December 3, 2017 - How It All Started
This journey of mine is all my Mom's fault. It actually started a few months ago. I was visiting my Mom at her house, and during the process of cleaning, she had come across a couple yards of old fabric. She thought maybe I could do something creative with it, so she gave it to me. I went home, and stared at the fabric. I can't sew, so any kind of a sewing project was definitely out of the question. I do know how to glue, however. Boy, can I glue. But what can you make with fabric that involves gluing. A memo board might just be the ticket. So, that's what I made (the picture to the right is my very first board). I had a blast. In fact, I had so much fun, I decided to make another one. And then I was hooked. Take a look at my inventory today and you'll understand just how hooked I got.
December 17, 2017 - 1st Non-Family Sale
A few weeks ago, I started listing some of my boards on eBay as a way to get them selling. Since my website can’t accept payments at this point, it’s not a very practical place for selling. And Etsy hasn’t worked well for me in the past, so I wanted to give eBay a try. I listed a couple dozen, and it worked for me. On December 8th, I got notified that I had sold a board (picture shown to the right). I was so thrilled. This was my first sale to a non-family member. I couldn’t wait to package it up and send it off. Over the next 10 days, I sold three more. Not an overwhelming amount of activity, but they’re selling! It’s very exciting. As I’m able to list more on eBay, I’m going to start listing the bling, too. I’m excited to see how well the bling moves. I love it, and I hope others do, too.
January 7, 2018 - Beginning my Marketing Year
I have now listed all of my finished boards on eBay, and I’ve started to list the board bling. I only have a few listed; my goal is to get them all listed on eBay by the end of the month. I also want to submit applications to upcoming craft fairs. I could only find a few fairs in my price range for booth rental; I was shocked to learn how expensive some of them are. That’s probably worth it for higher priced goods, but considering how inexpensive my products are, it doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a booth rental at a single fair. If I can attend 2-4 craft fairs this year, I’ll be happy. If I get accepted to one, my next step will be to design and build a cool, portable display. I already have some of the materials I’d like to use. I have a wood trellis that I can use to hang the boards from. I can even clip the bling to the trellis. I can spruce it up with paint and ribbon. If I’m going to market myself as a crafter, I ought to craft everything, including my display booth. I want to show that nothing is safe from being decorated by me!
January 15, 2018 - Creating My Craft Room
I started this endeavor down in our basement, where I scattered all of my supplies all over the floor. My daughter, Lizzy, helped me in the early days (the work quickly lost its glamour, and I lost my helper). I took over our spare bedroom to make a space where I could store all of my crafting supplies and work on my crafts. I turned into a storage container-buying fiend. I bought so many containers that I thought my family was going to have to do an intervention to get me to stop. But, hey, I need to keep my supplies organized, right? Right. Then, I needed somewhere to stack all of those containers, so I bought a couple of shelving units. I also decided that the bed we had in that room was taking up too much space, so I ditched it, and in its place, I bought a futon. Takes up much less space, and it looks nice in the room. I also bought a TV. Heaven forbid I spend any time in a room that has no TV; I’m pretty sure I’d immediately start suffering extreme withdrawal symptoms.
March 14, 2018 - Prepping For My 1st Craft Fair
I just recently got the news that I was accepted to participate in a craft fair this coming Spring! So exciting! But also so much to do. I started thinking of all I need to do to prepare a booth that will be enticing and draw customers in. It’s got to be colorful and fun. I decided to use a trellis mounted on a table as a way to display my boards. I’ll paint the trellis and wrap fake flowers on top to make it Spring-y. So that’s the basis of the booth. Sounds simple enough, but it’s all the little details that nearly gave me an aneurysm. Everything from an umbrella for shade, to tablecloths, to merchandise bags, to the Square so I can accept payments on my phone, to creating a banner with my company name. It’s actually quite a monetary investment just to create a booth, but I’m so looking forward to participating in a craft fair. And, honestly, I’m nervous, too. I’m not super-outgoing, and I’m definitely not a sales person, so it’s going to be stressful for me to put myself out there and hawk my wares!
May 6th, 2018 – SpringFest 2018: My 1st Craft Fair
I participated in my first craft fair yesterday. It was fun…and a little bit profitable. But very valuable! It was the first time I really set up my booth and displayed my wares. I discovered that a 10’ x 10’ space is really too small to display things like I want. Most of the boards had to be put in crates on the floor. So, they weren’t very accessible. I figured out some other improvements to make for the next fair, which is in a couple weeks. I’ve made new signs for prices and such. The ones I originally made were very colorful and unique, but once they were set up with the products, they got lost. So, I’m going to stick with simpler signage. And I’ll bring the crates of boards up onto the tables, lined up sideways so it’ll be easy to see the basic colors from the side. On the floor, they were in the crates front to back, so only the front board was really visible. I'm also going to bring my two favorite boards from home, all blinged out and displaying some photos, so people can see example of the boards with stuff on them. The metal mesh displays I set up didn’t have sides, but I’m going to put sides on them for the next show so that I can put out a lot more of the bling. Because of the inefficient setup I had this time around, most of the bling remained in plastic containers. No one was going to really go digging around in those to find something. So I need to get the bling out and more visible. Then we move on to the other side of my display – paintings. I displayed quite a few of the Colorful Quotes on Canvas, and they got a lot of looks, but no sales. It wasn’t obvious that people could buy the “blank” painting and then write something on it. So, I’m reconfiguring that whole display as well. And I’m going to print something out that will explain the idea behind Colorful Quotes on Canvas. The next craft fair, in Thornton, will allow me a 12’ x 12’ space – 4 square feet more, which just might be the extra bit I need to set up a nicer display. There was a decent amount of visitors at SpringFest, but only about 30 vendors. Thornton is advertising 200 vendors; that should bring in a much larger crowd! More people – more potential customers! I’m looking forward to it. My Mom and Lizzy both helped me tremendously during my first craft fair, and I’m relying on them for the next one, too. I couldn’t do this without their help! I’m very thankful for them both!
June 24th, 2018 - Johnstown BBQ Days
I was really excited to get accepted to the Johnstown BBQ Days earlier this month. But, oh boy, did it turn out to be less than thrilling. It turns out, this whole shindig in Johnstown was directed at the kids. There were quite a few fun activities for kids, including a rock wall, a bungee jump, and a zipline. This event was definitely not directed at artisans, though. I only sold one board the whole day – didn’t even pay for my booth. What a disappointment! The man running the booth next to mine had carnival toys – plastic swords, bubble-blowing machines, the kind of junk toys that get thrown out a month after they’re bought. And that guy was making money hand over fist. It was depressing watching him making so much money, and there I sat in my booth. The booth looked good, but there was still room for improvement. Halfway through the day, Brandon brought Lizzy out there to relieve my Mom, who started the day with me and helped set everything up. Brandon had some really good input for drawing people into my booth. I have since taken action on that, so I can’t wait to put those ideas in action and see if I can drum up more business at my next craft fair. Speaking of that, the next craft fair I hope to participate in will be the Fall ThorntonFest. Even though I had to miss the Spring ThorntonFest because we got rained out, I feel like I could be really successful at a Denver location…much more traffic, drawn in by many more vendors. I haven’t heard if I’ve been accepted to that craft fair, but hopefully, I’ll hear pretty soon. I’m anxious to get out there and sell!
