Prairie Grove Clothesline Fair offers their jewelry, more

Two young entrepreneurs from Prairie Grove are moving their vendor booth from the local farmers market on Saturdays to offer their handmade jewelry at the Clothesline Fair this weekend.

Sydney Ruland and Autumn Benedict are Prairie Grove High School graduates and seniors at the University of Arkansas. Ruland is majoring in interior design, and Benedict is juggling a triple major in psychology, sociology and criminology. She’s interested in working with law enforcement agencies as a profiler.

Their business, called Ivy Clay Designs, started as a personal project for Ruland. She purchased the start-up materials to see if she would like making clay earrings for herself. Benedict asked if she would like some help, and they decided to form a partnership about 18 months ago.

Now, their products include clay earrings, metal earrings and ring dishes and acrylic products.

In making clay earrings, Ruland says the two purchase the polymer clay, mix their own colors and then roll out the clay before creating different shaped earrings. The earrings are baked, finished with a glaze and then placed on cards to purchase. Their apartment serves as their production site.

“It’s honestly calming,” Ruland says. “It’s really fun to do.”

“It’s nice to de-stress,” Benedict adds.

Benedict says the items are fairly inexpensive to make but are expensive to buy in most stores.

“We’re selling them for more decent prices than other places,” Benedict says.

Their parents help on Saturdays when their daughters have to work at their regular-paying jobs. Ruland works for Magnolia Coffee and Bakery, and Benedict works at Gusanos, a pizza restaurant in Fayetteville. Proceeds from the booth provide extra spending money. Ruland is saving her money for a study abroad program in interior design in Rome.

Most of their sales have been at the farmers market, but Ivy Clay Designs also has an Etsy site and an Instagram account in addition to debuting at this year’s Clothesline Fair.

Canceled last year because of covid-19 concerns, the 70-year-old Clothesline Fair returns to Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park this weekend thanks to the efforts of the Prairie Grove Lions Club. Casey Copeland, club president, says the organization is calling it the 2021 Clothesline Fair. The club hosted the 68th annual fair in 2019, so this would be number 70 had the pandemic not interrupted the count.

This year, for the first time, the Lions Club is sponsoring the arts and crafts vendors, instead of the Arts Center of the Ozarks, and Copeland has coordinated that effort. The fair has 105 vendors who have registered for the weekend, Copeland says, with many returning vendors and a lot of new vendors. The Lions Club already organized food vendors and the square dance portion of the Clothesline Fair.

The fair opens at 8 a.m. today for arts and crafts shoppers. The Clothesline Parade, sponsored by Prairie Grove Chamber of Commerce, will start at 9 a.m. Saturday at the middle school. From the middle school, the parade travels along Mock Street onto Buchanan Street and then ends just beyond the state park entrances.