I just finished a three day show held by the Black Creek Arts Council in Hartsville, SC.\u00a0 This was their second year holding a “Christmas Shoppe”.\u00a0 It was a juried craft show, with only hand made items.\u00a0 Hartsville is a small college town, the international headquarters of Sonoco.\u00a0 So there is money in town <vbg> – but it is still a small Southern town, so also lots of poverty.<\/p>\n
The Black Creek Arts Council is very active, and has its own building with gallery and classrooms.\u00a0 The show was very small – just 11 booths – and was held in the gallery.\u00a0 There were three potters; two folks with mirrors (one was a potter too); one glass artist pair; one hand made soap guy; one photographer; and three of us with just jewelry, as well as one potter with turquoise jewelry.<\/p>\n
Black Creek has their patrons accustomed to Thursday evening opening nights, with wine and refreshements donated by local businesses.\u00a0 So we opened on Thursday, and had a fantastic turn out, complete with Santa and workshops for the kids upstairs so their parents could enjoy the crafts show downstairs.<\/p>\n
The director had done a fabulous job with promotion, with lots of press releases in area papers, postcards, e-mail notices, etc.\u00a0 So lots of “buzz”.\u00a0 The local library has some wonderful secure display cases, and he had also put some work in the display cases for the month leading up to the show.<\/p>\n
I had one lady come because she had seen two of my necklaces in the library.\u00a0 She didn’t buy one of those, but bought one of my high-end pieces ($250) plus a good many other pieces.<\/p>\n
After a wonderful Thursday night, with great sales, I sold a total of $49 for the whole day Friday – just awful!\u00a0 I think it was bad for everyone.\u00a0 I would be surprised if we had 50 people come through for the whole day.\u00a0 Frankly, it was more like 30!<\/p>\n
Thankfully today was MUCH better, although still nothing like Thursday evening!\u00a0 We had more traffic, and thankfully more buyers, so my total for the show was quite nice.<\/p>\n
I also have a couple of custom orders still to complete, so that will up the total.<\/p>\n
In addition to the good PR, the Arts Council provided hot spiced tea and snacks each day, and ordered pizza for lunch for the artists today – very nice of them!\u00a0 I will definitely do this show again!<\/p>\n
This coming week I am trying another show that is new for me.\u00a0 It is a Holiday Bazaar at the huge hospital in Chapel Hill, NC on Wednesday,\u00a0 Not billed as a craft fair, but as “gifts, crafts, art, music”….so not sure what I will find!\u00a0 Given the other sales events I have seen the hospital hold, I expect it to have an excellent turn out, so hope for a good day!\u00a0 It is not booths, but tables.\u00a0 Given that it is my first time, I only reserved one table, which will be tight quarters for me.\u00a0 But with the economy the way it is, and having to pay for a motel room (not cheap in Chapel Hill!!), I really didn’t want to plump for two tables.\u00a0 If it goes well, I’ll get two next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just finished a three day show held by the Black Creek Arts Council in Hartsville, SC.\u00a0 This was their second year holding a “Christmas Shoppe”.\u00a0 It was a juried craft show, with only hand made items.\u00a0 Hartsville is a small college town, the international headquarters of Sonoco.\u00a0 So there is money in town <vbg> […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/bethwicker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}