Saying Good-bye to Old Friends

Has it really been almost two months since I've written a blog post?  Incredible!  Where on earth does time go?  I've been extremely busy during that time with the day job and getting ready for and attending craft shows.  In some of my, evidently, weaker moments, I committed myself to two shows the end of September and first of October which were just one week apart and again in November to two shows just one week apart.  This weekend was the last of the four shows and I'm breathing a sigh of relief.  I made it!  And I would have to say that all four shows were successful shows in their own fashion; some with sales and some with sales and networking with other artists.

Normally, my floral work sells well at both the fall and the Christmas shows.  My jewelry, while much admired, does not sell as well in my area because of its price.  Occasionally, I will sell a piece or two to someone who recognizes its artistic quality and is willing to pay for it.  Those sales keep me going as an artist.  So, I continue to bring my bead work for display at craft shows, hoping for that one buyer who will toss a scrap of appreciation to my artistic soul.  This last show I received more than scraps.  I practically got the whole loaf of bread!  This was the first show I have done in the last 11 years where my jewelry sales made up the majority of my total sales!  It was manna from heaven and bittersweet at the same time.  Because my bead weaving does not move very fast, I've carried some of my pieces to many, many shows.  So when they finally sell, it's like saying good-bye to old friends.  I'm pretty sure they all went to nice new homes, though, where they will be appreciated.  And next up for me, in two weeks, is an honest to goodness art show where I will display my bead weaving.  I am so excited to be doing a show where I know there will be no products mass produced in China or anywhere else and passed off as handmade.  I am also excited to be doing a show where my work is considered to be art, at least  by the organizers.  Will it be feast or famine?  I'm hoping to come home soul full.

A few of my old friends who went to new homes.

New Season, New Style

My first craft show is only four weeks away and the second just four days after that!  I have been busy every weekend getting inventory ready, but today I decided to take a break and set up my new jewelry display to make sure it is all going to come together as I want.  I then took pictures to take with me to my shows so I won't forget how I did it!  It fits into an 8 foot by 4 foot area so should work for any show I do and leaves sufficient room for my floral display in the other half of my spaces (I hope!).  Please disregard all the clutter in the background.  lol  This is my floral workroom.  My bead room isn't big enough to set up like this.

I have done away with the grid wall and gone strictly to a tabletop set up.  Early this summer, I blogged about finding display pieces at a yard sale and they are what inspired me to try this new set up.   The two pieces I found were not enough to house all my inventory, so my wonderful SO crafted a third, larger, case for me.  It turned out beautifully!  He is so talented.  In fact, right now, he is on the back patio painting and reworking the shelves for the new floral display shelving I picked up at a yard sale two weeks ago for free.   :-D   I think I will find another piece of crushed velour for the small table so both match and I need to find a couple more lights to clamp on to the smaller display cases, but overall it is a done deal and I like it!!  I would love to hear what you think.

Change of Pace

The end of September is just not that far away.  I have two fall craft shows back to back coming up.  The first is Cider Days,  the last weekend in September and the next is Pumpkin Patch, the first weekend in October.  It will be virtually impossible to replace inventory between the two shows (and I do hope that will be a necessity!), so I'm working furiously to get enough made up to cover four days.  My beadweaving and jewelry designs are something I work on all year around, but my floral designs are much more seasonal.

I absolutely love creating fall florals.  It has to be my favorite season.  Fall colors are so rich, so glorious.  There's nothing timid about the brilliant rusts, golds, crimsons and purples.  Here's a few of my favorite designs I've gotten made up so far.

I think this is one of the best antler wreaths I've ever made.

Found this sunflower vase at a yard sale.

Isn't this pumpkin vase great?!  Another yard sale find.

I love to work with grapes and this old wine gift box said "Take me home"!

My favorite!  This used to be a two-tiered plate holder.

First Fall Fair

Only signed on for three arts and crafts fairs this fall and the first of them was Pumpkin Patch, Oct. 2 and 3 in a town just 40 miles from me. It has been a good show for me in the past and in spite of the current economy, it didn't disappoint this year either. We set up early Friday morning, starting a little before 6:00 a.m., sell from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. on Friday, then back again from 9:00a.m. until 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. It's a lot of hours but the schedule seems to catch just about anyone who would want to attend at some time during the two days.

The site for the show is the county fair grounds and Steve and I always set up in one of the out buildings. The building is used for livestock during the fair, so only has solid wall halfway up, but has a roof and a paved pathway down the center of each aisle. It can be chilly, but if you come prepared, it's not a bad space to set up. We hang tarps and put down ground cloth to help cut down wind and dust. Thank goodness we do, because Friday the winds were horrible. We had 30 to 40 mph winds all day long! My display stayed pretty secure but we didn't get the placement of the tarp quite right on Steve's side and he lost several framed photos to the wind gusts.

Over the two days I sold probably three fourths of my floral items which was excellent since they were all fall pieces and I probably won't take much in the way of fall arrangements to my next shows. But the most exciting sale was the sale of my turquoise necklace, Shades of the Southwest. I rarely sell any pieces locally in the above $50.00 range so when my most expensive piece is purchased it's truely a red letter day! And the same purchaser bought beadwoven earrings to match. Several beadwoven bracelets, a couple more necklaces and quite a few earrings went home with new owners, too. It was so strange that we had a larger crowd on Saturday but I had larger sales on Friday. Guess they had to be serious buyers to brave that ghastly wind!!

First Show of the Year

For several years now, I've started my craft show year with a two day fair called the Tulip Festival. It's the only outdoor show that I do and that's because they provide space in two large circus style tents so exposure to the weather is minimal. Rain and wind are not kind to my craft and Kansas springtime weather can have plenty of both. This year was no exception. Saturday dawned cloudy and damp keeping traffic to only a few brave souls. The sun finally made an appearance after lunch and brought the crowd with it, but it was too little, too late to make for a very profitable day. It's also rained in the area for most of the preceding week so even in the tents, the ground was wet and muddy. Sunday remained cloudy and the wind decided to get in the act too. Here it was the middle of April and a lot of us were running around in winter jackets! Sunday has traditionally been the slower of the two days and again, no surprises there. It wound up that I only sold about a third of what I did last year. I don't know if it was the weather, the economy, a combination of both, or if I just didn't have what the buyers were looking for this year. Craft shows can be so iffy, but I do enjoy interacting with customers and the other vendors.
I decided to take some shots of my set up this weekend. Unfortuneately, craft show spaces are never the same. They're never the same length and width. Sometimes you get lucky and snag a corner or an end space, enabling you to use both sides of a gridwall. Sometimes you get wedged into a center space. A lot of the time you don't know your location until you get there. My space set up has been a continual evolution for years now. I keep trying to make it better, more inviting, more efficient. A couple years back I happened on an old bakery rack at a yard sale and now use it to display floral arrangements. Since it has four sides, it took the place of two shelving units. My jewelry display has grown from laying things on tables to hanging them with corsage pins from a foamcore board to hanging them by handmade hang tags on gridwall. Until this show, I also used collapsible shelving for bracelets and earrings. I decided to try something different with the gridwall and ordered bracelet bars, waterfall hooks and shelves that all hang from the gridwall. I rather like the way that part of the display turned out. Hopefully, next time I will remember to purchase two spaces instead of just one and will be able to spread out my floral work a bit more. I like to create a shop-like atmosphere in my space but this time I made a mistake on my application and had to crowd things more than I like. Thank goodness, my partner didn't need all of his space and gave me about four feet of craft show real estate.
My goal is to get my display to the point where no matter what the configuration of the space, set up will be standardized. And of course, to always have in stock whatever it is the consumer is wanting on that particular day.

That Other Thing I Do

If you are familiar with my blog and my Etsy shop, you may have wondered why it's "beads" and "blooms". Most of my blogging is about my beadweaving and my Etsy shop currently only features jewelry. But before I discovered this wonderful cyber world, I sold my creations primarily at craft shows. Floral design was actually my original moneymaker and the jewelry kind of just happened. And the more I made of each, the more I knew I didn't really want to give either one up. So, I became Beads and Blooms.
Being a very small - as in one woman - business, I've found that selling floral arrangements and wreaths on the internet is really more than I want to handle. I did sell a wreath on Etsy shortly after I started my shop, but because I wasn't prepared to buy in quantity, finding suitable packaging that didn't cost an arm and a leg was a nightmare. What was I thinking? How was I going to pack and ship something more fragile? So I decided to just sell my jewelry creations on line and sell both at craft fairs.
My first craft show of 2009 is this weekend and I have been busy making up wreaths and arrangements as well as adding to my jewelry inventory. Spring shows are always a bit iffy. One never knows what the weather is going to be like or whether fair goers are going to be in a buying mood. Traditionally, I do better in the fall when folks have gift-giving on their minds. In fact, the only reason I still do this particular show is because I can set up in a huge tent which helps with the weather worries and it attracts a large crowd over a two day period. Some years I sell the heck out of jewelry and some years the florals move better, but it does seem that people buy at this show. This year, the weather is not sounding too promising for sunshine and the economy could certainly be better, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and these things aren't going to sell hanging in my basement!

Another Episode in My Craft Show Sagas

I started writing this post this morning while sitting in front of my SO's new wood burning stove. It was a cold morning and so nice to sit and watch the flames and let my thoughts drift while I sipped my Sunday morning coffee. Guess that was the problem, my thoughts were drifting and I never got around to actually writing. So now, we're back at my house and I'm on the pc in my basement with fewer distractions.

It's the day after a craft show and I'm tired and not wanting to do much in the way of physical activity. Setting up and breaking down a craft show take a lot out of me anymore. Gridwall gets heavier with age. My age, not the gridwall's. The show we did was a large one and one that has been around for 28 years. We haven't done it since their 25th and with the economy, etc. wasn't sure how it would go. The show is spread out in three buildings; a junior high school, elementary school and church basement. We were in a classroom in the elementary school at the end of a hallway, so I was also concerned about traffic. Would people come all the way to the end of the hall? The classroom set up was great though. Because it was just Steve and me assigned to the room, we could set it up as we saw fit. No 10 x 10 box to fit into. So I tried to arrange the space kind of like a gift shop and it worked very well. People were able to look in all three areas, florals, jewelry and photography without bumping into each other. Even when people stopped to visit in the middle, there was still ample room to move around them. Think we will look into this kind of arrangement again for next year. As it turned out, the show went well. We had good traffic and I exceeded my projected sales for the day. Steve sold quite a bit too and got some custom orders so I quess we'd have to rate the day a success.

It was not a day without mishaps however, but I guess that's what keeps things "interesting". With all that room you wouldn't think there would be a problem with people knocking things over, right? Wrong. Not once, but twice I had to rescue items from the floor. The first time was purely accident. A lady brushed against a shelving unit with a heavy bag and knocked over my bracelet display. She was so embarrassed, but ironically was heading to the checkout table to purchase a bracelet when the accident occurred. The second time was a bratty toddler who ran into the room and immediately made a beeline to hide behind my gridwall with my jewelry hung on it. When her mother told her to come out she started to pull a tantrum and I was afraid she was going to push the gridwall over. I rushed to hold on to the gridwall while her mother tried to pry her little fingers off it and in getting her out from behind the grid, she managed to knock down another shelving unit with earrings. I love children, but at craft shows they should not be allowed to run rampant. The mother did not even bother to apologize for the mess!

Then there were those people who you would like to give a piece of your mind but can't because, after all, the customer is always right. One woman "complimented" my work by saying that my prices were almost as good as Walmart's. And of course so many people can tell you how you could have designed something better or want you to tell them how you designed something so they can go home and do it themselves. Or they'd buy that particular item from you if only you had made it up with this color or such and such stone. But the one that really got me yesterday was a lady who was viewing my fall antler wreaths. These wreaths are very much one of a kind with deer shed antlers, pheasant or turkey feathers, silk leaves and flowers, berries, pinecones, etc. This woman informed her friend that she could make one just as well. All she had to do was go to Hobby Lobby, buy a grapevine wreath and slap some leaves on it. LOL There's always an expert in the crowd.

Hooray for Friday!

Can't believe I haven't blogged anything since the end of September! It's true that time flies faster the older you get. The last time I blogged I was riding high on having the best show of my life. Since then, I have had what could be the second worst show of my life. The worst one was two days, this one was only one day. It was in a large city, in a supposedly well to do neighborhood, the environment was outstanding, the promotors lovely people. But there was no crowd and no one spending money. It's discouraging to do all that work and wind up going in the hole. Oh well, when you do craft shows for any length of time, you learn that you will have bad ones. Those are the ones you think twice about doing again.

I've got two more shows to do this season, both will feature my Christmas/Holiday creations. That's what I've been busy working on since the middle of October and I only have two more weekends before the first of those shows. I love making Christmas wreaths and tried a new angle this year. I have put some on tabletop easels. We'll see how they sell.

Anway, Friday is here. The drudgery of the week almost over. It's time to get in the creative zone.

Crazy Good

Just finished up a two day craft show. Day one, we set up starting at 6:00 a.m. and the day ended at 8:00 p.m. Day two was from 9:00 to 4:00 and we were loaded up and on the way home by 5:00 p.m. I am totally exhausted, my feet are killing me, I have bruises that I have no idea how I got and I am thoroughly thrilled. This was, hands down, the best show I have ever done. In the first day I sold as much as I normally sell in two days and the second day I made half of the first day's sales. I really thought I had ample inventory made up and would probably have quite a bit left to take to my next show in 3 weeks, but boy was I wrong. I think I started with 26 wreaths and 7 tote boxes full of table arrangements, plus I had at least half a dozen arrangements too big to put into totes. I packed up 8 wreaths and 3 tote boxes to bring back home. As for jewelry, I sold what I normally do as far as necklaces and bracelets, but easily a third of my earring supply is gone, where I usually just sell a few pair to go with whatever necklace or bracelet is sold. I am still in shock from the extent of my sales and wondering how I'm going to get enough inventory built back up for the next show. I've always joked about how it would be too bad if I didn't have anything to pack up when a show was over and today I almost found out what that would be like! I know I'm going to get very little sympathy over this and that's okay cause I'm going to be crying (happy tears) all the way to the bank!!