This spring, I had the immense pleasure of being a vendor at two markets around Alberta! I don’t get to do too many markets & craft shows these days, so doing TWO (on back-to-back weekends) was a pretty big deal for me! There were lots of reasons to be excited, including having actual booths at both markets instead of a single table, and focusing primarily on selling my Love Catcher & Dreamcatcher designs. Today I’m sharing how I tackled my display at the shows.
Before I head out of town, I wanted to give you a little peek at last weekend’s Etsy: Made In Canada market. It was an AMAZING market!! What an incredible feeling to be included in such a successful & well-received show. Calgary is just craving all that handmade goodness! Check out my little post prior to the show.
The line-up to get into Etsy: Made In Canada (and score one of the sweet swag bags) started at 9am, a whole hour before the market even opened! Once the doors were opened, it was a steady stream of people coming through until 4pm!! I kid you not. Things only slowed down a bit in the last hour, but other than that, it was busy, busy, busy. You’ve also got to picture that the weather in Calgary was, well, kind of miserable that day. Down right cold, overcast, light drizzle of rain mixed with the occasional snowflake. Did I mention that half of the vendors were outside, tucked under tents, but still outside? Yep, I was out there too. Layers of comfy sweaters, hot coffee, and lots of lovely customers kept us all warm!
So here’s what my table looked like this time around. I think I’m finally getting there in terms of a more unified display & product style. Years in the making, but it’s coming together. The Love Catchers were quite a hit (although tricky to photograph here). I’m looking forward to making some more… there’s a big box of supplies waiting in the sewing room for when we get back.
Bubblegum Sass was included in a nice feature on the UPPERCASE magazine blog. Some of the gals who helped put on the show have blogged about it too, including Hilda of Handmade Therapy and Lindy of Crafted By Lindy. BIG thanks to the organizers and volunteers who helped pull this wonderful show off! Sounds like Etsy: Made In Canada went really well across Canada. Hopefully, Etsy decides to do it again. For now, I’ve got my fingers crossed on getting into one of the Market Collective Christmas shows in December. Hopefully I’ll have good news about that to share with you soon.
Thought we’d do a little bit of a different Button-spiration this week. I usually end up sharing a tutorial or project of interest by a fellow blogger, but instead I’d like to offer a peek at some of the items I finished up for the Boutique Wedding Market. There’s plenty of button goodness in all of it, of course.
Yep, it’s true. Kinda. Sorta. Well, it’s actually more that they hang from wood, as in the case with my new display stand. Purses just seem meant to hang, don’t they? So it is super exciting to have this display to use instead of balancing the purses on a table. Plus, I will be able to display more of my purses. I briefly mentioned this project and the inspiration that came from Hilda of Handmade Therapy a couple weeks ago. I put the finishing touches on the stand yesterday. Of course I had to use buttons somewhere in the project! They delightfully adorn the ends of each display arm.
Just as with the banner I made, I failed to photo document this fun project. Once I know what I need to make, I get all excited and just make it and then think afterward about how I should have photographed the process to share with all of you. One day I will learn.
The basic recipe for this stand is pretty straightforward. Enlist the help of a someone with tools, patience, and awesome problem solving skills (also known as Dad). Take a post intended for a banister (I suppose this piece would be one of the balusters, although I’m no stair expert). Cut to the desired height. 
Use a drill press to make holes for the arms. Take some wooden dowel of the appropriate diameter and insert through holes. Cut four pieces of wood to create a basic, but attractive base. Screw base to the stand. Sand. Paint. Paint again. Use a hot glue gun to fix big colourful buttons onto the end of each arm for a quirky finish. There is a cheerful pink sign to sit on top of the stand, which simply attaches via the miracle of magnets. Viola! A home for purselettes. Thanks for all your help Dad! Loved wondering around Rona, brainstorming ideas!
Now I just have to play around with displaying my small zip purselettes on the table, since those gals don’t hang…
I feel like I have been neglecting this here blog a bit, posts becoming farther apart; more time spent in front of the sewing machine than in front of the laptop. So I thought I would pop in and give a brief update on all the sewing progress and preparation for the Make It show. Remember when I said I wanted to spend a little more time experimenting and exploring some new sewing ideas? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past week. And it has been FUN!
Say hello to the newest purselette gals! Miss “I won’t let the rain keep me down”. She enjoys long walks on spring evenings and splashing through puddles. You might even catch her indulging in an ice cream cone.
And next we have Miss “I see rainbows on a sugar high”. She’s a shopaholic who can’t resist anything with glitter and hearts. You’re likely to find her baking sweet treats at home, with a cake decorator in one hand and a glass of cream soda in the other.
In case you’re starting to get a bit worried, I have not gone completely crazy. There’s just something about sewing colourful buttons on bright pink and teal that starts to make you go a little loopy. Anyway, what do you think of the newest editions? Quite different from my stripey purses, but I love their playfulness!
After turning out quite a few more purselettes, I’ve had to buckle down and take a serious look into how exactly to display all of these at the market. I’ve been dreaming of a coat rack-type of display unit and wouldn’t you know it, one of my fellow Etsy team members recently had her husband make one for her. Hilda of Handmade Therapy was sweet enough to pass along a photo of it. It’s a fairly simple design, but I think it would be perfect. So, enlisting the help of my wonderful father, I will hopefully get something similar constructed this week. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Wishing you fresh spring showers and sweet cupcakes until then!
(About two hours after I wrote this post, little white snowflakes started to fall. 15 hours later and it is still falling. Not quite the spring rains I was hoping for, but I guess I should know better… thinking that I need to come up with a winter wonderland purselette)
