Felting At The Art Fair

   ..  of course I WAS felting while AT the Art At The Center ... figured that most would not have any idea of what my 'art' was all about otherwise.  And it was a good thing too .. heard so many comments on the order of ... "you knit and then throw it in the washer and dryer" (um, no washing machine or dryer or knitting involved here) ... "you make these out of felt" (thinking you'd buy sheets of felt and sew them somehow) ... and best of all ... "hey look, she's making something right now" and in they'd come to check it all out!  Did several mini lessons and garnered a lot of interest in not only the technique, but in the shop here in town too!  Quite a few took my card .. we'll see if they follow through.  Got some inquiries as to if I would do 'custom orders' too, and told them .. call me and we'll talk!

  Friday after work Dave and I went out to get the tent set up .. it was pretty breezy so we drove home and then drove back a bit later to make sure the tent hadn't flown off somewhere.  You could tell those who follow shows like this from place to place .. they had tubes of cement to attach to the tent poles to keep it where it was!  We figured that if we drove back again to check on the tent and found it was blowing around we'd just tie it down to that tent next to us!

 

  Saturday morning, got to the Community Center around 8:30am to start the display set up.  That's when I realized for sure that I WOULD need the two additional card tables Debbie would be bringing with her .. and came to a screaming halt. I didn't really think I had that much to bring, but in checking it over the night before found that with pincushions and all, I had 111 felted things!!!

 Luckily Debbie got there an hour or so later and I had time to do my thing.  People would be walking around while we were doing set up and coming in  to look.  A bit of a pain, but also a lot of fun.   :)   

  I will say that my 'sign' got a lot of attention! 

It was breezy but HOT ... so the sides were not attached to the tent, just the overhead for shade.  Every time the breeze kicked up, fairies would go flying, Santa tried to fly without his reindeer, bowls would roll .. kept Debbie and I busy (and well exercised) sitting down then leaping up to pick up felted peoples and put them back and then sit down only to jump up again as "Baaaabs" and "Frankie" tried to run away.  That's how we spent the day .. from noon till 8pm. 

Early afternoon, two women came into the tent to AWARD me a 2nd Place ribbon and check for $75.00!  I'd been voted as 2nd best at the art fair .. and they told me that their artist judges 'overwhelemly' voted for me!  What a thrill .. how cool is that?!  I'm still up in the air over it!

    Sunday, got to the Center around 9am.  It was pretty windy that day .. and Hotter!  I tried to get things set up leaving the sides of then tent and part of the back wall 'down'.  Things were a shakin'!  Finally got boxes that had some weight to them, and set them over the sides of the tent as well as tried to get the sides underneath the table legs (that was 'almost' a disaster .. but finally worked!).  While my creations didn't 'fly' away like the day before, they did try to run around the tent a bit.  LouAnn got into the catch and release game of it pretty quickly.  The sales on Sunday were with people who had been in on Saturday and kept hearing a felted scupture call out their name to them all that night .. so they had to come back to get it!

Also had two people come in who had been called by friends to come see what I was exhibiting .. they wanted to give me information on applying to show at two different art fairs that were coming up.  One at the Renaissance Fair, the other at the Flint Institute of Art!    wowsers

Although there were more in attendance on Saturday than there were on Sunday, it would appear that when the 'sides were not up', more would actually come into the tent to look around.  Something else that was interesting .. on Saturday, just about every man who came in, picked up one of these two bowls.

On Sunday, forget about the bowls .. it didn't matter whether a guy came in or was just walking by .. "Ivan and His Bunny" got all the male attention that day!  Go figure!

All in all .. it was a fun experience (with the exception of an hour or so where Debbie and I looked at each other and said ... "so this is what boredom feels like!"    :)  I didn't sell out  but I did do $230 in sales, so I paid for the tent AND the space rental plus had a bit left over.  I did get 2nd Place!  I had interest in felting classes and showing what felting was all about; Had people find out I had a needlework shop here in town;  and was asked to submit entries for other shows.  I even got some sun!!   

Now I have the task of taking pictures of everything left from different angles so I can add them to my etsy store!