Corn and Apple

List of items made:

• Christmas cards and tags
• regular cards
• large and small covered notebooks
• covered notepads
• stickie holders with matching pens
• gift tags
• notecard folders containing 4 notecards and 4 envelopes
• notecard boxes containing 4 cards and 4 envelopes
• 5"x7" cards
  

I'll follow the lead of another stamping blog I read recently and record the good, the bad, and the ugly of my craft fair experience.

THE GOOD:

• A ton of people stopped by to say hi. It was great to see all of you!
• Carla kept me company for two of the three days. Thanks Carla...I would have gone crazy without you!
  
• On the last day (of 3) I had the idea of selling my old stamps. I colour coded them at $2, $1, and $.50, and sold about half of them. Very pleased!
• The weather was gorgeous, and for the most part, not too hot.
• There were a lot of potential customers.
• I did make a profit. Not enough, but at least I didn't lose money!
  

THE BAD:

• I had a new spot this year, in the back corner. Unfortunately the lady beside me had a fairly substantial display, so mine was somewhat dwarfed!
• The concrete. I never knew how painful it can be to stand on concrete for hours at a time, even in Birkenstocks! The concrete just seeps up into your bones and aches! By the second day I had a stool (so I could sit but still be high enough to make eye-contact with customers) and rubber matting.
• Sales weren't so hot. I learned that if someone says "Oh, this is soooo beautiful!" they're not going to buy. :(

THE UGLY:

• Unfortunately, there was a mix-up with some of the vendor placements, so some people were really cranky that first morning! Luckily, I was able to stay out of it for the most part. I'm just glad I'm not a vendor relations volunteer...they took a lot of flak that day!

THE CONCLUSION:

I'm going to try this for one more year. I'm going to make some more cheapo items (the tags sold pretty well at 5/$1) and some more 'high end' items because if you sell just a few, it really pays off! I sold 3 Notecard boxes (you can find the tutorial for those here) at $10 each. For the work involved it was more than a fair price, but it didn't cost that much to make in terms of materials.

So, see you all next year! :)