Lexington show, 2006
What initially prompted this series was a small craft show in 2006. My son’s fiance lives in Lexington, Illinois. It’s a farming community just east of Bloomington. They have a yearly craft show/yard sale and I paid for a booth space in their town park.
Here is my husband, Allen, and the front left side of the booth. What we had were some folding tables placed in a U formation with the base of the U being the front of the booth. On the table are rows of craft boxes which held an assortment of beads, separated by type. Where the customer is bent over is a black foamcore board placed on a tabletop easel with rows of hang tags.
A hang tag was a way to display my more expensive bead sets and pendants These tags are made from card stock and printed on my home printer. The card folds over and covers the top of the little zipper jewelry baggie containing the item. On the back is a paragraph about how to care for polymer clay jewelry. A staple holds the card stock and zipper baggie together. If I’m planning to hang the item, I put a hole in the top center of the hang tag with a hole punch.
Here is what one of the bead trays looked like. I took the hinged lid off the tray so it wouldn’t be in the way and take up too much space on the table. It was this photograph in particular that really spurred the desire for me to change how I had done things for my booth.
To cover the tables I bought black twin top sheets, one for each table. They were approximately $2.00 each at Wal-Mart. I also invested in a printed 12″ x 6′ vinyl banner from Kinko’s, which was about $30. But the biggest investment was an EZ-Up canopy. It was about $200 but very much worth the money.
The guy in the red checkered shirt is my son Phil. He’s an awesome salesman and was demonstrating product all day. This view is the left side of the booth, which held tools and kits and millefiore canes.
I think overall this booth had some good elements, but it needed some improvement to make it look more professional. So that launched me into a desire to do a complete overhaul. Allen and I talked about what kinds of things we’d like to see in the booth, and we made out a wish list.
