Craft shows DONE!!

As much as I love creating and making things for myself or to sell, I am happy to say that I am done with craft shows for at least one more year. It can be quite stressful getting enough stuff made and then worrying about whether or not you'll have a decent turnout with people buying your stuff. I had a very successful show with the first show! They advertised like crazy with a little help from my friend and myself. But this last show was not so good. Not many people showed up and those that did, weren't buying too much, if anything. I made half of what I made at this same show last year. I am seriously reconsidering doing this show next year. I hate to say for sure that I'm not, but I know many other vendors were not happy either and they made considerably less than me. Maybe it's what you sell and maybe that tiny little town is not the market for what they have. What I had barely had a market there either!

So anyway...I wanted to share some of the last minute things I made that I didn't have a chance to post before. I think I was doing pretty good by getting 2 posts in one week while working on 20 projects. LOL!

 

This is a really bad picture of this chalkboard I made from an old mirror. The mirror was broken in half a day, thanks to my 7 yr old daughter's own vanity. We just won't even go there right now.... anyway, the chalkboard is actually a dark teal blue color and no matter I tried to get the photo adjusted, it just wasn't showing that. With the larger chalkboards, I included a little basket that I attached along with the necessary piece of chalk and coordinated eraser.This one did not sell.  :^(

I swear, I can't write in a straight line! geeeez! Here is the other chalkboard that is also made with the dark teal paint. It's not the best color representation either, but it's better than the one above. If you notice, there is a stenciled frame design done in the paint. I seriously don't know what I was thinking when I thought this was a good idea in a time crunch situation, but it worked out and didn't really take me all that long. The hardest part was getting the design in a consistent size that worked for all 4 sides, since it's a little taller than it is wide. It wasn't perfect, but it did sell!  :^D

This is a sleigh light that I put together. It drew a lot of attention, but I guess the price wasn't "garage sale" low enough for the ones that were looking at it. Sorry if I'm being just a tad sarcastic in that last remark, but I will say that there are quite a few people in the smaller towns that come to these craft shows and think they're at a flea market or garage sale. Ohhhh, the stories I could tell! It makes me want to put up a sign that reads, "Reminder: this is a craft bazaar and not a garage sale, so please be considerate. ~thank you! Do you think that might offend?

I don't know that I've ever showed one of my skates on my blog before. I didn't want them to be copied all over the place, including craft shows that I'm in. Had that happen before.

I made one last year and just happened to send a photo of it to a friend in Chicago. She in turn sent the photo to her sister, who went nuts over it, I guess. So my friend bought it as a gift for her sister. She says her sister gets all kinds of wonderful comments about it when she has people over. I think she's one of my best cheerleaders of what I do.

I think I'm feeling a bit negative after having a dismal turnout for this event that felt like such a let down after the "high" of a successful first show. It was kinda like the crash after coming off a sugar high! LOL! I will say that I'm still in a crafting mood and have been working a few other projects that still didn't manage to get finished for either show. I don't want things left undone.

That's it for show and tell today. I hope to have more later on this week. I'm trying to find my house underneath all the craft stuff right now. My family is happy that the Laundry Fairy decided to make a trip in and leave some clean clothes behind. Whew!

God Bless and have a great day!

I am linking up to House of Hepworths