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}