Craft Fair!

Over the recent months I've been getting ready for this craft fair at my work, so I've been keeping a lot of my craft projects secret! Yesterday the day of the craft fair finally arrived.

I'd been planning to take part in the craft fair since last year - the first one was held then, and I regretted not getting involved. So I had plenty of time to plan my stall and make lots of things.

The only time I'd ever done anything remotely like this before was a church sale-of-work when I was probably about 13, and I think I only sold two pairs of earrings! So this was my first grown-up craft fair!

I did a lot of reading online about how to make an effective craft stall, which gave me lots of ideas. I made a banner for the front of my stall, and I scoured the car boot sales and charity shops for things to use to display my craft items at various heights. I didn't really know until the day of the fair exactly how big the table would be, so I was pleased that the bits of fabric I'd brought with me covered it nicely. I made sure that my prices were obvious. I created lino cuts of my business name so I could print two types of price tags - ones that would stand on the table, and ones that could be tied to some of the items.

I did quite a lot of self-promotion through Facebook - I hope my friends didn't get too fed up with all my posts in the weeks leading up to the fair! One thing I found is that as soon as I put photos of things online, people wanted to buy some of them straight away, and I was worried I might sell too many things beforehand and not have enough to put on the stall! So I limited myself to posting photos of little details of the items I was going to sell, and just put my final photos online on the day of the fair.

The first hour or so of the sale felt really quite busy. At one point I had a queue of about 4 people waiting to be served! I had a lovely surprise when my auntie and uncle appeared after reading about the fair on my Facebook page, and the mum of one of my childhood friends also found out through Facebook. The great thing about the fair being at my work was that I knew many of the people who came to my stall, so I didn't feel nervous about talking to them.

I felt that the craft fair went really well! I sold lots, but still had enough left on the stall that it didn't look empty by the end of the evening. And I have a few people interested in buying some of the things I have left. I'd definitely do a craft fair again, although it will take me a while to make enough new items to fill the stall up!