A Fair to Remember

 

Well, one Xmas Fair down and one to go (or maybe two as I've just had another invite to have a stall at a Fair in a couple of weeks time!) so I have a bit of breathing space for a week or two, and time to catch up with your blogs and share about the Fair!

 

It was pouring with rain when we arrived on Saturday (my lovely daughter made a special effort to get up early to come with me) at the lovely large and modern Village Hall at Rolvenden in Kent ( I never got around to sharing the venue, sorry!) and so we had to unpack the car in the rain which was a pain.


 

We met the lovely organiser Frances, looked for our stall and found we had a prime spot immediately opposite the doors - how good was that!

 

These photos I'm sharing are sadly pics of the mock up at home nearly week before the Fair, so not all is shown - lots more Xmas "25" linen hearts were there, as were many more covered journals - next Fair I will be better organised and take photos on the day of the Fair in action as I know that's what you all want to see - sorry!

 

There was only room for a few cushions on the table, but I took a shelf unit along with me which I placed at the end of the stall and was able to fill with other cushions.

 

 

On the day the green mini bunting was fastened properly along the edge of the table, and I had a sign with my name pinned to the front. I also had spent a day or two playing with Microsoft Publisher and printed off some pretty labels which I attached with linen string - and it all looked better than I'd hoped on the day.

 

So the stall looked pretty good, and the organiser seemed to love it all, so we just got on and enjoyed the bustle of the Fair - it was far busier than I'd expected, about 30 stalls in all set around the edge of the hall with an inner circle of stalls.

There were cake stalls and a bread stall, a cookery shop stall, toys, painted furniture, handmade soaps, jewellery, baby goods, home-cured cooked meats, cheeses and homemade preserves and all manner of other stalls - the atmosphere was very festive with live music, face painting and Minnie Mouse and Hello Kitty characters with their huge, rather scary heads!

 

And it was pretty busy the whole day, although it took a while to make the first sale which caused me a bit of angst to begin with!  Talking with some other stall holders an hour into the fair, we agreed that it was more of a social event for the villagers, as everyone seemed to know everyone else but they weren't taking out their purses, and at this early stage we were all worried we wouldnt even cover our stall costs!

But then they did (take out their purses!) and by the end of what seemed like a VERY long day it was well worth all the time and effort I'd put in - and I think it helped that I dropped my prices a little in the first hour after panicking that I wouldnt sell anything! Just a few "twofers" and a pound knocked off things seemed to help!

 

The fabric-covered Diaries and Notebooks seemed to be the best sellers of the day (one lady bought 3!), followed closely by the Lavender stacks, various Heart hangers from vintage linens and mangle cloth, and the little Cathedral Window pin-cushions I'd made recently (not shown here).

I made lots more journals than the ones shown here - I was still waiting for the 2013 Diaries and lined notebooks to come when I took these photos - it was a close run thing as they only arrived a couple of days before the fair.

Luckily I had partially made them up so could finish them off quite quickly, although I was still hand-stitching name labels on the back whilst I was at the Fair!


 

I thought it might be nice to add labels which told a little about the cloth used.

And I made new business cards and smaller simple labels to match.



 

 

 

 

 

 

(you can see this was still a work in progress as you can see pins in the heart where it still had to be stitched up!)


So taking a breather this week, catching up with friends real and virtual, learning from my experiences,  planning what additional goodies to make for the next Fair and what needs topping up.

Thanks to you all for your wonderful supportive comments these last few weeks!