First Craft Fair as a Vendor
Hey y’all! Today I was a vendor for the very first time with my business, Sew Knitting Crafty. It was pretty awesome to do something I haven’t ever done before!! I make and sell elephant pillows and quilted, reversible mug rugs.
I got a sewing machine for my birthday in high school, but didn’t start using it often enough until about 5 or 6 years ago. I decided to make my daughter a dress for my brother’s wedding. It was totally worth it! I learned a lot – and I was kinda afraid of my sewing machine at that point – I didn’t want it to stitch TOO fast… fast forward to today: I LOVE TO SEW!!!
At the urging of my husband, I put one of my elephant pillows for sale on Facebook Marketplace to see what would happen. Out of the blue, months later, I was approached by someone about becoming a vendor this spring. I jumped at the chance even though I didn’t have enough inventory at the time. I made it happen anyway!
Long weekends of sewing and ironing happened in my dining room which doubles/quadruples/etc. as my creative space for sewing. It was so worth it. I was able to more than double my inventory AND make additional items (mug rugs) too. I used what I already had on hand for the most part for both my elephants and mug rugs. Cotton fabric, quilt batting, and thread of course. I even branched out and made some zippered cosmetic bags! Whaaaat? How did I find the time to do all this??? I decided it was important and I went for it.
Figuring out what else I needed for the craft fair was relatively easy – at least the table part. I borrowed a folding 6′ table from a family member and reached out to a friend for some ideas on how to decorate my table. With the info she gave me, I headed off to Home Depot for a large canvas drop cloth to use as a table cloth and made a couple of Amazon purchases. Hooray for the Amazon fairies!! I found a 100pk of cute, colored clothes pins and a 100pk of shopping bags with handles. Of course I couldn’t stop there….. I ordered a bunch of business cards to hand out to customers that I think came out SO CUTE!! I got them from VistaPrint.com.
Since I already have some baskets used for random stuff in my living room, I just used them with some string attached to hold my price tags and some of my wares. Looks cute to me!
I totally love my Silhouette Cameo machine! Used it to print and cut out my price tags with green cardstock. They look SO awesome! Bonus – it saved me a bunch of time from having to handwrite them all. Hooray!
My first craft fair vendor experience was a good one. I learned a lot, got to talk to some other vendors about their experiences and figured out that not every location is going to be awesome every time. Apparently they are all different – which is great bc you never really know what to expect!
Overall learning from my first time as a craft vendor…… hmmmm Just have fun, be nice and talk to as many people as you can! And then do it all again next time!