I’m hoping that with a reeeeeeeeally good cleaning and a little cosmetic work these will turn into lovely displays for my shows. There’s a bunch more where I found them but I’m working in batches.
I always liked the idea of “booth lego” where I can use boxes and other items to both carry stock and arrange my booth with. I may sand down my current Ikea boxes back to plywood so that they’ll better mix and match.
I sell at small, informal shows and so I worry less about a perfect, neat booth setup and I tend to switch things around a bit more. It’s still a basic black booth though – I use plain matte black and white as my fixtures to better emphasize and showcase the colourful clay items I sell. I want no mistake about what’s for sale!
One of the eyecatchers on my table is a rack with a LOT of earrings on it. They are all there, in a mass, and they are all shiny, colourful treasures with glass and metal glinting, showcasing the colourful clay beads in them.
Until this weekend, my rack was on my table. It stands about 14″ at it’s highest point, on a waist high table. So that meant that to take a good look at what had caught their eye, people were bending over, craning their neck. And they did it too. By the end of shows, I’d have sympathetic winces for it.
This past weekend, the table I had to use was smaller. It made me plan out the usage much more efficiently. And it looks much better, if I do say so myself! Of course, it was the one weekend I forgot my camera. The end result was that my earring rack moved from a front, low position to a raised position. Suddenly people did not have to bend over.
Far more people reached out to touch and, most importantly, I sold about 10 pairs more than usual.
OK, so this one isn’t really clay but I had to scramble a bit because all I’ve made from clay this week are stacks of Natasha beads. I leave for a couple days of Easter break tomorrow and I had gotten the studio cleaned up.
The stand is based off a design in a sweet book called Beader’s Stash: Designs from America’s Favorite Bead Shops by Laura Levaas. I took the book out of the library in this weeks stack of books and it has other interesting, contemporary designs as well.
My stand is made from simpler stuff than the one in the book – plain black plastic coated copper wire. It currently sports my favourite pair of citrus slice earrings and a pair made by the amazing Sarah Shriver. I will probably make a few more of these in colours that match my booth setup better but this time, I found the 16 gauge black first!
