Starting the Improvements

From the wonderful experience at our first market, I have learned a lot and am making some changes as a result.

While most of the day did go quite smoothly, I had an incident early in the day and a couple more times towards the end. See, I had my jewellery set up on a cork board that was sitting on an old recipe book holder. Apparently, this was not a wind-resistant set-up.

Half an hour into the morning I was leaning down behind the table to check on something and I felt a thud on the back of my head. At first I was a bit dazed and didn’t know what had happened, but when I saw a kind stranger picking all the jewellery out of the dirt by our stall I realised. Tip: Metal recipe book holders may seem stable, but they aren’t and could easily double as a weapon.

I thanked the man profusely for his help, gathered all the items and put the display back together. Then at about lunch time it fell down again (this time my head was thankfully not in the crash zone) and I put it up again, only to have it fall a third time just a few minutes later, and this time I lost one earring and a painting was damaged. So I gave up and put the whole lot away. Oh well, no one had so much as admired one of the items all day anyway.

So I started thinking: How can I display my wares without ending up with a brain injury?

As I don’t intend to focus on my jewellery anymore, and the crowds were drawn in by the cards, I thought some way to have some of them sitting up for all to see would be handy, rather than having them all just lying on the table like I did. The answer came to me while roaming the glorious aisles of Spotlight- a tiny set of drawers!

I grabbed the plain wooden set, a few shades of paint, some wrapping paper and went on my merry way, along with another set of 50 plain cards to turn into quilling works of art later.

One afternoon when I should have been studying later, and I had this:

Cute right? I went for the colour scheme of this website to make it all cute and matchy.

Note how the sturdy structure is a lot less likely to blow off a table at the slightest breeze.

Here they are displaying some cards as I plan to at the next market:

I think that it will be effective.

In other news, my business cards finally arrived yesterday. Handy huh? I had to make temporary ones at ten thirty the night before the markets. At least they arrived at all though. I'll have them there next time, and I'll be keeping some in my wallet and also adding them to the package of any purchase bought online.

Now, I said I'd make part two of my 'How to Quill' lessons yesterday, and instead I painted these drawers (I'm calling procrastinators anonymous tomorrow), so I think I'll go do that now, before burrowing into my studying nest.

xnata