Outdoor Booth Progress Update

It’s hard to believe that my first outdoor festival is less than a month away! I’ve been really busy the past couple of weeks researching how I wanted to display everything, ordering the supplies, and finally starting to put things together.

Here’s what I have managed to complete:

– I bought all the fabrics for my signs, displays, and table runners. I happened to find all the fabric I needed/wanted either on the clearance table or on sale, and then had a coupon that covered all the fabric!

– I ordered the tables for my booth. I went back and forth about what size I wanted, and ended up going with three 4 foot long ones. I wanted my booth to feel as spacious as possible and be able to rearrange my booth as needed. Because I am hanging a lot of my products on the walls, I was able to get away with the smaller tables. Finding them on sale was a huge bonus, and then having them fold in half for easy storage was even better! They can be adjusted in height; I think I’m going to use the counter top height for the booth.

My cat claimed the table boxes; he was very upset with me when I eventually unpacked them:

And my youngest loved using them as a fort to play with while I was deciding which height I liked best:

– I ordered tablecloths. I was planning on making these as the wrinkle resistant ones were so expensive. However, I found some on Amazon for a great price! They just came today and although they’re wrinkled from the packaging, I think they’ll be perfect. They’re a bit bigger than I thought, so if I decide I need a bigger table at any point, I should be okay with the tablecloths I have now.

– I’ve started making the jewelry displays. I knew I wanted them to hang on ribbon inside of a frame, but couldn’t find any frames I liked in the size I wanted within my budget. I decided to go buy moulding and make my own, but I found great sized bulletin boards at our church’s garage sale!

Thankfullly I found a tutorial on Pinterest that helped me figure out how to take the frames off of the corkboard, because man, these frames were put together very well and took forever to take apart.

I found some white sparkly fabric that I thought would be a great backdrop for the jewelry and painted the frames black. I think they look fantastic! Now to make more earrings as my inventory is quickly disappearing!

What I still have left to do:

– Make my original art work display board. I finally decided on what I’m going to do for those, and we just bought the supplies this past weekend. My hubby will be cutting the boards to size for me this weekend, and then I can get moving on getting those finished!

– Waterproof my tent. This isn’t completely necessary as my tent is water resistant, but I don’t want to take a chance on ruining my products!

– Make tent weights. I could have ordered these, but they really are expensive. We’re making them instead, and once the PVC pipe is cut to size, I’ll be able to get those made up in an afternoon.

– Make more products! Paper for prints and ink for my printer are arriving today/Monday, so I’ll get those made up quick. I have to make note cards and more earrings still. I also have an original piece that is so close to completion, and I want to try and get that finished up if at all possible.

– Finally finish the necklaces. If you follow me on Facebook, you know I’ve been having trouble with them. The first chains I bought tarnished within a day or two of being out of their packaging. The next chains I bought were too big and bulky for the pendants. They look fine in this picture, but in person, they really detract from the pendants:

We just bought new chain, but now the clasps I have for making them into necklaces are too big for the chain. I’ll be grabbing those this weekend sometime, and hope to have them finished for good early next week.

– Finish buying supplies. I don’t think I need that much, just a chair for sitting during the festival, a dolly/hand cart for carting things back and forth for set up and take down, waterproof spray for the tent, and bungee cords. I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of things, but I won’t know for sure until I do the first test run of getting the tent set up, which will hopefully happen sometime this week.

– Make my signs for the booth. I’m making a banner for the front of the tent, and then a big one for the back wall of the booth. I was going to have them made for me, but they were just too far out of my budget to justify it.

Things I’m learning:

– Doing outdoor festivals is not cheap. I’m making sure that I am sticking to a budget and trying to get sales or use coupons whenever possible, but it’s definitely more expensive than I thought.

– Be flexible knowing that things will probably change with booth designs and displays. I know this is going to be a learning process and that I’ll be changing my displays regularly, but I want to make sure that what I have now can be used in multiple different ways and looks great while I’m figuring this all out. Being on a budget makes it harder, but I refuse to go into debt for this!

– All of this work is mostly a one time thing. For my next outdoor show, I’ll just have to tweak designs and make sure I have enough products as I’ll already have my tent, tables, and displays. The frustration and stress I’m dealing with now is almost over, and shouldn’t be this bad again.

I’ll be updating more once things get farther into completion. June 6th is coming up waaaaay too quick!