November 9, 2019: Today was the bazaar at Columbia Valley Elementary School in Vancouver, WA (out in Fisher's Landing area). I did this bazaar last year, which was their first year having it, and I was very impressed with the amount of planning, advertising, signage, and positivity they had. This year it was even better! There were 718 people there, not including planning people and vendors! I did relatively well. I knew I wasn't going to make back my booth fee, but I figured if I made enough to cover catching an Uber there, then it would be a success. I sold $13 worth of paper-crafted items! Strangely enough, nobody bought my notebooks, which usually are very popular. Some people bought cards but most of the sales were of the gift tags of various kinds! I sold so many Christmas tree ones that I had to make more on the spot for one of the customers! I sold 25 of those. Many people also loved what I concocted for a business card. It's my logo with my e-mail address curved underneath so the whole printed image is almost an oval, and then I cut it out into that oval shape. I got a lot of compliments on it, both on the logo and on the distinctive shape. Some people who came by the booth remembered me from last year, and one of them texted her friend to tell her that the "lady with the Big Shot" (my die-cut machine) was there again!
Of course, the table was a hit with kids as well, although none bought any of the items. One little boy, about first or second grade, was bouncing up and down on his toes trying to see all the things I was putting out for sale. I showed him a few things, and (of course) he asked how I made them. I showed him how the Big Shot worked and let him do three samples for the table, making sure it was clear that what he made was going to stay at the table. (His mom came by later to get him and bought a couple things but not what he'd made.) He did a dove die-cut, a snowflake die-cut, and the word "hope." He drew an eye and feathers on the dove, the radial "arms" on the snowflake, and then I showed him how to stamp the word "hope" on the outline he'd cut out. He proudly put them on the table with the rest of the gift tags and walked away with a big smile on his face. About 10 minutes later, a lady came by to buy gift tags, and loved that the little boy had helped, so she bought the dove and the snowflake! She was a grandma and was going to hang them on her Christmas tree because her grandkids were too old to make ornaments anymore for her.
I also got a lot of people talking about all sorts of papercrafting with me, and about some other crafts, too. I was next to a woodcrafter and another woodcrafter was across the aisle from us, so we were all chit-chatting when we had time. Another crafter a few feet away also came over and invited us all to come over to her studio (a redone two-car garage) to work on crafts together sometime! We all exchanged business cards. That's going to be a blast! Another lady came by and was so excited that a papercrafter was selling items, but even more excited that one was making things right there and showing the process! Most of the other booths were "product" booths rather than "process" booths, meaning they made things ahead of time to bring and sell, then had selling be the focus of their booth. Only a couple others were focused both on the item to be sold and showing how it was made. While explaining happily to me why she was so excited about this, she motioned to the nearby booths with a sweeping hand gesture and said, "All of these others, it's like" and brought her hand all the way up to signify a tall display. "Then there's yours," she said, and her hand came down to the top of my table. "I love it!" She turned out to be a papercrafter too, and she got a lot of new ideas for Christmas gifts from what I had for sale. She had tried some of the techniques but not others, and had only been papercrafting a year (started last Christmas) so had made presents for last year and was going to make for this year.
I used a template from “Level Up” by Connie Prince; the stamped word art from this year’s DSD by Sweet Pea Designs; one of the pieces of word art from this month’s challenge by Blue Heart Scraps; 4 papers & 2 elements from “Journey With You” and 3 elements from “Crisp Autumn Day,” both by the GingerBread Ladies; 2 elements from “Explore the Great Outdoors” by Laurie’s Scraps; 4 elements from “Warm & Toasty” and 1 element from “Autumnal,” both by JoCee Designs.
