Craft Fair Success

Saturday I participated in my first craft fair. I teamed up with my friend Laura who also has a little girl just a couple months older than mine. Since it was my first fair, and I recently moved to the area I had no idea if things would sell well.

The fair started at 10 and we were allowed to come as early as 7 to set up. We got there at 7 and were the first to set up, when 9:45 rolled around and vendors were still setting up or JUST getting there we were glad to have given ourselves plenty of time.

Both of us really just wanted to at least make up our booth fee and figured it would be a good experience if nothing else. To our surprise we made not quite, but close to 4 times our booth fee. I sold 3 tutus, some bows and a few headbands and beanies. Laura's flower loop bows sold like crazy! Next time we know to have a bigger variety of those. I had made a few and didn't think to bring them, now I wish I had! We had a couple women come by that taught dance, or knew someone that does that took business cards and we are hoping to hear from them about large tutu orders.

Here are some photos from the fair, I really wanted grid walls, but being it was my first fair and didn't know if I'd do more, I wasn't ready to invest in those quite yet! Maybe after a few more.

I also had my eye on a metal dress form I wanted so so bad to display the tutus on, but came up with this alternative instead. I made 5 of these stand mostly out materials I had at home. I just had to go to home depot to buy a scrap piece of wood for the bases and picked up a couple dowels to complete the stand. 4 were used for the tutus and one was used to put my mannequin head on. Laura helped me in assembling them and they cost me about a dollar a piece to make, a lot cheaper than buying a mannequin! And the extra tutus we clothes pinned to the front of the tables, which we covered in bedsheets we had!

We heard some talk that this was a slow year for this fair, we wouldn't have known the difference though. Being that we were very pleased with how we did on a "slow year" I'd love to try it again!

In the next couple of days, I will be listing the extra tutus I didn't sell at the fair in my shop as ready to ship tutus. Most of them will fit newborn up to 4T, so keep an eye out for them!