SO....
the craft fair was Saturday, setup on Friday; I actually sold some stuff, and made almost three times the booth fee! woot!
here's a comparison with last year.
last year I:
was outside, where there were pretty much no shoppers;
was away from the door, so the shoppers that did pass by to go inside didn't see me;
had very little display stuff and no tablecloth;
shared with a friend with paintings and drawings, who didn't sell anything although everyone who did wander over liked one painting in particular. I think she had them priced too low;
sold a couple small things to friends but made nowhere near the booth fee (or even half the booth fee, which is what I paid)
Picture:
this year:
I was inside, there was good lighting and lots of people;
had a tablecloth and much better display stuff;
had candy and $1 stretchy bracelets;
had prices on everything;
had my brother with me, who's a licensed jeweler, inspected and cleaned people's rings for free
(several people said "no thanks" or "can't get'em off" or "didn't wear them today", but several people accepted and appreciated it), kept them at the booth for a few minutes to look around, although some just closely watched the cleaning;
the tealights in my display were really fun and popular;
I sat part of the time but stood up to talk to customers, and sometimes walked around the booth and rearranged some things, most times that I was doing that people came to look
I brought a lunch and ate it in the booth, but put it down when customers came by;
had small paper gift bags with "thank you" and some info on them, and tissue paper, to put purchases in - people liked that;
we're not the chatty type so we had plenty of attention to give to customers ;-) and none of my friends came by (sigh)- I can see how it could cause a problem if they did though;
I made about 3
1/2 times the booth fee (except for cost of the extra display stuff, but that wasn't much) and my brother sold a couple t-shirts
pictures:
hmmm, could've planned that two-part photo better. also need to find the "wide shot" setting on the camera. but oh well.
the only thing that kinda went wrong is I forgot my camera at home (fortunately I had it at set-up so I still got pics, but I was afraid I'd lost it) and I had so much stuff under my table (lunch, snacks, cleaning stuff, repair stuff, box for display stuff, t-shirts, bags), it was a little disorganized and the one time I thought I needed my calculator I couldn't find it. fortunately my brother did the the math in his head and the customer confirmed it, but I felt a little silly relying on them for it. but it was ok. also my brother wished he'd thought to bring some of his tools to fix prongs and stuff, so we'll remember that next time.
I'm glad I didn't pay for electricity because the only thing I was thinking I'd need it for was extra lighting, and I didn't need that 'cause the place was well lit. however, my brother suggested getting some jewelry-cleaning equipment that would need electricity, so we might eventually do that.
also I accepted one check for a purchase, and haven't been to the bank yet (closed on weekends and probably today), so I hope it's ok.
btw, the lovely business card holder you see there was made by and purchased from KreativeKarryAlls on Etsy. the tablecloths were borrowed from my friend Amy, the earring display is a picture frame with mesh attached, the necklace displays came from a jewelry store that was closing and were a Christmas present from my sister, and the mirrors and tealights came from Hobby Lobby and BigLots. So I guess I spent about... 15 dollars on the display. Oh yeah I also had candy in a bowl which I bought specially for it, so that makes around 20 or so. So maybe I made more like twice the booth fee. But still that means I did awesome! yay.
