Sterling silver earrings and our visiting cards
One of our favourite things to do is to take our pretties to flea markets! There’s something absolutely magical about setting up our stall, and displaying all our jewellery. I find that I am often slightly amazed, once we’re set up, at how much stuff we’ve made! And seeing it all laid out is just incredible!
Our stall set up early on Thursday
So that’s what we did last Thursday and Friday. We went to the Green Haat@EGL, and spent two glorious days talking to people, and being around tons of other artists. Green Haat is a flea market that normally happens at a quiet little restaurant, Green Theory, on Convent Street. Lately, they’ve organised their flea market in a tech park – which means lots more potential customers! Those of you who’ve been following our adventures on Facebook would have seen photos of our last trip to EGL in July, which was our first flea market in over a year. That was a single day affair, and we had tons of friends and family who showed up. I think we were probably one of the busiest stalls in the place last time!
This time, we decided we’d stop twisting our friend’s arms inviting our friends to our exhibition for two reasons. Firstly, we’d just called them all to our last exhibition, and secondly, after a point, we thought it would stop being fun for them to come, and become more of an obligation. Plus we thought it would be interesting to see how many sales we made when friends weren’t our customers! 🙂 I think that’s something all hand-made businesses have to look at, sooner or later.
Our earrings on their little display trees
Earrings on their new flower displays
So we showed up, bright and early, on Thursday morning, and spent about an hour and a half setting up our stall. It’s amazing that setting up always takes so long, even though we’ve done it a fair few times by now, and are getting much better at it! But we were all set up, and good to go, before a lot of other stall owners even showed up. I think that helped with our sales as well. We had three tables for our display, and were able to lay all our jewellery out to its best advantage. I think our new display idea of using little paper flowers as display tools really worked! We generally get a lot of compliments on our displays, and this time was no exception! Thursday was a little slow, crowd-wise. The last time we were at EGL was on a Friday, and we didn’t have a moment to sit down! Thursday was much more peaceful, and gave us time to wander around and look at the other stalls.
Our necklaces on display
Bracelets on their stand
Our rings on their little flower coasters
Anklets on their very own display – a repurposed spice rack!
This was the first time we’d ever been to a two-day flea market. On one hand, we worried that people who’d met us on Thursday would have nothing new to see at our stall on Friday, but this was balanced by the fact that we received a couple of orders on Thursday that we could fulfill by Friday. We also had a lot of ideas for our stall that we wanted to incorporate on Friday. These included banners with our most commonly used materials, and a few more informative signs.
Full moon as we were packing up on Thursday night
So Thursday night and Friday morning saw us running around like crazy people. But we managed to get everything done, and set off happily again on Friday, looking forward to a hectic day, given the usual TGIF vibes in the air. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that was in the air. The moment we got to the venue, it started to rain. It was a light drizzle to begin with, and didn’t really worry us, and we started setting up. But once everything was set up, it started pouring. With winds that slanted the rain straight into our stall and onto our jewellery! So we rushed to cover everything up. We didn’t have large transparent sheets of plastic, so we used ponchos instead. I must say, that Universal Studios logo didn’t help us with any sales! After a while of having the rains stop and start, and rushing to uncover and re-cover our displays, we finally abandoned one table, and rearranged our things on the other two tables. It made our display a little more crowded, but at least we didn’t have to worry about the rain, and having half our inventory under plastic at any given time!
Friday morning dawning wet. You can see our ponchos being put to good use, and the rest of our merchandise huddled together at the driest corner of our tables! And our poor pennants falling to pieces…
So Friday wasn’t the bustling day of activity we anticipated, but it was fun. And we did sell a lot of pieces, even though none of our friends were around to buy! We’ve decided to take a break from exhibitions for a while and build up our inventory again, and get ready for the festive season. This time of year is our absolute favourite!
*Ammu*
Fire & Rain 