Craft Fair Booth on a Budget

While going through the photos on my camera, I came across the ones of our booth at the small craft fair my mom and I participated in before Christmas.  I thought our little booth looked pretty good!

On the left side, I set up my tins and a couple frames:

In the center, my handpainted tags/ornaments and candle embellishments:

I have since sold all but two of the candle embellishments:

I also sold a few of the wooden tags/ornaments.  That’s my mom’s decorative tree from Pier One used to display them:

More frames on the right side:

I also sold some  handpainted personalized ornaments, I was able to personalize them with an initial while the customer waited:

Two tower displays of my mom’s glycerin soaps flanked the entrance to the booth:

We really put this booth together on a budget.  Since this was my first craft fair experience, I really didn’t know what to expect and didn’t want to spend a lot of money.  Here are a few of the things we did to keep costs low:

• Used plain white sheets for tablecloths, accented with fabric remnants from previous projects.
• Purchased wire ornament displays (not shown) from Dollar Tree.  I only ended up using two of the five that I bought because they were a little flimsy, but I plan on stabilizing them better if I use them again.
• Used our own purple tinsel trees (Christmas decor) to display ornaments.
• Used some of the boxes that we transported everything in underneath the tablecloths to provide height.
• Banners from Vista Print.
• Used my own picture frames to display price signs.

Overall, I would say the show was a success (except for one little speed bump, right, MOM?).  I sold enough to cover my booth costs and time, and I even got a potential wholesale client lead. In the future, I will only do shows much closer to home (this one was an hour away) and in larger towns, but this one was a great way to get our feet wet. 

Do you have any craft fair experience or advice to share?

A Homemade Christmas

I’ve been busy making more wooden ornaments/tags for my Etsy shop and for a Christmas festival that my mom and I are participating in this weekend.  She’s going to bring her fleur de lis soaps and I’m going to have several different fleur de lis items including the tags, tins and candle embellishments. 

We’re kind of going out on a limb by having a booth at this festival, it’s in a small town and this is their first year doing it.  This will be our first craft fair/booth, so we just wanted to get our feet wet and see how it goes.  Hopefully we will have a good turnout!

******If you want to win one of these tags for yourself, head on over to Finding Fabulous, Jane is giving one away for her Frugalicious Friday post.******

Have a great weekend!

Trying to Get Creative with my Displays...

My friend Candace of Chicky Girls Hair Bows invited me to showcase my crafts with her at a recent play-date meetup of her Mom's group. I jumped at the chance, thinking it would be a good way to get some local exposure and hopefully a few sales. It also gave me the opportunity to design some sort of display for all my products. My mom had an old bi-fold shutter door lying around, so I had my hubby cut it in half to make a display for my tins. I spray painted it and painted "Embellished Bayou" across the top of one. Here's how the door looked before:

I had a 6 foot table and a card table to work with. In the future I think I will need at least one more table so everything doesn't look so cluttered. Here's how the displays turned out:

I'll also need a table cloth for the card table, more risers (I just used a couple boxes this time) and a cute holder for my business cards.

Overall, I think it turned out nice. And I got a couple orders for the larger frames....which I can't take credit for since they were my best friend's design! I thought I would have a little more interest in the painted tins, but no takers so far! A couple moms who are expecting said they may order one of the triple tins for their nursery, so hopefully I'll get more orders in the future. If business picks up, I am considering doing a local craft show this fall, so this was a good "trial run". If anyone has any craft show tips, feel free to post them in the comments!

Happy Spring!

The first day of spring has arrived, finally! Spring is my favorite season (besides football season of course!) because my garden is coming back to life and the temperatures are perfect! I'll be taking a break from crafting this weekend to spend some time in my yard and try to get my business a little more organized. I did finish another Candle Embellishment today and I'm about to post it in my Etsy shop.

I'm really thinking about trying to sell some of my creations at a local craft show that is held once a month. Has anyone done this or have any tips for me? If I decide to do it, I'll have to get busy making more samples to fill my booth! The prospect of being out a lot of money (booth rental, supply cost, etc.) is a little daunting, but I suppose it will be worth it if I'm able to get some regular business....