Attica Founders Day Booth and Update

Hey everyone!

Yesterday was my first outdoor festival, and I’m really happy with how everything turned out. The bumps in the road that I experienced all last week worked out in the end, the weather was absolutely perfect, my booth looked great, and I made some new contacts.

Before I get into any more detail about how the show went, I know a lot of you have been anxious to see the finished booth!

Remember my initial design sketch?

I think I came pretty close to creating that:

The jewelry displays turned out perfectly! They hung on chains that were anchored to the ground, and although there was a little bit of a breeze, when there were gusts of wind we didn’t have to worry about the boards going anywhere! The mirror was a great addition; a lot of customers appreciated being able to see how certain earrings or necklaces looked.

We had to do some tweaking with this back wall after awhile. The table was supposed to be farther left, but because of the extra oil painting display, there wasn’t room for both chairs on the right of the table. The print display ended up blocking the sign, so we moved it over to the right side of the back wall, and it looked much better there 🙂

The hanging displays for the originals worked out great! We’ll be doing some tweaking to them to make them better (especially for windy days), but for yesterday they were perfect.

Highlights of the day:

– One of my customers works in the framing department at the local Michael’s, and he really liked my work. He sees a lot of different things, so it was a huge compliment that he liked what I did!

– Meeting a lot of new people, and putting faces to names! Thank you to everyone who took the time to come visit, check out my booth, and chat with us!

– We were getting ready to pack up, and a woman came back who had visited earlier. She really wanted a necklace and was afraid she was going to miss getting back to us! That really encouraged me 🙂

– So many compliments on the booth, the art, and all the little details! So many people loved the cut outs on the jewelry and then the free gift boxes as well. Someone even commented that they loved how the purple shopping bags I had for carrying purchases matched the booth colors.

Hard parts of the day:

– This wasn’t during the day, but getting those note cards done was so stressful! My ink arrived early afternoon Friday, and I still didn’t know if the printer would work with the computer. During the kid’s rest time, I redid some of the note card designs on the computer, thinking maybe the files had corrupted or something along those lines. That afternoon, I went to work on printing, and not only did the note cards I redid print out beautifully, but all the other ones I had saved from before did too! We’re still not sure what the problem was, but hey, it’s working now and that’s all that matters!

– Packing the van so everything we’d need right away was up front and things we’d need last was farther behind. We didn’t know if we’d be able to park right by the tent or would have to walk far for unloading, so packing was something we took extra time to figure out in the morning. Everything fit, and it was super easy to unload, especially as we were able to park right behind tent 🙂

– This is a really really silly hard part, but it was definitely a struggle! We were situated behind the pulled pork guy, the reuben sandwich guy, AND the kettle corn guy! Anyone who knows me well enough knows that those three things are huge weaknesses for me. It was so hard to not go buy from them all day, but we had brought our own food, and didn’t want to spend our hard earned money from the festival on food. We ended up not purchasing food at the festival, but having the breeze blow the smells into the tent all day was almost torture!

Things I’ve learned or have to change for next time:

– Have more things at different price points. I hadn’t thought about this too much because at the last show I had the gift tags which were a nice low price. I didn’t have anything like that this time, so I’m not sure if that affected sales or not.

– Have a sale/discount. My husband volunteered his entire Saturday to come help me, and halfway to through the day he said next time maybe do something like get a necklace and earrings as a set for a certain price, or buy two prints get $5 off. I had thought about that before, but it slipped my mind.

– Have my giveaway sign be clearer, easier to read, and standing up! If I hadn’t been mentioning it, I don’t know if anyone would have really entered.

– Figure out how to anchor the original print displays for wind. They were blowing pretty good, and we were afraid the originals might fall off and break if the wind was any stronger. We’ll be replacing the nails with small L hooks as well so the pieces will be better secured.

Fun tidbits:

This festival was only my second show, but first outdoor show. It fell exactly six months after my first show! My displays have changed so much since then, and we’ll see how things change from here on out!

Questions:

When is your next show? Are you going to do AppleUmpkin?

I don’t know, and I don’t know. I need a break from shows right now to concentrate on some projects that have been held up while I’ve been prepping for Founders Day. I would love to do AppleUmpkin (our village/town’s big festival), and I had been offered a space from someone who lives just off the main road of the festival for free, and I need to touch base with her. If that is no longer an option, I need to get moving on getting an official application in as it’s due by the end of the month, if I decide to do it. It’s a bigger fee, more work for the application, and it’s two days instead of just one. As soon as I know my next event, I will let you all know 🙂

Thank you all for your support and encouragement the past couple of months while I was getting this all together, and for those of you that stopped by to see me yesterday! I can’t wait to get started on other projects tomorrow, so be looking for sneak peeks within the next few days over on Facebook!