Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Where are all of the shoppers?

Pretty little button

Hearts

I guess you can tell by the title of this post that my show didn't go well.

I could fake it and say it was wonderful and I did great, but I'm too honest to do that.

In general, the show was nicely laid out and organized. The people were friendly, the weather fair. I had a lot of fun chit chatting with my craft neighbors and got some great ideas for displays. There were a lot of cute dogs on leashes and kids in strollers, but there weren't very many shoppers. I only had one customer all day. Seriously, one. I have never done so poorly before and I've done shows on and off for 25 years.

Networking is always fun, but I guess if I want to network I should just go shopping at a show. Sitting, standing and strolling all day just about drove me nuts. But it's no one's fault. As I said to another crafter, "you buy your ticket and you take your chances."

My friend Jim told me to open myself up to the universe and tell it that I wanted to make $1000. I told him that I would be happy with $200. He told me to work the table all day, sell, sell, sell. I would have been talking to myself most of the day, since very few people stopped at my booth. People seemed to be "cutting" through. Cutting through the show to go to church. Cutting through to go to Zingermans Deli. Cutting through to get hot coffee.

So, in the end, it was a flop for me. Financially, I was left in the hole.

But, on the bright side, I have a lot of inventory now and I can spend days putting buttons and hearts and pins on etsy. You know the saying, when life give you lemons...blah, blah, blah.

When I have that kind of a discouraging day, the first thing I do when I get a chance is check out the job section of the newspaper. I saw an ad for a job that paid $12.00 an hour as an office assistant. As I started to read the job description my reaction was bleech,,"I'd go crazy if this was my job!" (no offense to any office assistants out there!)

So, the ever enduring, creative maniac inside me survived another bad show. Call me stupid, call me insane, or call me tenacious, but back to my clay studio I go.

I'll leave with this quote..

“One man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.”

:)