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.

Weather Nightmare At Street Fair

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.  

Ways to Promote Your Jewelry

As you've read in this blog, we've been selling our sea glass jewelry at art fairs and festivals. We've also been selling them on the web at Etsy. Etsy is a large website that hosts stores for artisans, suppliers and vintage sellers. Etsy is an easy way to get your product for sale on the web as they provide the website, simple steps to get started and also a check out/buying cart. I would recommend Etsy to artisans just getting started on the web. You a can see our Etsy store at http://sistersjewelrydesign.etsy.com/

Okay, so we are on the internet, but how do people hear about us? Find us? Well, at festivals, we give out our cards which list our Etsy site. We list our site on all our emails underneath our names. This is advertising and a way to promote our sea glass jewelry, but it isn't enough to just be on the internet. The internet is HUGE, so we have to do things to promote our site. First, we joined liked minded sites to promote our Etsy store like Facebook - you can see my Facebook page of Sisters Jewelry Design at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sisters-Jewelry-Design/328818121698 there you can like our page and tell others about us. Also I joined a site that promotes Etsy artists called "We Love Etsy," http://etsylove.ning.com/ This ning site gives you a home page where you can talk to other artists and/or advertise your work with pictures and comments - like - "hey, look what I just created." We also pay for a small site on Handmade Spark which is a marketing service for people on Etsy. What I like about Handmade Spark is you can find everything we are doing in one place, ie., blogging, shop, twitter etc. You can click on this following url to go see my site on Handmade spark -http://www.handmadespark.com/myspark/SistersJewelryDesign

Here is a badge they give to you to put on your sites then you click on the sign and off you go to my advertising site. There are other sites to promote your website/store on the web and just a few are Linkedin, Stumbleupon, Handmade Artist Hangout and more. You can twitter about your jewelry - promote your work! There are so many ways to promote your art on the web even this blog is a way for me to share and PROMOTE our sea glass jewelry.

You can spend hours promoting your work on the web or you can hire other people to do it for you. You can spend money on Google ads, we haven't done the ads yets because I want to have a website first. Hours and money can be spent on advertising.

We've also tried a few unconventional ways to promote our sea glass jewelry. My sister Shirley belongs to several charities and is often called to help decorate or set up an auction, a dinner, a lunch. Recently, she was involved in a charity where you buy a table and invite friends. Well, often when you buy a table at an event you can decorate it the way you want! Shirley decided to do a center piece of sea shells and our sea glass jewelry. Here are a couple of pictures of the table (sorry about dimness of photo).

Note how the sea glass necklace on a card lays over the napkin or is tied around a star fish.

One man at the table did take a necklace home by mistake - his wife called Shirley the next day to say they had her necklace. Our jewelry wasn't for sale at the event, but everyone at the table got a good look at some of our pieces. You never know when someone needs a gift and will remember something they saw recently - like our sea glass jewelry. You can also contribute a piece of your art to a charity for auction which is a great way to promote your product.

Another way, we advertise our jewelry is by having it in a case at Shirley's Travel agency. The case filled with jewelry sits on a side table and above the case hangs a picture of sea glass jewelry. Sometimes, someone takes a look and/or even buys a piece. Here are a couple photos of Shirley's set up -

The above ideas are just a few ways we are trying to promote our sea glass jewelry. It is an ongoing learning process. We'd love to hear from you readers if you have any suggestions.

Stay tuned as next we tackle creating our own website!

Day One - Art Festival Cathedral City, California

This is a picture of me standing with a group of people. This shot was in the Desert Sun Newspaper, in Palm Springs. Friends called me when they saw the shot and said, "You're in the paper, you're in the newspaper." Well, if you can call seeing a side view of me in a white sleeveless shirt "in the newspaper," then there I am chatting away.

Steve is sitting at our booth. We made the mistake of using flowered cloths for our tables and the jewelry got lost. On Sunday, we switched out the cloths for plain burgandy and the jewelry looked much better. This was our first show and we made a bunch of mistakes, but we learned a lot.






As you can see, the pendants and the earrings look much better on black velvet.




















Key holder bracelets. Great for a house key and slip it on your wrist and off you go. Or use it for the gym key or your tiny credit cards like the grocery store ones and leave it in your car for when you shop. Despite the flowery tablecloths we sold a number of pendants, bracelets and earrings. And we met some great people - buyers and other artists. My friend and hairdress Drew Scott (I call him Scott), first told me about the show and how to enter. So when we arrived to set up I was so pleased to see that his space was close to ours.

Scott took 3rd place in the juried paintings - and this was also his first big show. And over the two days, he sold a number of his great paintings over the two day event. Scott told me that he loves painting and working with different mediums to create his art. You can find his website at http://www.artbydesign.vpweb.com/

Next to Scott's space was Ted L. Reynolds. His work took first place in the show. I love abstract painting and Ted's work is really interesting.

Next to Ted's space was Gerry High (pronounced Gary). Gerry is a noted Palm Springs artist and he also has his own gallery on line at http://www.gerryhighartgallery.com/ Gerry spent some of his time painting which drew a crowd to his booth. He is a good artist and a really nice person. I liked him alot.

The artists were all great and interesting to talk with and compare notes. We learned a lot from other jewelry sellers like Pat Newman with her Dichroic Glass Jewelry.

And JoMarie Anton who has been selling Native jewelry for twenty years. JoMarie's space was right next to ours so we got in a lot of good gab time. And her jewelry is awesome. I don't know why I didn't get a picture of JoMarie, but maybe she was talking with someone or selling. I'll see her again and post more about her later. You can see more of her work at http://www.nativedreamlodge.com/ Check out her lovely necklaces, you'll be glad you did. Then way in the back corner was Kendra of Culbertson Designs. Kendra likes to work in pearls and she was great in giving me some places to buy pearls. One place she suggested was Quartzite in Arizona. I'm dying to take a trip there and see all the rocks, fossils and gems. It is supposed to be one of the biggest rock and gem shows in the world. I think that the big show is in the winter, but I'll find out and report back. These are aqua quartz earrings with sterling silver lever back ear hooks.

Okay, I've got to go now. It is 114 degrees today here in the desert. I've got the air on but it is still hot as Hades outside. Took Dylan to the dog park and stayed too long so now I've go a bit of a headache. Tomorrow, I'll post more about the other artists at the show including a sculptor from Fairbanks, Alaska who sculpts life-size horses out of stone.