Eek! Craft Fayres!

Ok, so you guys already know I was sweating bullets (not literally) over this Xmas Craft Fayre we participated in on Friday night. It was a very strange evening - Savi's friend's mum came and bought a handbag  - the one on the right.  She was so excited about it, and I LOVE selling to people like that - I get so inspired and excited making them and it's nice to see other people like my work, too.

The rest of the evening was pretty slow, and pretty weird.  I guess it was the wrong venue/crowd for what we're selling, but at least we got some idea of what people like (stuff below £7 and small), so I can make more of that for school fairs and put the big stuff on etsy or something.

This was our first attempt at a 'show table' with Savi smiling away, peeking over the top.

A view of the school hall.

During the first hour, there was a choir accompanied by someone playing a keyboard, the volume of which was turned up so loud that you wouldn't have known people were singing if you weren't looking at them.  We were very lucky in being directly opposite from them, so in a better position than anyone else to hear the keyboard and ignore the choir. In the pic above, the choir and keyboard are directly to the left, while our table is the first one on the left. In short, I had a pretty big headache 30 mins into the show. (Why didn't anyone tell them to turn the keyboard down?)

Then, I foolishly looked on stallfinder.com and found a place in Lyndhurst that puts on around 60 craft shows a year, and after emailing the fair manager got an offer to have a table Sunday 10am to 4pm, for £15. Here's the pic:

Looks a little less cluttered than our first attempt...

Now, they charge 40p admission fee to even get in to see the tables, which I suspect makes people either wary of being ripped off (again) or perhaps promotes them to expect wonders on the scale of Ripley's Believe it or Not once they get inside and look around.  Naturally, it's fairly unlikely that either of these things will happen, so people tended to march through with a scowl on their faces, bitterly disappointed at being so foolish as to squander 40 pence. I don't blame them.  But, without counting the fuel and the sandwiches we bought, we were only down 50 pence by the time it ended, after 6 long hours of smiling and trying to get people to look at my stuff for more than 5 seconds. After talking to other vendors I discovered that almost everyone had had a very bad day, so at least it wasn't just my stuff that people hated?...
Actually, I didn't really care that much about that.  It was a little embarrassing to fail so spectacularly in front of one of the few people whose opinion really matters, my husband, who bankrolled the whole thing. But we gathered a TON of useful information about what people like and want to buy. Plus there was one couple who were REALLY tempted to buy the London backpack, which is £89, which in itself was quite flattering.

 

view of the hall we were in at Lyndhurst.

Before I went, I got a ton of really useful advice from people over at The Hive, which I am so totally grateful for.  It was a huge help in making sure I was prepared. And honestly, no one at either fayre did a roaring trade except the people who pocketed the money for the space/tables.  There was one chick on Friday night who was selling hand-embellished knickers that were absolutely beautiful, but it was the wrong crowd. Ah well, live and learn, right?

So now we have one craft fayre left, at a school in Winchester on 3 Dec, having cancelled the huge one we were doing on the 4th because it's an outside thing and we don't have all the kit to do it. 
So now, my SewHappyGeek friends, I'm off to take pictures and load some stuff onto the etsy store.

Thank you all, and have a great week!