Saturday was Small Business Saturday and my son and I departed in the dark hours of the morning to drive just over 50 miles to set up for a craft show.

Attending a craft show, you never know quite what to expect. Since this was a one day show, I tried to cut back a little on how much I displayed, while still covering a range of items. You never know exactly what people might be looking for, so if I make it, I try to display at least a token of it. For instance, I set up all 116 scents that I make in soy candles, but only brought a small amount of my hand spun yarn. (People don’t have the time to knit for a gift this close to Christmas.) I also brought a sample of my husband’s canvases, along with some prints made from his originals.

craft show booth overview

end of wooden shelf

wooden shelf

My son, on the other hand, set up his complete inventory of needle felting and wire wrapping. I think it looked very nice and it did draw people in for a closer look.

necklaces and needle felting

needle feltings

needle felted ornaments and art dolls

The organizer does a nice job, she had advertised, but the number of potential customers seemed down from previous years, as were our sales. She had the vendor next to us slide her tables down a bit, to insure that customers would be able to walk into our corner space. I appreciated that as when we arrived to set up things were looking a little crowded in our corner.

However, as a business, we will have to consider if this will be a show worth our time and effort to do in the future.  With the size of our display, it is more time efficient to set up for two-four day shows, then to do too many one day events. By the time we returned home from a seven hour show we’d been gone for twelve hours! A very long day!

On the personal side, a friend stopped by to say hi, I was able to visit with another friend/vendor, had an interesting conversation about knitting with a lady looking at my yarn, and our son made a lady very happy when he custom made a bracelet to hold a charm the lady had gotten for her granddaughter.

One more show to look forward to (along with the aching back from hauling candles) and our craft show season will end until we start up in the spring!