Art Fair Report

So, my first Art and Craft Fair appearance of the Pre-Christmas season, or indeed, ever, was on Saturday. It was at Padiham, which is a smallish town about 30 miles to the north of Manchester, which I had never been to before, and which seemed like a nice little town. The Market itself was in the concert hall of the town hall building, which was a lovely wood panelled, art deco style room, and apart from me I guess there was roughly 15 other stallholders, selling knitwear, ceramics, sewn goods, other photographers, some painters, jewellery makers and a woodworker. So, a good mix. And although there were other photographers, my work was very different from theirs, as it was largely landscape or nature photography, so we complimented each other without being competition.
After spending last week fretting a bit about how my stall would look, I was actually quite pleased with the final result, which you can see here:

The proud smallholder with her wares

So, once I was set up, all I could do was wait for the people to come in and see whether they would want to buy any of my stuff. The doors opened at 11am, and there was a pretty steady stream of people until they closed again at 4pm. Lots of people stopped to look and just for a chat, and then one lady bought a card. Yay! My first sale! There was a bit of a lull in trading for a while after that, but then things picked up again and I sold several more cards. I was "warming up" a bit now, and getting better at talking to the people that stopped at the stand, and explaining a little bit of what my work was about and what inspired me etc. People were really genuinely interested and receptive, and said lots of kind, encouraging things,which was really nice. And then I sold one of my more expensive, giclee prints, which I wasn't necessarily expecting to do, so that was a lovely surprise. Sales in cards and stickers were steady after that. Several people really liked Anna's lamps, but nobody "fell in love" enough to actually buy one. And then, right at the end of the day, I sold another print. I was kind of hoping to sell a few more prints, but overall I was really happy with how the day went.

 I spoke with several fellow stallholders and got some good contacts, advice and ideas out of that, and I gave out my "business card" (actually a postcard flyer from an old exhibition, which I happen to have loads of left over) to lots of people, so overall I'm really happy with how it went. It was the first ever event like this for Padiham too, so I think they must have been really pleased as well. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, so I will definitely go there again when they do their next market.

 Ok, onto the next! That will be the MAKE Art and Design Fair in Wakefield, on Wednesday 27th and Friday and Saturday 29th and 30th of November. It looks like the emphasis will really be on the "Art" side, not so much on crafts, so I'm really hoping that I will be a big hit there. I have a few weeks to prepare for that, so I'll take the lessons I learned here, (mainly, sell work mounted but not necessarily framed, and have a rack to put the prints in, so I can fit lots more on my stand!) and hopefully have a lots of success there!

The Giclée print I sold

The joy of prints!

So, I had a busy day today, that has left me feeling very excited about the market on Saturday. Firstly, I made a trip to a...ahem, well known homewares store, where I got all kinds of cool stuff to help make my stall look awesome, and to buy some reasonably priced frames to frame some of my prints. I have previously bought a couple of table top easels to display prints, but while I was winding my way through the endless aisles of the shop it suddenly struck me that I might find other things that will help with the display process, especially of my cards, and my friends lamps that I will also be selling. (more about those later!).
 I looked at some sort of woven wicker magazine racks and pen holders thingies for ages - they were just what I wanted in terms of shape, but they looked pretty ugly. I toyed with the idea of spray painting them and weaving bits of thread through them, but in the end I opted for a smarter wooden desk tidy thing, that can display the stuff quite nicely I think. That leaves me without anything to display the print son, but perhaps I'll treat myself to a proper print rack for my next market.

Some of my wares arranged in the desk tidy

When I got home there was still no email from the printers, so I rang them up, and they told me my prints were ready! Yay! I was there in a flash, and could see that the bigger prints looked GREAT!, but I had to wait to get home to have a look at the cards, and I'm THRILLED with them as well! I literally can't wait to show them off at the market. I just have a busy day of mounting and framing tomorrow, and then it's showtime!

All 10 designs of greetings cards I'll be selling at the market

So, about the lamps, a few of which you can see above. They are made by a Hungarian friend of mine called Anna Kaszanitzky, who has kind of done similar to me, and followed her dreams to become a self-employed professional lamp maker. She makes amazing lampshades much bigger and more ambitious than any of the things I am currently selling of hers, but just to give it a try, I brought over from Hungary some of her smaller, battery operated novelty lamps, like these:

 They are all individually hand made and unique, so they aren't cheap, but I'm hoping people with love them as much as I do. Eventually, I would like to sell some of her bigger pieces, which you can check out at her website or on her facebook page.

 I am bursting to know how mine and Anna's work will be received. For me especially it's about whether people be attracted to buy at these new lower prices, and will the cards sell well? I'm not expecting the giclees to fly off the shelves, because they are expensive, but I'm hoping the more affordable stuff will sell like hot cakes! Because then I'll know if this really is a self sustainable thing - if I can do something I love AND make a little bit of profit out of it. I'll probably be too busy to post tomorrow, as as well as being the crunch day for getting ready, it's also my birthday, so I won't report in until after the show. So, if you're reading this before Saturday, keep your fingers crossed for me!