What To Bring To Your Craftshow - A Checklist

I'm working on getting ready for a craft show this upcoming weekend. Between making extra inventory, I have been checking my displays and making sure I have everything organized so I don't end up at the show missing something important (like my jewelry inventory!). Since I make lists to keep myself organized, I thought I would share what I bring with me to craft shows.

Inventory to sell- I keep all my jewelry inventory organized in trays in a gray travel bag

Display Components

• Table - if not supplied by the venue
• Tablecloths - I layer a few different colors to make the table look interesting and have my base black fitted tablecloths in 6 and 8 foot sizes so I'm ready for whatever size table the venue gives me.
• Display racks/components - Luckily jewelry displays are pretty small. I have a mix of store-bought and handmade displays. If you sell other types of items, you may need to get creative about how you make your display. Think vertically, too - everything laid out flat gets boring.
• Banner/Signs - make sure people know who you are! I haven't gotten a vinyl sign yet but I made a pretty nice one with a 11x14" sheet printed at Kinko's that I mounted to poster board and sealed with acrylic spray. It works just fine for smaller indoor shows but I'll have to upgrade when I graduate to larger shows.
• Clipboard with sign up sheet for mailing lists
• Business cards & holder
• (For outdoor shows) - Canopy & sidewalls

Packaging For Sales

• Boxes, bags, etc - make sure to put your branding on them! I use clear address labels with my logo and website printed on them.

Business Forms, etc

• Copy of business license - important, especially at bigger shows where there might be inspectors coming around to check that you have all of your paperwork in order with the state.
• Extra price tags
• Extra price stickers
• Spiral notebook
• Sales list - make a table that you can write what has sold, for how much, and how much sales tax you collected
• Custom order forms
• Extra paper for signs
• Photo album w/ pictures of past projects, behind the scenes
• Craft show information sheets - print out or gather up all the flyers and vendor info sheets the venue has sent you
• Receipt book
• Ball point pen

Office Supplies - because you never know when you are going to need to McGuyver a part of your display together...

• Phone charger 
• Pens (lots) 
• Pencil 
• Sales receipt book 
• Sharpie 
• Stapler 
• Twine 
• Binder clips & paper clips 
• Scissors 
• Tape 
• Glue stick 
• Box cutter 
• Lint roller 

Cashbox/Money Bag/Vendor Apron

• Enough cash for change. The amount varies depending on how much you think you will sell. I aim for $150-$200 in small bills and coins. I guarantee people will pay you with $20 bills, so make sure you have enough $1's. I'm pretty sure the teller at my bank thought I was going to a strip club the last time I got cash for a craft show... 
• Square and Paypal Here credit card readers - there are so many people who forget to carry cash (me!), or spend all their cash, then fall in love with one of your items and only have plastic to pay for it - so being able to take credit cards will bring you more sales. The transaction fees on both of these are pretty low and they are secure and easy to use. (I bring both because sometimes my Square reader malfunctions) 

Cleaning Supplies

• Small bag for trash 
• Wet wipes 
• Napkins/paper towels 
• Hand sanitizer 

Food

• Bottle of water 
• Granola bars 
• Other simple snacks/food - go for non-messy, non-staining, non-sticky foods... no meatball subs or Cheetos 
• Coffee in spill-proof mug

Personal Items

• Makeup for touch-ups
• "Feminine items" just in case of emergency
• A few band-aids
• Contact solution and case - I got dust under my contact in the first hour of one of my previous shows, and spent the whole day squinting with my eye watering because I didn't have my contact stuff with me. Now it goes everywhere with me.

Extras

• An in-progress project to work on during down time - I usually bring supplies to work on chains. It gives me something mindless to do, is portable, and people usually come over to my table just to see what I'm working on. It also displays that I really do handcraft all of my items.

Why, hello there!

Buried in custom orders and building up inventory for my craft fair, but I though I would share a little bit of what I've been working on lately...

(clockwise from top left: Red Creek Jasper and Copper Collar, Bumblebee Jasper, Peridot, Citrine & Sterling Silver Pendant, Fossil Coral and Sterling Silver Necklace (with viking knit chain), and Turquoise and Sterling Silver Pendant)

Sorry! I Haven't Really Fallen Off the Face of the Earth...

I've just been on vacation. Then recuperating from the massive cold I caught while on vacation... (Thanks Mom & Dad!)

I was in Michigan visiting my parents and the Chicago area visiting a friend, so here's a picture of part of a cool historical fishing town in northern Michigan and a bonus picture of a blowfish in Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

In addition to helping my husband's little brother settle into junior high (and settling myself into having a teenager in the house!), I'm trying to get back in the swing of things with my shop and also starting to get ready for an upcoming craft fair.

(Which I guess I should start to promote a little bit, so here that goes...)

If you are in the Seattle area and would like to see my shiny things in person, and support the funding for the Northshore School District Special Education Parent/Professional Advisory Council (quite the mouthful, but they support the special education programs in my local school district), come visit the SEPAC Woodinville Holiday Craft Fair on November 2nd from 9-4 at Woodmoor Elementary School (12225 NE 160th, Bothell, WA).

And if you are the type of person to think waaaay ahead for holiday shopping, I will also be participating in a trunk show with Studio 54 Furniture and Fine Art Gallery in Enumclaw, WA on December 14th.  I'll have more information about that in a week or so.

I also have new fall dates scheduled for classes at Beadworld in Seattle (check out their website for the updated class list) and I also agreed to be available for private lessons through them as well. So I'm going to be one busy girl through the holidays!

What I've Been Up To - August 5 - 24

I feel like I've been running around crazy busy for the last two weeks, but when I look at my jewelry desk and things that I've finished, there's not much there! I guess I've been crazy busy with other things. My husband's little brother has come from overseas to live with us and we are running around trying to get him ready for junior high.

On the jewelry front, I knitted a long viking knit chain out of 30 feet of 28 gauge sterling silver wire for the fossil coral pendant I finished a while back. It looks great! Sparkly and shiny and flexible. It took a while to finish because I had to put it down every half hour or so to let my fingers and eyesight recover. I'm going to section it into three pieces, add end caps to each section, and separate them with fossil coral beads. I think it's going to be really impressive when I'm done with it (she says, humbly...)

I also took apart a moonstone ring I made a while back... (This one...)

I was never totally happy with it - the stone was a little crooked, the split shank was a little unequal on either side - so I managed to pry the stone out of the setting and I heated it until it the shank de-soldered from the setting. I bent the split shank wires into a nicer shape, turned the setting around so it was horizontal rather than vertical, and soldered it all back together with a handful of silver balls for decoration. 

Much better now! This version will actually get photographed and added to my shop...

I have also been busy making three custom earrings with a customer's own saltwater and freshwater pearls. I just finished them the other day and I'm very pleased. Hopefully she will be too!

Weekly (Really!) Update - 8/4/13

I think my biggest accomplishment this week was cleaning my jewelry desk! You wouldn't know that I cleaned it off by looking at it right now of course, but it was totally clean for at least 15 minutes, I swear... But I got some stacking plastic drawers meant for organizing paper that sorts my silver wire spools and coils perfectly by gauge and shape.

And I also got a nifty little sawblade, file and burr organizer, which is nice because I was starting to get neurotic about losing my setting bits in the mess of my side shelves.

I also ordered a new mini butane torch because I suspect the one I have is on its last legs. Only it's not so much of a mini torch! I'm going to have to be careful about melting stuff with this giant! (Or setting things on fire!)

I also actually made a few jewelry things last week. Stacking rings and earrings for orders, of course. I also finished a fossil coral pendant to match the earrings in my last post. It gave me so much trouble! Getting the bezel, the complicated openwork backing, the decorative circles and tube setting all soldered together wasn't overly difficult. But then I realized that the bezel wall was just a hair too short on one side for me to be sure that the stone would be totally secure, so I decided to add some prongs. And of course by now the piece was just a little to big for my little old microtorch to get heated properly. The prongs seemed to go on just fine, they stuck on through filing and finishing and a trip through the tumbler, but then they started breaking off as soon as I had the faceted CZ set and the bezel pushed around the coral. So I got to pry the coral out and force the CZ out of the tube setting (because apparently CZs can't handle high heat from torches). I'll make an already long story slightly shorter and say that luckily my new giant butane torch showed up in the mail so I blasted the heck out of the setting and got those stupid prongs totally soldered down and put everything back together. And the end result is nice!

After waffling back and forth for a while, I've finally settled on going whole hog on the chain - I'm going to knit a viking knit chain and piece it together in three sections, with fossil coral beads between each section. Of course that means, that I get to make at least six handmade end caps for the viking knit. Since I'm going all out, I'm going to make them out of tube and sheet and solder them to the ends of each chain. Should be fun!

After the fight with the fossil coral, I made a little copper and stone ring. Mostly for practice, since the band is copper and many people can't wear copper rings without skin reactions. It was good practice though and it turned out rather well.

I'm going to be working on the chain for my fossil coral, and I've also got local custom earring order to work on, so I'll be nice and busy in the coming week. But jewelry is the best thing to be busy with!

Reoccurring (Sometimes Weekly) Update - July 28th

So I'm officially an "artist"! Studio 54 Gallery in Enumclaw, WA picked nearly 20 of my jewelry pieces to display (and hopefully sell) at their gallery. Here's a few of what they picked...

I've also been busy making some new things, too.

Circle and Dot Earrings and Rings - available in my Etsy shop

Blue Lace Agate Hinged Cuff Bracelet

Fossil Coral Earrings

And straight off the jewelry desk (I finished them last night):

I was a little bit inspired by historical roman and medieval designs for these earrings. The labradorites have a nice blue green flash, too. They are pretty much my favorite stone.

I have a bunch more earrings and pendants planned out, I just need to get downstairs to my desk to start them!

Weekly Update - July 14th

I just want to pop in here really quick and share a couple recent projects!

These are Tanzanian sunstone and silver. I made the ball posts from scratch, too, which was fun.

And this was this weekend's project:

The top picture is my concept drawing and the bracelet after I had cut and soldered everything and fitted it all together. The bottom picture is after I polished everything and set the stones. I'm not sure what the stones are... they are a creamy white with purple and gray veins running through them. I DO know that soldering copper is a pain in the rear, though! I haven't soldered anything but silver in quite a while and I forgot how annoying copper is. I like the end result though! :)

I sprinted through this bracelet project because late last week, a local gallery contacted me and asked if I would be interested in displaying (and hopefully selling) a few pieces with them! I drive down and meet with them next Wednesday and I wanted to have a few more metalwork pieces to show them. I'm hoping to finish another large pendant and set of earrings tomorrow and Tuesday. Might be a little optimistic, but that's what I'll shoot for. 

Wish me luck!