First Craft Show of the Season.

Yesterday (Saturday) I attended my first craft show of the season, and the first one for me in Halifax.  Unfortunately it was not well attended, though this was through no fault of the organizers who worked their butts off to line up some great vendors with lovely products.  It rained hard later in the day, but for an event the day before Mother's Day, we were all scratching our heads wondering where all the shoppers were!  Despite that, I'm happy to have my name and my cards out in the Halifax area.  You never know when that little bit of presence may come back to you in the future.  Of course I promoted the Pictou County Weekend Market too, so people would know where to find my products and the products of other fine artisans through the summer - June 19th to September 19th.  Website is HERE.

Whatever the challenges of the day, it gave me a chance to try out a new display scheme and I think it worked well.

I had a corner spot, and because the tables were set up with me behind one leg of the L instead of being behind both of them, it gave me a different option to setting up my products.  I've been using two heavy folding bookshelves and I wanted to try something a little less cumbersome to set up.  So here it is.

This is the soap and B&B part of the display.  The tables are quite narrow, so there isn't a lot of room to spare, but I have 24 varieties of soap here.  Plus bath bombs (which are new this year) and a small display of lotion sticks, Night Time Foot Cream and Peppermint Foot Scrub.  I'm using black metal mesh letter trays from Staples and they fit 4 varieties of soap very well.  I also have matching black mesh sorting trays from the dollar store for things like the bath bombs.  I like that they fade into the black of the table covering so the soap and other things stand out.

Here's a closeup of one of the soap trays.  I've added labels for each of the varieties of soap too.  I still have a little work to do on them, but the general idea works pretty well.  The upper trays are sitting on the upended totes that I used to take the soap to the show.  As you can see, there is space between them to put other stuff too.

A little better view of the corner.  Not really enough space where the votives are to put anything else because it will hide the business cards, but on a larger table it might be more accessible.

Here are the candles facing the table with the soap.  I used a couple of step shelves that I got at Wal-Mart to make them easier to see.  I really wish I could get a few more of them, but the last few times I've looked for them I haven't seen them.

This is the end of the table.  The wax tarts and the tealights are in two of the dollar store mesh paper trays.  They work pretty well turned sideways so the candles don't slip out.

The far side of the candle table - Soy candles and wax votives on this side.  I had intended to only put out 6 boxes of votives, but decided to put the other two out as well.

And a closeup of the votives.  Two scents in each box; I tried to keep them complimentary, such as French Vanilla and Hot Fudge Brownie in one box, Northern Blueberry and Strawberry Rhubarb in another and so on.  I did remove the incorrect and leftover labels after I took the photo.  ;-)







All in all, I was pleased at how the display went together.  There are still some bugs to work out, but for the most part it was pretty smooth, especially tear down.  This weekend coming, I'll see how it works at the Farmers' Market.

Now I have to tidy my workshop and take pictures of that - that will be the subject of my next post.

See you then!