two weeks later here it is! the post about the crazy craft fair i did! sorry it took so long to post this, i had to catch up sleep and orders after the show and then was down with the stomach flu this week. i'm finally back at it!
klondike days is a two day festival held by the city of eagle river that celebrates all things winter & woodsy! i knew that the festival wouldn't quite draw my target market, but my mother in law wanted to pay the entry fee so i figured i should at least test the waters!
perhaps because i didn't pay the fee myself, or maybe because i wasn't expecting things to be super awesome i was a little behind in preparing for klondike days. the week before the show there was a lot of this happening at our house {fabric flowers, snack & my little snuggle dog}
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| she's a great snuggler, but not a very good helper! |
i finally decided to just let myself sleep and whatever i had would be good enough. the show wanted us to demonstrate our work while we were there so i figured i could just keep on working throughout the weekend! since the highschool where the festival was happening is only 4 minutes from our house we only took the big stuff- tables, chairs, shutters & doors- the night before and then brought all the product the morning the show started.
these doors that i use for my display were abandoned in the basement of our house in wheaton. i LOVE them. they are old & solid & beautiful! there were actually 3 of them & we were hoping to bring them all with us to the woods, but the single one had to stay behind. it was going to be my new headboard- sad!
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| this picture was taken at the end of the day sunday- things are looking kinda bare! |
my booth was on the corner of the craft fair, right across from the teaching drum. since the festival was all about outdoor living the teaching drum people were there to talk about wilderness skills. now i'm a camp girl, i have some wildersness skills, but these were serious people! they were all dressed in leather outfits they had made, there was a shelter set up in the middle of the gym and animal skins hanging everywhere. i definitely live in the woods!
all day saturday and sunday i had a perfect view of one of the guys actually 'creating' one of the skins that they have hung up. it started with a big furry piece of an animal and he just used a weird branch to remove the guts & fur. saturday it wasn't so bad, but sunday the animal smelled horrible which made the gym an unfortunate place to be. i sent brandon over to take pictures of the process but he didn't want to just stand there & take pictures so he did a walk by photo shoot with my phone- little bit blurry!
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| he said they usually use wolf skin {not sure where they're getting that?!} but this was just a deer |
back to the fun parts- my display! i've determined that i need some sort of backdrop for indoor shows. i've only ever done outdoor shows and the back of my tent creates a nice wall but indoor i don't have anything. when you walked up to my booth the back of it got lost in the massive amounts of fleece at the blanket booth behind me & the giant sign from the dip guys next door. funny thing about being next to the dip booth- i wasn't allowed to have any food or drink all weekend {no coffee!!!} but it was okay to sell & sample dips and skin animals. weird double standard. and yes, i snuck coffee in anyway, which was tricky! a friend and her family came for the festival which was mostly outdoors so she had a thermos in her backpack pocket- they took it from her at the door! the food options out in the foodcourt included a paul bunyan brownie that took up 4 cafeteria tables, elk burgers, bison burgers and {of course} brats! brandon had to man the table so i could leave & gobble down lunch!
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| my booth & my wonderful helper for the weekend! |
besides the doors for the statement necklaces and wreaths, i also had two tables. both were covered with white table cloths and then burlap. i try to make sure my table cloths come down as far as possible in the front so i can hide bins & supplies under the table. in the middle of my larger table was a "tree" {just branches in a jar of sea glass} that held all the flower clips. i couldn't get a great picture of it since i didn't have a great backdrop. i found these fabulous shutters at goodwill down in wheaton for $1.99 and use them as my earring display.
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| also included here: payment accepted & custom order signs |
the smaller table just held cake stands. these were a huge conversation piece and i sold a few, but people were really funny about them. i admit, if i saw these at a craft fair, i would just leave thinking "i could make that!" and that's fine! the funny people were the ones who obviously wanted to figure out how they were made without asking me or actually touching the cake stands. this led to a lot of people bent over, awkwardly trying to see the bottom of the plates. these same people would leave as soon as i tried to make conversation. made me chuckle! the most fun was having people recognize some of the china as their mom's or grandma's pattern, or even as their own!
i didn't get good pictures of my headband display {a wine bottle} or the bracelets {on a velvet bracelet holder} but those both sold well! a couple of the crocheted bracelets i was working on sold right after i finished them!
more pictures of some of the craziness i encountered? why sure! sorry for the poor quality, these are cell phone pictures i snapped quickly as people walked by!
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the typical klondike days patron. these people didn't really go for
fabric flowers or crocheted bracelets :) |
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he was wearing a hat made of a whole skunk, but he must of gotten hot because the
skunk was just sitting on his shoulder |
this was the booth across the track from me. she came to visit a few times and was pretty frustrated with the whole festival. it moved weekends and the price of admission tripled. she said in the past 10 years attendance has gone down dramatically and it won't really be worth her time anymore. she said she only sold one hat on sunday {perhaps because everyone at the festival already owned one?}
it was a very interesting weekend! i learned more about my target market and gained experience at an indoor show. i discovered that little old ladies aren't afraid to wear giant flowers! i did just fine financially and got to watch a hatchet throwing contest. i met people who raced dogsleds and others who did the 6 mile race in snowshoes. i learned more than i ever wanted to know about leather outfits & skinning a deer. i'm not sure if i'll be back next year {i might need to add a line of fur necklaces...} but klondike days was a weekend i'll never forget!
