Comments on: Selling Handmade Beaded Jewelry at Craft Fairs and Jewelry Shows

By: Tantesherry

Tantesherry — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:42:49 +0000

I had a check list on our fridge – the only Other items I took to our outdoor markets were sun block, bug spray and an umbrella–the last year we had the market it seemed so much hotter a FAN would have been great!

By: Cindy Lietz@Teardrop Blend Color Shifts

Cindy Lietz@Teardrop Blend Color Shifts — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:31:49 +0000

@Connie N: Welcome Connie to our friendly blog. I think you will find it to be a creative and supportive place to hang out and learn about polymer clay. Making jewelry is fun and rewarding and I am happy to see you are enjoying the process. I wish you lots of success with it! Let us know if you want to add polymer clay bead making to your skill set. It is pretty fun!

By: Connie N

Connie N — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:27:12 +0000

Just went to Lucinda’s site from 2008 and saw her beautiful artwork! What talent!

I am new at jewelry making. I just retired from teaching with a disability that makes it hard for me to do crafts like knitting and crocheting because they take long and etc. Anyway, a friend suggested making earrings. I am enjoying this immensely. My son helps if anxiety sets in. ha I am thinking of either selling on line or going to a craft fair or show. This list has a lot of great reminders that I wouldn’t thought of. I will continue reading for more ideas. For sure I will go to some shows as a visitor and see what they are like. Thanks for the input!

By: Megan B

Megan B — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:34:49 +0000

This is a great list! thank you for sharing! I always seem to forget something or another whenever I do a craft show, probably in part to waiting until the last minute to try to get everything ready, prices, and displayed properly! Live and learn i suppose! :-)

By: Maria

Maria — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:56:22 +0000

@Ken, Catalina, Carolyn and Marlene- thank you so much for the kind words of encouragement and commiserating with me! I can’t quit – after all my entire garage is full of my clay and jewelry making stuff – I have to use it – ha-ha! As our CA governor says:”I’ll be baack” : )

By: Marlene

Marlene — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:08:35 +0000

Maria, my son has been making Hair Twisters and my soon to be daughter-in-law has been selling them at craft fairs in the area since February. In June she started doing a weekly Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and her sales started fine. Then when I decided to share the table, with some of my items, things tanked ( I hope it was just that the same crowd was showing up and not a reflection on my work ;)). We moved to another Farmers Market with a different crowd, and much better reputation, and things have been picking up. This past Saturday was my best day so far. My best advice to you with my limited experience is the same the Market Organizer gave me. “Don’t get discouraged, things with pick up, especially with the holidays coming up.”

By: carolyn

carolyn — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:01:13 +0000

I am currently in Wheat Ridge, CO, with a gal who usually sells lots of pieces, some rather high ticket items, at gallery shows. There was a show Friday evening … she sold only one pair of earrings! She was quite disappointed to say the least. Has there been something strange in the air recently?! Maria, your day will come. Don’t give up.

By: Catalina

Catalina — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:10:54 +0000

Here is my first craft show story. My husband’s ex-wife works at the local community college. She was to organize a special “festival” to help attract new students to the college. She spent a lot of money (that had to be spent on recruiting) from the government. She said not only crafters were wanted but food vendors, antique car owners for a car show, musicians to provide entertainment, clowns, magicians, animal trainers you name it!! It was free to have a booth so no cost to me! I said yes and collected my projects and headed off to sell. Well, she “forgot” one important thing, ADVERTISE the event!!!!
Only twenty current students showed up with their children! Maybe fifty people total showed up!! The car show had NO cars!! Maybe they knew something we didn’t! No food vendors either! I was the the first of the crafts to set up and waited two hours before another booth was set up! We were all so bored and hungry. No one thought to bring food. One girl offered to go find fast food and do a food run for all the crafters!! We started to buy from each other just so we could say we sold something!! Can you believe that? I didn’t mind too much. But these people do is for a living and ended up wasting a day of a good weekend to sell nothing!! They were not too happy that no one showed up. It is one thing to have a lot of people and no sales. But to have no one show up and the whole event was a flop was unheard of. My husband explained it to me as this: it is government money that has to be spent so they can get more! The event didn’t have to be successful!! It just had to happen!! What!!!??

By: Ken H

Ken H — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:37:16 +0000

@ Maria

That stinks (wanted to use another word but didn’t want to offend), most of my sales have been from people I commute with on the train, and people who have seen me selling to the folks on the train (we see each other coming and going), I haven’t sold anything in a while because I’ve been too busy with my day job and performing to make anything other than pieces for the FB Gallery, but my last sales were during the early winter of this year and were very brisk (and economic conditions aren’t much better now than then), I wouldn’t let this get you down, a poor showing at a first year event (and it doesn’t sound like an event that is going to pull the type of crowd that goes to craft shows), now if you do some other shows and you see a trend then I might start being concerned and revisit how you’re targeting merchandise to the type of show, but it sounds like you do well at the bazaars. Keep the chin up!

By: Maria

Maria — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:33:42 +0000

Sigh… times still are really tough out there… I just did my “real” first booth sale (I’ve done a few sales at my church bazaar, but that’s to people I know, so this is different)… I sold ONE bead (in two days) to a lady who wanted to use it for a project. Now, mind you, the other vendors were not doing well either and complaining that this event was very poorly advertised (it was a rock concert/ beer thing/ craft faire). There were not that many people attending as a lot of people were attending a Fall festival in the neighboring town that was well established and known. This is the first time they’ve done this festival so no one was expecting it. I realize now that it is very risky to sell at a first time event (of course, when I signed up I didn’t realize this was their first time, sigh…) Anyway, people would stop by, look at my stuff, compliment how lovely it was and then go away… so frustrating… the only consolation was that about 15 people took my newly minted business cards when I told them I do custom work – so maybe ONE will contact me about making something special for them. How are you folks doing with your sales?