The craft fair post!

You guys, you are so nice to me. :) Thanks for all of your appreciative, kind, and uplifting comments on my last post. Seriously, you are the best ever!

So....remember how I did a craft fair last month? I bet you forgot....I don't blame you. Life happens. But, as promised (albeit a month overdue) here is it.

In early December, my crafty friend {Meg} told me that her work was sponsoring a small craft fair and asked me if I wanted to share he table with her. Um. Yes. The catch? The fair was in a week and a half. Yikes!!

Initiate panic mode.

I had never done a craft fair before, and I had only thought about it in a "hm, yeah maybe someday" kind of way. And all of the sudden the opportunity falls in my lap, and I am completely unprepared. I researched and researched and spent some pretty pennies stocking up on supplies. Inventory? HA. Yeah, I didn't have one of those. I decided to only stick with my very simple cabochon jewelry because I knew I didn't have time to work on intricate pieces. So I glued and glued and glued and glued until I was slightly high on toxic fumes and had enough jewelry to call an inventory.

I won't go into detail about the company that decided to wait 4 days to ship my items even though I told her I needed them immediately. I didn't get them until the day before, and stayed up extremely late the night before finishing everything. I now have premature gray hair.

Did you know that sane people prepare MONTHS in advance for craft fairs? Sometimes even for the entire year? I completely understand why now, there is SO much to do! I thought I just had to create an inventory, hooo no! I had to make business cards, build creative displays, plan a layout of all the supplies, label, nail down reasonable pricing, organize, plan out how to transport everything safely, make change, and so many more tiny things that you would just never think of. The amount of time I put into preparing for this craft fair was triple the time I spent at the actual fair! It was nuts! Luckily if I ever do this in the future I will already have a lot of the prep work done, but man, physical, mental, and financial toll here!

I got really lucky and found EVERYTHING I wanted at the thrift store (in one trip too!) that I used for display. Of course I went with a gray/yellow theme, it's my obsession right now, and it also has the advantage of being pretty neutral. Not that men were going to be drawn to my table anyway....

I was really so blessed to have so many things work out in my favor preparing for this! There are still some things I would have changed, but for my first ever craft fair and only 10 days prep, I think everything turned out just fine. :) I went in with zero expectations, and I was blown away! I sold much more than I thought I would, I made enough to cover all the expenses from preparing and then some! But truly, even if I didn't sell a thing, the experience would have been totally worth it.  Maybe I'll do a separate post on the specifics of what I learned, if you guys are interested.

And now, the breakdown of the display! That's really why you're reading, right? I got 90% of my display pieces from the thrift store. I used tons of small frames, a cork board, some vintage saucers on candlesticks, and a few unexpected goodies!

This cute earring display case? Used to be a cookie jar set. 

This crappy phone pic pretty much has is down, it was NASTY. The person that donated it didn't even bother to rinse it out, it was still full of crumbs! Sticky with kitchen grease, stained and dented, but with some heavy duty cleaner, sandpaper, spray paint, and a LOT of love, it turned out beautifully! It's now proudly sitting on display in my craft nook filled with earrings waiting to be shipped off. 

I loved this ring and bobby pin display! It kept everything organize and on different levels, perfect for picking through. Wanna know what it began life as?

Wooden bowls and a candlestick. Love it!

Each of my price displays started out as creepy pictures. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to score four scrolly, texturey pictures frames for all my price tags! A little sanding and spray paint and they turned out better than perfectness.

I made the price tags in Picnik, with my super awesome mad Picnik skills. (sarcasm font, in case you couldn't hear it.)

I had a larger frame to display my shop name and logo (it's all about branding right?) and the business card holder is a bamboo one from Staples. The little bracelet display?

Saucer + candlestick + E6000. I had one for bracelets and one for cab necklaces. 

I would have liked a bigger corkboard for these necklaces, but anything bigger would have been too hard to hold up and keep balanced on a tiny little stand. 

Did I mention I twisted the hubs' arm into coming with me? He didn't have school that day, and he was a huge help when I needed a potty/lunch break. 

Let me know if you have any more questions! Thanks for letting me crash your fair Meg. :)

PS, I'm sponsoring a giveaway over at Mine for the Making celebrating her 2 year blogiversary! Check it out {here}

Just a quick post

<p>Checking in from the last hour of the fair! Running on less than three hours of sleep I'm pretty beat, but it's been a fun experience! I came with expectations to sell nothing and I actually sold things so it was a great day! :) more to come later.

I'm still here!

I promise I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I have just been so ridiculously busy! I've had tons of prep for the craft fair tomorrow, making Christmas presents, working, and soo many other things. I haven't even been reading my blogs, my reader won't even tell me how many I have to read because the number is so high. Ack. But I promise I've been doing stuff! I've made a handful of Christmas crafts, I've been redoing a lot of thrift store finds for the craft fair and I've made jewelry out the wazoo!! I know, I know, pics or it didn't happen. I'll get some....a little later. And I haven't forgotten about that series, this craft fair is just really kicking me in the butt and I haven't had time for much else.

Wanna hear a funny story though? On Cyber Monday I ordered a ton of crap from {VistaPrint} (which is awesome, by the way.) They had a ton of free promos going on and I took full advantage! I got business cards, note pads, sticky notes, a pen, a t shirt, a tote, an address stamp...yeah I went nuts. Since I ordered so much stuff I chose the extra super slow shipping so I wouldn't break the bank. But I wasn't worried, I didn't NEED them right away.

Yeah, no. My friend Meg told me about the craft fair just a few days later. Greaaat...so now I've got a business card dilemma. These fancy ones from VistaPrint wouldn't get here in time! I thought about getting them printed somewhere local but I got so overwhelmed ordering more supplies I just didn't get around to it. So last night I spent many hours designing and printing and cutting them out myself. Quite the labor of love, and I think they turned out quite nicely!

Yay for Microsoft Word.

Guess what came in the mail today?

"Congratulations! Your order has shipped early!" Oh the irony. At least I have that awesome t shirt to slap on the hubs so he can be a walking advertisement. The craft fair is tomorrow, so hopefully you'll see more of me next week. Unless you haven't missed me...in which case: "Sorry, I'll probably be back next week."

XOXO,
Amie

(and there's my name again! V <--- that's an arrow pointing down btw)

Craft Fair advice please!

I am doing my first craft fair next Friday! Well...sorta kinda. My friend Meg's work is having a craft fair and she graciously offered to spend her lunch break selling some of my jewelry! Isn't she awesome?? (Answer: yes, very awesome)

So I need your advice! I've never done a craft fair before, let alone a proxy craft fair! She's really only going to have an hour or two to sell things, so I need ideas to maximize sales in such a short period of time without me being there! I need display ideas (I have NOTHING), selling ideas, and ESPECIALLY pricing advice. Without the cost of shipping, shipping materials, packaging, etsy/paypal fees, advertising and all that I can sell  my items for less, but HOW MUCH less? There is too much to think about and not enough time to think about it, so I would greatly appreciate any advice!

I have been searching some display options and I like a lot of these ones!

{Sunshine and Carousels} 

{Vintage Indie}

{It's a Scrappy Life}

{Vintage Wanna Bee}

{My Blonde Ambitions}

I'm ridiculously excited about this, though I have no expectations to sell a thing. That way no matter what happens, I'll either be right on or pleasantly surprised. :)

What I like Wednesdays- Colorfest

Welcome to another addition of What I like Wednesdays! This week I like Colorfest, an amazing craft fair I went to this weekend with my mom and hubby. It was a blast, the best craft fair I've ever been to! There were hundreds and hundreds and HUNDREDS of vendors with so many crafts we didn't even get to see them all. (And we were there from 8:30am to 5pm!!) My feet were in agony by the end of the day, but it was so much fun. :) I don't think David had fun...he was basically our pack mule for the day, but my mom and I sure did!

We were booking it and I mean booking it the entire day, so I wasn't able to get pictures of everything. :( But here are some goodies to drool over! I hope you can find some inspiration from what you see because I know I sure as heck did.

 Just as a warning, there are lots of kitty crafts. C'mon, the blog name is Kitty Cats and Airplanes. You should expect it. :)

 Do you see the size of the stem?? It's like as thick as my forearm! It was massive!

 I was so in love with this quilt. SO IN LOVE. I really, really, really wanted it, but I just didn't have the money. I need a fancy machine to quilt like that and add pretty embroidery like this! Come to think of it, a machine like that would cost more than this quilt. Nevermind...

 Teeny tiny little vases! Aren't they adorable!!

 I really want to try this. A dried pepper wreath! And it smelled just as good as it looks.This would be such a great housewarming gift!

 This painting makes me want to watercolor paint again.

 These were all made from recycled materials! Not only are they super cool, what a great way to make money off of old junk. :)

 Those are crab shells! Painted as kitties! Two of my favorite things in one, yes please!

 Dressed up pumpkins!! I love it. This is totally do-able, I think it would look excellent with some orange burlap with some freezer paper stenciling! Future project maybe?

Me and the hubs in Spongebob hats. Because I love the old Spongebob episodes. ("Is this is Krusty Krab?" "No, this is Patrick.")

 He was such a good pack mule. :)

 I love the kitties on this, but look at that ridiculously happy pumpkin behind it all.I smile just looking at it!

I loved this. You change the tile for every season so you always have matching decor! Brilliant!

This was David's favorite part. :) Shows how much fun he had! Too bad, at least me and my mom had fun. :)

Other things I like:

My mom used these adorable candle holders on a lot of mine and my other brother's birthday cakes, but they kind of got lost and weren't used as much for the two younger kiddos. But my mom busted these out and we were all giddy over them. Aren't they so cute???

My brother's reaction to the present we got him. Amazing that he's 17 and not 7. :)