Preparing for Thornebrook Art Festival

My next art event is at the Thornebrook Art Festival, September 24 and 25.  I've actually been getting inventory ready for the past month (including Halloween jewelry), so I just need to get my game on and get organized.  I probably wouldn't be thinking about this too much at all, but for all intents and purposes, I'm going to be unavailable the week prior to the event.  Yeah, I know that doesn't sound like a good idea, but an incredible opportunity with my other line of silver jewelry presented itself and I couldn't pass it up.  I'll be out of town selling that jewelry almost the entire week before.

No worries.  I'm getting ready this week and next.  Here's what I have to do:

1. Since I'm redoing the booth to make it as easy as possible for one person to set up and decorate, I need two new tables and two tablecloths.  I might also go with some organza table covers.  Not sure.  Still thinking about that one.
2. Since I have my only sale of the year in conjunction with this show, I need to get that jewelry packaged.  It has worked out well to have that jewelry packaged and priced in a basket for people to sift through.  
3. I will also have wireless access in order to process credit card information at the show this year.  That will be a big time savings and I don't have to worry about declined credit cards later.
4. Of course, I need to get focused on having enough finished jewelry.  That means that I had to be finished with pouring resin LAST week in order for me to finish it this week.  I'm actually doing the best on this one.

Stay tuned for picture updates.

Outdoor festival jewelry booth design

In case you haven't noticed, I've missed a couple of blog posts in the last few days.  If having TWO batches of resin that didn't cure properly (mostly hard, but sticky like scotch tape when you touched them) wasn't bad enough, I've gotten the wild hair to redo my outdoor art festival jewelry booth.

This is my current booth.  It is composed of wooden boxes with collapsible glass boxes on top.  The boxes themselves don't collapse, but the legs do come off the bottom.  I get lots of great comments on it, so why change?

Couple of reasons:

1. I don't think it fits the resin jewelry style.  I think this display is a good match for sterling silver and semi precious stone jewelry, but little too "snooty" for resin jewelry.
2. It's a bit cumbersome to lug around.  For shows like the Downtown Festival and Art show, in Gainesville in November, where I can't set up until Saturday morning, there is no way I can set this up by myself in time for the show. 
3. It's time for a change.

So here's what took me five days to come up with.  (Thanks to Google Sketch Up for the help.)

First, let me say, the wall and floor colors are a bit more "intense" than what I would say they will be, but you'll get the idea.

The floor is actually the brick road street downtown.  Unfortunately, it isn't as level as the picture shows.

The long table is 2 four foot tables put together.  It is draped with ivory tablecloths, with a table runner on top.  The table runner matches some jewelry display novelty items I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond a couple of months ago for my wholesale show.  The table runner is ivory with a few large flowers on it.

The walls are going to be a sheer drapes in the aqua color.  My hope is that they will give enough color without feeling heavy.

The three hanging wall items will be jewelry displayed in a frame at eye level.

So you might be asking, why not go over the top color like what I did with my wholesale art jewelry booth?  I did think about out.  Really, I did.  All I can say is now I understand why fashion designers put out the big over-the-top fashion pieces -- to grab attention.  I think the wholesale booth does a great job of drawing business and art gallery owners in and making it crystal clear that my jewelry is about fun and color.  I'm a bit concerned that the same "over the top" approach to retail customers may be too much.

What do you think? 

Resin jewelry making pictures

My sterling silver and resin jewelry has been a bit neglected for the past couple of months. The scrabble tile pendants have taken off with orders, and I have been mostly focusing on them as of late. That is changing a bit as we move closer to the holiday shopping season. These are just some random pictures from this weekend of resin and silver pendants in progress.

The resin gets poured in stages.  I only pour one color at a time.













The silver portion of the pendants get "staged" first.  Then I pour the colors.











Can you tell that red and green were my last two pours?  The resin needs at least 24 hours to cure before I pour the next color.

I "overfill" the resin in the silver well.  This will get sanded down later.

When I'm done pouring the resin, I let the jewelry set in a glass pyrex dish covered with plastic wrap.  I will check on it from time to time and make sure nothing is going wrong.  For example, a couple of hours after I poured the green resin, one of the pendants was leaking from underneath.  I was able to get it out and clean up the resin before it made a huge mess on a several pendants.

I hope to have many of these pieces ready for the Downtown Festival and Art Show in November.

New resin jewelry storage containers

Whether it's because I'm frugal or resourceful, I'm a big believer in "use it up or wear it out".  I don't just buy the latest "it product" because I want it and I try to repurpose as many things as possible.  As I've found out though, sometimes I have to "start over."

I've been using recycled storage containers (baby wipes, large yogurt tubs, etc.) to store the new scrabble tile jewelry pieces.  As I found with my last art show, it made it difficult to look for a specific piece to accommodate a customer request and/or set out a similar replacement piece for display.  I decided to "splurge" and get some "user friendly" storage pieces.

I bought several wooden trays (shown on right of the picture) and plastic inserts (left side of the picture) with individual  storage bays.

The plastic pieces fit snugly inside the wooden trays.  I can put up to four resin scrabble tile pieces in each bay.  I group them according to theme.

I can then stack the trays on top of each other.

I also purchased a canvas tote bag to store the stacked containers.  The side zips down and I can just slide them in.

Here we go!  All zipped up and ready to head to the Downtown Festival and Art Show in a couple of weeks.  I'm pretty excited that this will make things easier for me to store and organize my resin jewelry pieces.

Resin jewelry and art festivals

So I completely should be fired.  I promised on Friday's post that I would take pictures of my booth as I was getting it together for the Thornebrook Art Festival.  I was almost done when I realized, OOPS!  I hadn't taken a single picture.  I had a few minutes Saturday morning after getting the jewelry in the case to get some pictures.






Thornebrook is the only outdoor show I do where I don't use a tent.  I'm under an awning next to one of the stores in the complex.  I display my work under glass, mostly because, I hate to say it, it tends to get stolen if I don't.  I place the jewelry on display pieces.  I use scrap granite tiles and travertine stone to help give the display some lift and visual interest.  I also have signs up briefly explaining the procedures and prices.







This time of year is my one and only advertised sale.  I prepackaged all my sale jewelry this year and had it in two baskets.  A lot of my shoppers said they were getting their holiday shopping done early.  I was only left with a handful of pieces.








This was the first time I had the scrabble tile pendants in public, and they were a hit!  The biggest sellers were the Halloween themed pendants (seen in the lower right corner of this picture.  I will have the Halloween jewelry up until October 31.  Click here if you would like to purchase a piece of Halloween jewelry.







Thanks to all who came out to see me at the festival.  See you next month at the Downtown Festival and Art show!