The Handmade Faire, Craft Shows and Home Shows

My fall craft show schedule begins in earnest starting this weekend. On Saturday the 25th I have the Handmade Faire in Medford, NJ at the Flying W Airport (see the banner to the right for more info)

This show will be heavily supported by regional handmade artist/crafters, including a large number of the rapidly growing EtsyNJ street team. The show is juried and only handmade vendors have been selected.

If you have holiday shopping to do and are looking for something different than the same old "stuff" , come down and take a look at what this talented group of handmade artists have to offer. It will be a lot of fun and you won't be disappointed.

On Sunday, I'll take my creations to the Lacey Fall Annual show in Forked River, NJ. The show will be in it's usual Lacey High School location. Over 150 tables filled with handmade vendors and vendors with personalized gifts will be in attendance. The show runs from 9am-3pm and is often well attended.

I will have several new sea glass creations on my tables during this weekend and I'm hoping all of them find new homes.

My next scheduled show will be on November 8th at OM Baby in Point Pleasant, NJ. This show will be an all EtsyNJ street team show and I'll be talking more about the show in future blogs.

Earlier tonight I had a private showing for one person, with a slight chance that a 2nd might show up. I brought my Etsy shop items along with a handful of new items.

When I arrived there were 5 women there and they were looking at my Flickr site, along with my blog searching for a few new items. After about 30 minutes of going through the 40 or so items I brought (remember I was planning on there being 1, possibly 2 people) I ended up walking out of the showing with 1/3 of my shop sold and several pieces that were about ready to be listed, including a couple new sea glass pieces.

I'm a bit concerned I may be a bit short on bracelets, so it looks like I'll be back at my crafting table tomorrow night to build up my bracelet supply.

Maybe the talk of "buying handmade" at my 1st show of the season, is the sentiment of many shoppers this year. Perhaps in the down economy, people are looking to spend money on unique or one-of-a-kind items this year. And that's great news for all of us handmade artists!

'til next time...

R

Above image is a lime green sea glass copper bracelet soon to go into my shop on Etsy

Cobalt Blue Sea Glass... a sneak preview, Plus Etsy promos

With 2 very big shows coming up this weekend, I spent the better part of last weekend at my crafting table trying to build up my inventory. I have been building up my jewelry quality sea glass for awhile and this weekend, I finally put several new pieces together.

The above piece is probably my favorite, as I'm a sucker for cobalt blue sea glass. I like this one so much, I haven't even considered placing it in my Etsy shop... but yes, it will eventually get in there, if it makes it through the weekend.

This past weekend I offered Free Shipping on all of my sea glass pieces and that was picked up on the weekend Deals article in the Storque. My shop was the 3rd feature in the article. The sea glass piece they featured in the article received several views and a handful of hearts and I had countless other shop and items hearts this past weekend.

Also this weekend, the EtsyNJ team website had an article (http://www.etsynj.com/) featured another piece of my sea glass in the lead weekend article! In all it was a fairly good weekend on Etsy for me and I doubled my sales for the month in less than 60 hours.

I'll be adding a few more of the sea glass pieces tomorrow, along with the info on this weekend's shows (the 1st show has a banner listed in my blog at the top of the right hand column).

'til next time...

R