Well, here we are at another street festival - this time we were at Sunset Beach, California. I had picked this particular festival because of its proximity to the beach. Sea glass, beach glass jewelry - think beach and you get the reasoning behind my decision. If you look to the right of our sign in the picture above you will see a silver car in the distance and beyond that is a sandy path to the beach. Here is a slightly better picture.
As we set up our booth, I'm very excited. I can smell the ocean air. And I plan to walk over after we're ready to check out the beach,. Here are a few of shots of the tables set up with sea glass jewelry.
Sea Glass Nuggets Hanging on Chains
Shirley's Crochet Necklaces with Sea Glass
View of side table
View of Booth Closeup from Front
Another view
Another view with Steve in background
As you can see, a lot of our jewelry is mounted on cards and hangs on boards. Finding a great way to display our jewelry is difficult and I'll go into that in a later posting. Anyway, when the weather is great and there is no wind our displays work well. But at Sunset Beach, we learned what can happen when the wind starts to howl. In the afternoon, of the first day, a light breeze came up. As our booth was situated backing toward the beach access path, we didn't have any buildings to block the wind as it came in off the sea, this was a real problem.
The afternoon progressed and as it did, the slight breeze turned into a wind, a raging, pull your hair out, wind. All the cards on the boards went flying. The tablecloths ruffled and blew back over the tables. And finally, our whole tent began to lift off the ground. As the tent readied itself to fly away like a kite, we scrambled to save it. We didn't have strong stakes to hold down the tent, we didn't have sides or a back for the tent, so we had to lower the back legs trapping us inside. The vendor to our right, helped us tie down the back legs to his generator and we scrunched down inside to weather the wind. Needless to say, our sales fell off as no one wanted to stand in front of a booth that had the wind slapping their face. At 4:30, we started boxing and bagging our jewelry so when the fair ended at 5 we could make a hasty retreat.
As we drove home, we realized that we needed to be prepared for the wind the next day. We went to Home Depot and bought a tarp for the back end and strong steel stakes for staking down the legs of the tent. The next day we were prepared for the wind.
Shot of Booth Enclosed with Tarp
We only enclosed the back of booth
The tarp wasn't especially attractive, but it did the trick of keeping out the wind. (Right now we are looking for a more attractive covering) What the whole experience taught was to be PREPARED for all kinds of weather. Remember, if the street fair is near or at the beach, you can count on there being some breeze or wind.
You can find us at our new website http://sistersjewelrydesigns.com/ where we are always posting new designs in sea glass jewelry - necklaces, pendants, earrrings and more.
New Ice Blue Sea Glass Pendant with Mermaid Charm and Pearl
Coming soon - more adventures selling Sea glass jewelry at street fairs and art fairs.
