Enchanted Rose Garden Set Up Day

.Almost all of my inventory is now is 3 stores. And I have the biggest show season of my career this fall. Panic much? Nah. Gulp. The good news is I have lots of centers stitched, ready to be made into cards, notepad covers and framed art. And lots of centers ready to be stitched.

I set up my space at the Enchanted Rose Garden in Penfield yesterday. I want to fill this wall with framed art. I actually have a few more pieces at home that I want to rework a little bit or reframe. Then they can go in too. That card rack contains a bunch of non-stitched cards I'd like to sell to get rid off so eventually everything I make will have stitching on it of some sort. I also have slightly bigger card racks I could put in addition to or in place of this puny one, as I increase my inventory here.

That's my friend MJ's painted glass next to me. She downsized her space slightly and offered this set of black shelves to me at a good price so I took her up on it. Those two shelves actually form a wall down the center of that room, dividing off our little area. (You can see her glass next to my wall space too. We both have space on both sides of an aisle, if you will.) MJ bought the shelves at Target and painted them black, which the owner & I just love. Really pops those colors as they say.

Overall I'm happier with my initial set up than I thought I'd be. I was able to fill more than I expected. This is an acrylic display I had, someone had given it to me actually. I've found one similar online at a good price, measured yesterday and so today I'll order 4 to fill the rest of the shelves. I like displaying all like-colored items together so I think I'll keep that theme going. It worked out well assembling these purple Sticky Notes all at one time too. I punched multiples of various parts at a time and so they went together pretty quickly. I hustled at the last minute to get the gold flip flop Sticky Notes ready - it won't be summer forever. The fall shows will be too late to sell these.

I priced that piece on the left pretty low - would love to sell that thing. It was way more work than the result warranted and has garnered very little interest. I'm going to pick up some black or clear easels I saw at Michael's recently. I just used these big clunkers for now because I had them on hand. This turquoise quilt set-up sort of came to me at the last minute.

This shows the top two shelves. The shelves are adjustable so I can always play around with them as I change things around. That's a wood tray I painted black that holds my pins. Next to it are my business cards (must stitch more!), my little bio sheet and my list of future shows.

Above are the 4 remaining notepad & pen sets. (I had another but I stored it carelessly so the cardstock cover got bent so I'll have to redo that one.)

I had to retag every single thing because I now have a vendor number again. Since I haven't had one in a while, but still participate in one-cashier-for-all shows, I've been using my initials. Most shows are good about using existing numbers, knowing that vendors also participate in co-ops. Hopefully there's not another #15 participating in the same shows that I do. I took this opportunity to raise my prices just a skosh because for one, I feel more confident in selling. I initially priced my stuff on the low side to test the market. Without exception, every fellow vendor who saw my prices thought they were too low. The second reason is the owner of the store keeps a percentage of each sale to cover advertising and credit card fees.

I need to tidy up my studio a bit today, then get back to creating.
.