Setting Up A Booth For A Festival

The first thing we do when we get to a festival is find our designated spot.  Then we start hauling all our stuff to the site.  We have tables, tent, jewelry displays, sign, and other things needed to make sales during the day.  Oh, and a cooler with some drinks and food.  (Food can be expensive at the fairs and festivals, so we try to bring our own).  The above shots were taken early in the morning when we were at San Clemente for their annual beach festival.

In the picture above you can see the festival tents down on the beach where they will hold races, surfing contests and more.  The vendors, like us are up on a bluff overlooking the beach - really a perfect place.

Here are a set of pictures showing Steve setting up the tent and securing it to construction bricks.  We have found that one needs to have weights to attach to the tent legs to hold the tent securely in place.  You never know when a strong wind might come up and want to blow the tent away - especially at the beach.

After we get the tent up and the tables in place, we set out the jewelry.  Placing the jewelry and displays takes some time and we are always changing where we put things depending on table placement.  So we find it takes about 2 hours to set up everything - tent to jewelry.

After we are all set up, then it is time to check out the other vendors or get coffee or just walk around as we'll be stuck in the tent once the people start coming.

Art fairs and festivals are a lot of work - setting up and tearing down after the show - packing and hauling, but they can be lots of fun too.  The advantages of going to festivals is that one can show your work, get known by people, pass out cards with your business numbers and websites and of course, sell the jewelry.  I like to think of ourselves as jewelry gypsies.  Here are a couple pictures of some of our new sea glass jewelry pieces.