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Sunday, May 8, 2011

Our First Craft Fair!


Whew! It's over, now I have a sense of peace in my heart again. Sarah and I finished our very first craft fair yesterday. We had tons of fun and learned quite a bit. I thought I would share some pictures of our booth and a little bit of what our Friday and Saturday was like.

I don't know about where you're from but around here the Fall craft fair is the big one. It gets so crowded at all the venues that you basically have to stay in line to get from booth to booth. Considering that I didn't even know we had a craft fair in the Spring until Sarah asked me if I wanted to apply, I assumed it wouldn't be as busy. I assumed correctly. It was busy enough but not like we had hoped. I'm happy to say that we came out on top and we have enough inventory left to get us started for the Fall if we decide to go for it. 

Sarah and I are both introverted so we aren't the type of crafters that finagled people into our booth. I hate being guilted into looking at items I'm not interested in. I'm not sure what the common courtesy is but I'm sure not a fan of being trapped into a conversation with someone. Instead we stayed out on the edges of our booth and greeted everyone who did come in to look. We offered assistance when needed and stayed out of the way the rest of the time. When I shop, I like to be left alone to carefully consider my purchases so that's what we tried to do for our customers.

I have a confession to make, we never did a practice set up for our booth. We're both procrastinators as I'm sure I've mentioned before in previous posts. I'll stop procrastinating when procrastination stops working for me! We even had to have Sarah's husband Curtis run to get another table cloth for our back table at the literal last minute. He arrived with it as the doors opened and we had it on the table in two seconds and ready to go.


This is what our booth looked like the first day.


My friend Kim who works at a Salon let me borrow a few of their practice heads to display headbands on. Our metal headbands were displayed on a multiple picture frame that I spray painted blue and removed the glass and backing from. 

Aren't these flower clips adorable? They're so fun because you can wear them in your hair, on your shirt, on your shoes, on your bag, the possibilities are endless! Check Sarah's etsy out if you're interested in these little lovelies.




I brought this lovely lady the second day of the fair after we realized that people weren't really noticing Sarah's teething necklaces. I think she wore it well, don't you?

We did some rearranging on Saturday. I brought one more practice head in to display one of my bloom headbands on. What do you guys think of using heads for display? Creepy? Cute? A good idea so people see how the headbands are worn? Personally, I like them.













Here are a couple of my clutches. I'll be adding a few to my shop in the next couple of weeks.

Here's a couple more..

I thought this shadow box that I found at goodwill would be a cute display for my earrings. The earrings were pretty popular. I'll also be adding some of these to the shop.

We talked with a lot of lovely people who genuinely enjoyed our items as well as our booth as a whole. Our sweet friends came by to visit with us and purchase items, some even came both days. My friends are such a blessing to my life! I'm sad that I was too tired to attend the girls' night they were having Saturday evening but I'm so glad I got to see them anyway! :) <3

All in all the past couple of days have been really fun, and I have to say, doing this craft fair was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done. 



Happy Mother's day to my fellow moms! 
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. 

<3 Mandy



7 comments:

  1. You are so creative and talented! I love the clutch!! Super cute!

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  2. i love it! I think it looked wonderful! & I also think {know} that I need a pair of those earrings!

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  3. Emma, You got it! If you can tell from these pics which pair you like let me know and I'll send them your way for free since you gave me that bunny pattern. Ok?! :)

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  4. You're the sweetest! like them ALL and would like the dark pink/fuchsia ones, or purple ones, or yellow ones! aah! lol I think I'll go with the off white ones if you have any left. that would probably go with more of my outfits since I'll probably NEVER want to take them off!

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  5. Mandy, looks great! Glad things went well for you. :) I'm participating in my first craft fair in October {2 weeks after we get married - yikes!}, so I'm always interested in other's experiences. Thanks for sharing!

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  6. everything looked great mandy! so glad it went well for you & you had fun!!

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  7. It looks great! Such cute things.

    xo,

    Sarah

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