Do You Attend Craft Fairs?

Happy Fall Y'all

It's a beautiful partly cloudy fall day here in the mid-west.  I'll take partly cloudy versus rain and mostly clouds.... any day.... just love to get the bits of sunSHINE!!!

A few weeks ago, I participated in my first craft fair!

If you go through my past blog posts, or get know me in person..... I would never admit that I am 'that' really positive person!  But I have spunk, I'm a realist, I try certain things over and over again, failure is not often in my vocabulary and I don't give up easily if I believe in something!!! I'm not generally a outgoing positive person, but I don't think I'm a negative depressed person either.  So...Go ahead, try to put me in a category!!!!!

Unfortunately, I'm sad to admit that my first craft fair was not at all a success! wah wah!!! Sad face :(

My partner MK and I, think we had a very cute booth!!  We had a beautiful wide variety of hand crafted items and we came prepared... with plenty of change, business cards, repair kits (for the just in case) snacks and a good attitude!

However, being my first craft fair and MK's 3rd.... we think the sponsor was 

1. New

2. Didn't advertise

3. There were other 'bigger' fairs going on in the area

We estimated that there were about 20 booths.... if... 125 people attended and maybe 25 people wondered into our booth!

I covered my portion of the cost of the booth with my one and only sale!  And if you think about it... I also lost a bit of money, because we were not informed that we needed to donate up to a $10 gift that was given away during the first hour of the event.

To say the least, I was disappointed.  My husband will ask me all the time.... are you doing this 'artsy thing' to make money?  Or,  are you having fun?

MK and I came up with a few reasons for our unsuccessful event.... 

•  We heard that there was a 'more' popular fair going on in the area, our booth was $40, this other event charges $350 a booth (What??)
• I guess we missed the boat on the sponsors 'packet of info'... so we don't know who or if they advertised this event, we didn't know we needed to donate a prize and a few other things (MK copied me on numerous emails she sent to the organizer asking questions that went unanswered)
•   My husband saw no signage to direct him into the high school where the event was taking place
•  The average age of the attendees was over 55... so craft fairs don't attract a younger age group?
•  Younger people are not into 'country' or homemade crafts like they used to be, they would rather buy new or on-line
•  A few quilts sold in the booth  next to us, she was charging $40-50 for small baby blankets... but our $5 greeting cards and other paper crafts didn't draw much attention, other than the disbelief that I can draw so well.

Will I do another craft fair?  

I don't know if I will do another craft fair. Wrong place, wrong time!  Right? I can't take it personally.... there wasn't enough activity to think the worst, that 'my stuff' was crap.  Seriously.... I get that! Selling at a craft fair is not the way to sell my products.  The fair was highly disappointing. But, I'll never say never again.

Will I stop creating paper crafts?

No, I love the challenge and satisfaction of what I create.  I honestly think (unless all of you have been lying to me!) that friends and family LOVE to get my cards as 'gifts' that they can pass on to others. My cards do truly.... Brighten Someone's Day

Will I become a famous artist or crafter?

No.  But maybe all this practice in creating, is helping me get to my next purpose.

Should you support local artists?

Yes!  If you see something you like. I think we all should continue a movement to support the little guy.  Buy from your local artists.  Buy gifts that come from the heART. Give gifts from the heART

I tried selling at a craft fair. No for me.   Let's see, what is next???

Stay tuned!!!

and

Shine On!