Keeping cool even when your swingouts are on fire.
So this all started with a wooden hand fan I got at Animal Kingdom while working for Disney World. The poor thing was just not made to withstand swing dancers. At first it was just a few tines coming loose but then the hinge pin broke too. During this slow demise were the major Albuquerque Swing Dance events, 505 Stomp and ABQLX. For non swing dancers, they have really cool event flyers that get printed and sent around a few months before the event. People often used them as temporary fans and I was like, 'Hey! I could make fans out of those!" and so I tried it. It was one hot mess of ribbons and glue and flyers. So I put the thing aside for a year or so. This march my mother got me a ducktape crafts book for my birthday and I realized, 1) I didn't own ANY ducktape (GASP!! OMG NOO!!!) and 2) OMG THAT WOULD WORK SO GREAT TO FIX THE FANS!!!
So I bought some supplies and fixed those puppies up! They are very pretty and somewhat useful but honestly I would only recommend them as a decorative, special occasions fan. The empty spaces between each tine of flyer let too much air pass to make them really efficient for dancing. So, as I wanted a replacement for my wooden fan I looked up fabric fan tutorials and I found one that seemed fairly reasonable and I tried that. It works and it looks cool except it is partially naked in back and I didn't like how it looked. So I took a deep breath and jumped off the grid and just stuck the tines between the fabric and waited for the glue to dry. And they worked AWESOME!!! After a little tinkering with size and measurements I have my own unique designs and some wicked fans. So that, little ducklings, is how SwingGene's Folding Hand Fans was born.
I have some ambitious goals for the future on how to really customize, embellish, and trick out the fans. For now though I just really want to make each customer the perfect custom fan. There are so many cool designs and patterns I feel like everyone should have the fan that they dream about.
I recently got to sell at an amazing fundraiser for Enlace Comunitario (http://www.enlacenm.org/) and one of my fans was featured in the menopause gift basket. This was a really great event and I'm glad that my fans could help raise some money for them.