TOWAMENCIN- Continuing an annual tradition, the International Friendship Committee (IFC) kicked off spring this weekend with their artsy craft show. Amidst the lingering winter weather, artist and vendors from all around made the trek to set up their booths in North Penn’s own cafeteria where lunch tables were traded out for colorful, creative displays. Preparation commenced Friday afternoon and the work rolled over to the following Saturday. By 9:30, the doors opened and volunteers and committee members were already two hours into the activity when the first attendees began slowly browsing the stands.
In addition to the fall show, the spring craft show is the IFC’s sole fund-raiser to send students abroad. And just like the fall show, the spring craft show brought back many of the same vendors and customers who have faithfully participated in this event.
Set up in the Senior Café, with a homey display of paper mâché animals, Linda and Jon Beazley have been participating in the craft show, “since the inception,” claimed Mrs. Beazley. “Since it started basically, we’ve been in the craft show. That makes twenty-five, maybe even twenty-six years now.”
Linda and her husband developed the hobby by chance. Having taught art to third and fourth graders for thirty-some years, Linda did various projects with her students, one of which was paper mâché. The realization that such a hobby could create profit though wasn’t uncovered until a friend basically told the Beazley’s to get them involved in a local craft show.
“We had no idea getting involved in this” Mr. Beazley stated. “We just had somebody that we knew who was doing some art, and she said ‘we are going to have a craft show. Do something.’ They needed participants and she knew Linda was an artist.”
“I told her I teach but I don’t make my own crafts, and she told me to just make something and come support the show” Mrs. Beazley recalled. “So I started to do paper mâché and I started with teddy bears. I made little teddy bears and cows. I hardly make those now, but those are the first two things that I made and that got me started.”
Since then, their collection has expanded from teddy bears to nearly fifty different animals. Linda designs all the pieces herself and makes the forms strictly with paper while Jon covers and casts them with brown paper toweling and wall paste. The figures are then painted in detail by Linda, and the whole process takes on average two to three hours. “So for two crafts people we have two jobs to do before one piece is ready,” they explained.
Jon added: “If it’s a new piece it takes a lot longer because we are playing around with how we want it to look.”
However, among the foxes, frogs, and fish, cats have proved a favorite among buyers. Yet despite the great variety among the pieces, they all have one underlying quality: a smile.
“The pieces do let you see into her mind,” Mr. Beazley shared, flashing his wife a smile. “Almost every animal smiles; every animal she makes is happy. Living with her I can tell you she’s a happy person, and you can see that in her work, and it just demonstrates how she goes and sees life really. She does the art as how she lives.”
There’s no doubt these two obviously find joy in their work and their dedication was evident as their pieces were proudly displayed among all the other vendors. And their quaint booth and charming personalities contributed to the craft fair atmosphere.
“It is such a great group of people. I mean, the people who put it on and put it together, they’re just like family, and we like all the things that are here so we feel very homey here” Mrs. Beazley said.
“It’s all the crafts people and the promoters,” added Mr. Beazley. “Sometimes you have promoters that really just use you to make their money, and sometimes they aren’t even there. But these people, it’s just a group working together, and it’s really nice.”
Mrs. Beazley continued: “I know what I’ve done here, and I know them, and it’s all just a real friendly environment. It’s such a great thing here, and it’s one of our better shows. We don’t do a lot of shows anymore, but this show is one we wouldn’t give up,” she admitted.
Another craft vendor, Tim Neal, is also a regular participant in the craft show. Every show his delicate and eccentric display of handcrafted wood pens is meticulously laid out across white clothed tables.
“I started making pens because my wife bought me a lathe for turning,” Mr. Neil explained, “and I hadn’t used it in a couple years when I saw in the newspaper that Wood Craft (which is a big wood working show) was turning pens for troops where people made pens and then sold them to send to the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The purpose was twofold: number one, to send the pens to the troops just to give them a little something they can enjoy and also to show people how to make pens.
So that’s how I learned how to make them, and I just fell in love with the hobby after doing that,” he concluded.
Ted and Bonnie Knauss, IFC chair members who organize the craft show, saw Tim Neal’s work and invited him to display his talent at our very own North Penn. Tim recounted that;
“I came to the craft show, and at that point I had just got into making crafts, and I liked what I saw here. [The Knauss’] were very selective on who they chose to display and the vendors they chose to invite so I really wanted to get into the show. Plus, it’s nice and close, I only have to travel twenty minutes. So I applied and showed my pens that I made to Ted and Bonnie and they really liked what I made and they invited me to the craft show.”
He continued: “Obviously the fall show, which is in November, is closer to the Christmas shopping season so it’s a lot busier than the spring show. But both shows are very enjoyable to do. I like doing it, I like having the volunteers. They help us move stuff in and out and that’s great. As long as North Penn continues to host the show, I’ll continue to do it.”
A few stalls down from Tim Neil’s display, a vendor new to the North Penn craft show was setup. Gail Warner had her decorative display set up mimicking the brilliant colors in Mr. Neil’s pens, except her trade is specialized in candles.
“Have you ever watched a candle burn? You see that small little flicker and a little stream of smoke that goes up, and well, that’s carbon. With my candles, you can enjoy candle light without destroying your house…” Mrs. Warner said in her opening as she intrigued all the costumers drawn to her beautiful booth.
Her simple shelves were evenly spaced with clear bottles containing flamboyant silk flowers and ultra pure oil – a smut-less, smokeless candle product – varying in all shapes and sizes. The display was divine, and Mrs. Gail Warner was constantly busy with the crowd of costumers surrounding her candles like bees attracted to flowers.
She’s been making her unique candles for eighteen years now; her whole trade motivated by her love for candle light, however, she realized that as she was burning candles in her house, the carbon waste was slowly destroying her house and creating filth. “I learned the hard way,” she said.
So, now, she promotes not only environmentally friendly candles that don’t emit carbon into the atmosphere, but she creates exquisite decorations that are beautiful and eye-catching whether they are lit or not.
All the way across the cafeteria, back in the cookie corner Eric Fausnacht was selling his craft: pillows.
“We had just introduced them last year, and we’ve been doing this about ten months now. We are in about two hundred stores now. We did a New York show, and the Philadelphia Flower Show, and things are selling!” Mr. Fausnacht proudly exclaimed.
Eric Fausnacht had originally sold his paintings of farm animals at the craft shows, but with slow business and the aspiration for more costumers, Mr. Fausnacht got to brainstorming:
“The artwork wasn’t selling as well so I had to come up with ideas of what else I could do within my line of farm animals” he said. “I wanted to do something that was just a little easier to buy; something people could give away as gifts.”
His brainstorming led to collaboration with Chris Kline who helped to create screens in which he started printing high contrast photos on cloth material. The whole process, from taking the photos to sending the prints through a heat sealer and then finally sewing the pillows together, “takes a while” in the words of Mr. Fausnacht. “We are a lot quicker at it now, but going through the whole process, it takes a while. But we really have fun with it”
By the end of the day, despite all the activity, North Penn’s cafeteria was transformed back to its original state: all evidence of the craft show gone.