This show was a major leap of faith for me. I’d applied to teach classes there, and had been accepted to teach two of them. I’d also signed up for a full-sized corner booth in the exhibitor hall. Ambitious ventures!
We’d spent a week painting the bifold doors. Jenny’s booth looks great with the doors in their natural wood state; but we thought they wouldn’t look good with the black and white theme of our booth. It took a lot of coats to completely cover these doors, and about 4 gallons of paint! But we were pretty happy with the results, and we still use the bifold door setup today.
Here’s the car, packed and ready for Allen, Margo and I to hit the road to Milwaukee. A friend of mine, Linda, was going with us and we climbed into our vehicles and headed to the big city. I had huge butterflies in my stomach about doing this show. I’d nearly backed out a dozen times!
Here’s the booth, setup on the exhibitor floor and Margo working on getting some paperwork done. We actually changed the setup the next day, because the table was again preventing people from coming IN to the booth. It was going to take me awhile to get that concept into my head, I guess.
The classes went really well and people seemed to be very excited about what they learned. At the same time, Allen and Margo and Linda were taking turns manning the booth. I came when I could between classes, but I would have liked to be at the booth more than I was.
At the spur of the moment before we left, I brought one of the drawers with my canes in it. They were the best seller at the show, which completely surprised me. I realized I’d brought too many finished jewelry items and not enough loose beads to the show. And canes! So definitely some good lessons learned here.
