fast, so arrive early if you want a mug!).

This summer, I had the pleasure of vending next to the lovely ladies of This Charming Candy, who make stellar lollipops in great modern flavors like salted caramel, vanilla cardamom, and honey jasmine. They’ve got great Twilight-inspired gift sets, which I couldn’t resist even though I’m not a big Twilight fan. Check them out, along with all the other handmade goodness this weekend!

Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
December 4 &5
11am-5pm both days

We have reclaimed ceramic mugs, unique drinking glasses, shot glasses, and one-of-a-kind glass vases for sale through Trillium Artisans. Check out some of the other artisans’ work in their Etsy shop.

Here’s a little secret: If you place an order on our website or Etsy shop and your shipping address is in Oregon, we’ll include a postcard with your order which has a 20% off coupon to Trillium Artisans (good until Dec. 23rd on in-store purchases), while our supply lasts. Buy local, buy handmade, and support sustainable artists!

Trillium Artisans
9119 SE Foster Road
Portland, OR 97266
503.775.7993
Open Tuesday – Friday, 10 am – 6 pm

Last year, I contributed a number of photos to Garth Johnson‘s book, 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse. This book is one of my all-time favorite coffeetable books, since it’s simply overflowing with crafty projects that reuse and repurpose materials into something better.

Starting tomorrow, an art gallery show will be on display in West Virginia, featuring art by contributors to the book. I sent a number of etched glasses, a hand-engraved blue glass vase with a jellyfish on it, and one of our new sandblasted ceramic art tiles.

The show is up until Nov. 7th at the historic gallery at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV.

A while ago, I became fascinated with the idea of carving my drawings onto materials other than glass. There’s a store here in Portland called SCRAP, which collects things that can be used by teachers and artists who can’t spend a lot of money on supplies. There are bins full of paper (sometimes whole reams which have printing on one side, but could still be used on the other), plastic film canisters, colored markers, ceramic tiles, and all kinds of treasures which are just waiting to become a really fun craft project.

I discovered small granite samples (from a kitchen countertop or maybe a flooring company) that weren’t really useful for much, but came in all kinds of interesting colors and patterns. I wanted to draw on them with my drill and diamond burrs, and turn the little stone samples into something more artistic. I wound up gluing some rubber “cork” to the backs of a few granite tiles, and they sat in a closet for many months while I focused on other things.

Fast forward to today: Trillium Artisans organization has been invited to submit 2d artwork to the 100th Monkey Studio to showcase our artists for the month of October. Since I don’t normally work in 2 dimensions, I was having trouble thinking of a way to participate until I remembered these little granite samples. I also found a box of glazed ceramic tiles which we thought we’d one day turn into coasters, and I knew that I wanted to submit these for the show.

Come by the 100th Monkey Studio for the First Friday opening reception on October 1st, from 6-9pm. Lots of other art by Trillium Artisans made from recycled and reclaimed materials will be on display and up for sale!

Only 5 pieces were entered, but we still have a whole bunch of ceramic tiles, so I’ve been listing them in our Etsy shop. They’re more expensive than our other housewares because these tiles take more than 4 times as long to sandblast than our regular glassware. That’s a lot of time spent on each piece, and a lot of grit that gets used up! Luckily, most of our grit is reusable, but it’s a lot of work to put it back into our system. My favorite thing about these colorful tiles is that they can hang on a wall like a real piece of art, or you can use them as coasters because I put rubber feet on the backs! What’s not to love about versatile art?

Workshop 6: The Video

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Isaac

This workshop focuses on wholesale pricing, line sheets, writing press releases, and other steps to increasing business at this level. Amanda Siska of Bread and Badger leads the course and isolates areas in which you can improve in expanding your business beyond the digital world.

Amanda Siska has been selling her wares since 2005 and started Bread and Badger in 2006. She and her husband Sean now work on the business full time. For more about Amanda and Bread and Badger, read her Instructor Profile or visit her website. You can also read the follow-up article to her workshop, Taking Your Business to the Next Level.

If you want to download the video and watch it at your leisure or take it with you on a mobile device, visit the video page and right click on the link in the lower right corner.

via Workshop 6: The Video | I Heart Art: Portland.

Summit of Awesome 2010 from Hello Craft on Vimeo.

This video brought back a flood of great memories from my time at the Summit. Three whole days of crafting, talking, learning and rubbing elbows with crafty celebrities (plus the Show of Awesome where I got to sell stuff at the Doug Fir Lounge)! Where will the Summit be next year? Will you be there?

Come see us in San Fransisco this weekend for Renegade Craft Fair!

We’ll be at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion (it’s all the way in the back of the Fort Mason Center) from 11am-7pm on Saturday and Sunday, July 31st-Aug. 1st. We’ll have one-of-a-kind mustache mugs, assorted designs of our popular pint glasses, plus new juice glasses, recycled glass oil & vinegar bottles, soap dispensers and more!

Here are the directions from their website:

The entrance for Fort Mason is located at the intersection of Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St. in the Marina district.