Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Craft Bazaar!

Ok, I am finally posting about the craft bazaar from last week!

These are just a couple pictures of the table after I got it most of the way set up. This was my very first time doing anything like this, and had NO idea what to expect. I went for a simple approach, with no fancy frills or anything. I kept the 'background' basic and black. Black table cloth, black baskets, black shelf for some height. I did this to make the products pop, and to keep the distractions to a minimum. this helped bring attention to the products.



Thats my wonderful mother sitting behind the table. She helped me SO much that day! This bazaar was put on by the people where my mom works. She is funny, she is a great person, but she never smiles for the camera! She makes me laugh! Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, They turned out dark and I had to lighten them up a bit.

I was able to borrow a card rack from a lovely person in the group I belong to. It sure came in handy! I would eventually like to get one of my own, but that will be a long way down on my priority list unless I become serious about the craft fair circuit, but I don't see that happening any time soon! Everything you see on my table was the culmination of about 9 months worth of work! I really didn't have a whole lot of stuff, but since this was my first time, I just went with a few things to kind of get an idea of what sells and what doesn't. If I do it again next year, I may add a few things.

I will be posting pictures of some items I sold in the next few days. I thought I would start with pictures of the table so you can see that.

When I was initially planning for this, we were told that one person backed out so we would have 2 tables, but upon arrival, found out that wasn't the case, so we only had the 1 table to work with, which was ok, but I would have liked just about a half a table worth of a little more space.

In the end, I consider that day to be a complete success, as I sold over half of my cards, sold out of a few things, and sold at least one of every type of item I brought. I made a decent amount of money from it, way more than I had anticipated. I'm not saying I made a fortune or anything, but I can say that my expectations were low and I exceeded that by a lot!

I will however say that I sell my items for a lot less than what I have seen others sell their items for when I was researching craft fairs. I priced them to cover the cost of materials and tax, (they made us charge tax) and then settled on a fair price after that.
There were a few other people selling cards there, and at first I was a little worried, but I figured that I know they wouldn't have the same designs as me, so its not like we are selling the same exact product, so it was ok. I went over and visited with the other card maker tables, said hello and got to know them a little, and took a look at their cute cards. I didn't happen to see what they were asking for them, so I don't know what the price comparison was. But it was nice to talk with them and see their work!

I will post a list of the items I had, how many I sold of each, and a few pictures on my next blog. For now I should head off to bed, as it is getting late......
Until next time!

1 comment:

JulieA said...

So glad that your craft fair was so successful! Congratulations!