I recently set up a booth at an outdoor art fair in Angwin called “Art in the Clouds”. It was only the second year for the art aspect of the fair and as such I was one of only four art related booths. I at least broke even, but it wasn’t super successful. I had taken part in the fair mostly as a practice run to see if I could do it. In that regard I learned a lot and now have more confidence going in to a next one…I haven’t lined any up yet though.
The way I managed to break even was with the printed cards and a few little trinkets I’d made, like the magnets and a few charms.
I recently discovered the long existing but never discovered by me “shrinky dinks”. I had a variety pack and ended up really liking the matt finish one since it really works well with colour pencil.
This is colour pencil
And this is permanent marker. Note their size.
Place in the oven at 300F
In seconds they start to flex and shrink. Really fun!
In the end they’re super small, about half their original size.
Later I attached small silver jump rings and hung them on ribbon. I ended up selling a few of these charms.
Here’s what the set-up looked like:
A little cluttered. And it was hard to get people to walk in and actually look at the paintings. A little more thought needs to go into the whole thing. Definitely a less patterned table-cloth is in order.
I made a few rings some with ceramics and one with a drawing behind a glass pebble.
mini canvas charms
Card sets
A pretty good turn out
Overall a good experience and I’d like to do a few more of these types of events. If nothing else I got a lot of positive feedback which was rather encouraging!
Cheers.
S
Your work looks great and with lots of interesting variety — I’m impressed. Your quality of work would draw me in if I were walking by — you can see, even from a far, that there are good things to come in to check out.
If you have any advice on how to make people comfortable enough to come closer and look, please let me know. So many people just skimmed and walked on by…didn’t know if I should hide or engage them!