About three weeks ago, I was asked to participate in the Tobacco Festival. The person in charge of the Artists's section of the festival wanted me to display and sell my postcards. So I spent the past couple weeks getting ready for the event. And this is the fruit of my labors, my own booth at the event. My daughter is in the photo posing at my booth and she was going to sit with me all day, but she found some friends and they went to enjoy the festival. I didn't mind. I would rather her have a good time with her friends. They did stop by every now and then to check in and say hi, which was nice. When I first got the call to participate, I had plenty of postcards and ATCs to show from my collection, but I didn't have any to sell. So I had to make a few so my booth wouldn't be so bare.
I wanted to have a whole table full, but time didn't permit me to make that many. What I did have time to make turned out to be enough. I ended up selling four postcards and probably would have done better if there would have been more people walking by. The "Artists on the Green", as we were called, got a raw deal that day. If the city would have decided to keep the main vendors across the street from us, instead of move them a couple blocks down then we would have had as much traffic as the rest of the festival. The people would have naturally flowed over to our event, but since the main vendors were were moved a couple blocks down most people didn't even know where we were. My husband had to tell a couple of his friends and our neighbor where to find me. A few of them made their way over, but others never did.
Towards the end of the day I became miserable and bored. It was super hot, temps in the 90's. The heat is mainly to blame for my misery at the end. But, if there would have been people walking by to chat and discuss postcards with, then the heat would have been a bit more bearable. But sitting there doing handwork in the heat, not talking to anyone was just not fun. I actually became bored which it is rare for me to be bored. I was ready to be home and work in the comfort of my AC.
The coordinator of the event felt so bad that she told us all that even if we did have sales that we could to keep the 15% booth fee we owed her. She did tell me she has other fiber art events coming up soon, though and they have been successful in the past and she would be in touch with me again.
Over all though, minus those last two hours, I must say I did enjoy the event and getting ready for it. I even enjoyed the first couple hours sitting in my booth. It was my first experience ever trying to sell my own items at an event, so I was excited and the very few who did come by were quite interested and were a joy to talk to.
These next photos are the postcards I made for the event. These first ones are brand new ideas and there is only one of each of them.
These next ones are similar to ones I have made in the past and I made multiples of them.
- 1 Log Cabin Quilt Block Postcard
- 3 Candy Canes postcards
- 7 beach postcards - I sold two of those.
- 2 Halloween Ghost postcards - I sold one of those.
- 4 Pumpkin Halloween postcards
The other one I sold was a red and black spider web postcards with iron on gems. I had made it about a year ago, but since I had a duplicate at home, I went ahead and sold it. That is why there is a missing slot on the postcard display on the right in the booth photo above. I sold that card while I was setting up the booth.
Every now and then I like to pull one of the unfinished frog postcards off my pile and practice my simple hand embroidery stitches. One day I may advance and try some of the fancy stitches showcased on Pin Tangle, but for now I want to get better at the simple stitches since it seems that the more complicated stitches are all based on these basic embroidery stitches.
