Craft Fair Mania

Whew, I'm back and still alive! This weekend was insane--even more so than expected. I drove up to my mom's house on Friday to start prepping for the show and discovered that she had found out about a 4 day holiday boutique and talked to the owner about putting my cards in it. So we went over there to show her my cards and she accepted them! That meant that Friday night was spent not only prepping for the show but also tagging cards per the boutique's specifications.

I got 3 hours of sleep before rolling out of bed and hitting the road. We hit up Starbuck's (tea and breakfast), Joanne's (last minute jump rings), my grandmother's house (big bag o' change), and the boutique (to drop off cards) before finally arriving at the church just a half hour before the show was supposed to start! Ek! We managed to do the fastest set-up I have ever seen and I managed to finish the cell phone dangles and bookmarks with the emergency jump rings. Thankfully, we had put all the stock into the appropriate baskets the night before so all we had to do was throw the tablecloth down and layout the stock. : )

The show itself went well, we had a fair amount of traffic although all the vendors were complaining that sales were slow. I wasn't too upset as I moved more at the show than I have in my entire time on etsy. : D

Lessons learned:
*Having posted prices scares away looky-loos. I am undecided as to whether this is good or bad.
*Having two people is essential if you want to shop, pee, or eat.
*Counting change is over-rated. We simply took all change out of my grandma's bag and threw any coins we received in there. We came out 75 cents off.
*The little cards I have with my dragonlings giving their names and interests are what sell them.
*People much prefer the note cards to my "thank you" cards.

Fun story:
A gentleman who bought a single teeny-tiny card as a gift tag for his mom's gift looked through them all and finally selected one with a present on it saying "Well, that's what I'm giving her." : )

I passed out some business cards, so hopefully both etsy and I will see some good traffic from it.

Several of my sets of note cards were broken up by people buying only one or two cards from the sets. I have removed those sets from my etsy shop and will be re-listing the remaining cards as singles. This will give people more flexibility in what they buy as well as the ability to mix and match. I think that in the future, I will list my cards mostly as singles, with a few sets available for gifts.

On the school front, this is the beginning of the end. I have a final paper due tomorrow, a final on Wednesday, and two finals next Tuesday, which means (sadly) that school will be my primary focus for the next week or so. I will still try to get something listed each day, however, expect a small boom in listings once school is finally over.

Pictures of the set up for the craft fair. We used my mom's tablecloth and basket collection and lovely napkins that my husband and I received as a wedding gift. Total cost for displays, $0. : )