A little over a month ago I saw a sign near my house adverstising a Craft Fair at a local elementary school. Apparently, in my area there are a whole batch of PTO sponsored craft fairs being run as fundraisers for the schools. The vendors pay an "booth" fee and that money goes to support the PTO. I've been looking for an opportunity try out my creations on the public, so I contacted the school and they still needed vendors! Since then, every weekend and nights after work I've been frantically painting, sanding, and creating all the projects I've gatherd the materials for, but hadn't started yet.
On Saturday the day I've been preparing for for over a month finally arrived! The morning of the fair was a little rocky as a few "not ideal" situations cropped up. First, I forgot all the boxes I was planning to pack things into and transport them to the school at work the night before. So, things were kind of hodge-podged into the back of the truck and I hope-hope-hoped it didn't rain on the way to the fair.
Luckily the school was only about a mile and a half down the road and it didn't rain. However, when I got to the school gym and finally located the person who was going to assign me to my booth space I was met by an unpleasant surprise. I knew my booth size was 8x5, and I had requested wall space to lean some ladders against to display my signs (my husand's genius idea). I had "practiced" my booth in the basement by taping off the space. So, going in, I thought I had a good idea of how I was going to set up. The unpleasant surprise was....my booth was not five feet deep and eight feet wide as I had envisioned. Instead, it was a long skinny column of five feet wide and eight feet deep! The lighting wasn't good in the gym, but you can see in this picture how cramped up everything was.
After a lot of juggling (and an epoisode involving a falling sign, a ladder, and a clock knocked off the wall) I got everything set up as well as I could. This was the first time this particular school had a craft fair, so it wasn't well attended overall. However, I did sell enough of my wares (mostly to my fabulous friends) to at least break even on the booth space. I had so many of my friends visit me and support me that the lady in the booth next to me commented on it! Thank you to everyone who took the time to come see me and support me in my first effort
Although the fair overall wasn't very successful, I did make contact with a woman who has a small, part-time shop in a neighboring town. She invited me to bring my stuff there for the upcoming weekends because she will be open for Mother's Day shopping. I'll be headed to her shop, Greystone Gallery, after work tomorrow to drop off everything that didn't sell at the fair. I'll post pictures of her after I've visted it. Wish me luck!
