Panic Mode

The craft show I've been trying to prepare myself for the last six months is now looming only eight days away and panic mode is truly starting to settle in. In comparison to my normal, not-in-preparation-for-a-craft-show production rate, I think I've accomplished a lot, but when I think about setting all of my current items out on the display tables I feel like my booth will seem a bit sparse. I keep on consoling myself with the fact that it will be quality over quantity and I do think that is true, but I will still like to have more items to offer. I'm expecting to pull several all-nighters in order to add a selection of more affordable items like earrings and basic leather cuffs to assist with this issue. As this is the first craft show I'm participating in more than a decade, I don't expect my booth will be the top notch, most high tech, polished, and über-professional one at the event, but I hope it will rise above the amateurish, be creative, and compliment my work.

I've been planning to redesign my logo and overall "look" as I no longer think it best suits my current style, but in the midst of actually crafting work for the show I just haven't had the time to do so. This means that I'll be using my current business cards and I did not get the opportunity to have an official banner printed. So in lieu of a sleek, vinyl banner I made myself one in the form of a paper bunting. I was inspired by the photos Cathe Holden took of various booths at the San Francisco Renegade Craft Fair (oh how I wish we had Renegade Craft Fairs around here!). Almost all of the crafters featured made their own signage in the form of buntings (even the logo at the top of the post incorporates one), so I decided to try my hand at one. My work doesn't really jive with the primary colors and triangular pennant-like shape of the more traditional buntings some of the San Francisco crafters used, so I modified the design a little bit to suit my style and so far I'm really pleased with the result. I still need to string the individual flags to hang them as a unit and I want to create a spacer flag with the image of an old skeleton key to separate the two words, but otherwise it's all done. Last week my boyfriend and I wandered into Creative Inkling, a scrapbooking and craft shop in Lahaska, PA, for the first time and I bought all sorts of goodies including some gorgeous letter stamps which I used on my bunting. In addition to those I purchased some other items I plan on using for my other signage including large manila tags which have vintage postcard typography on them. I'm planning to use those as signs to list the various prices for my matted prints.