So Handmade Market was this past weekend, and seemed like a huge success! Despite some slightly threatening rainclouds (which thankfully didn’t end up raining in us) there was a huge turnout of people - according to the blog over 10,000 over the course of the day!

In the end I didn’t manage to make anywhere near the range of things I was hoping to, but managed to fill out my little table well enough. I was lucky enough to borrow the organiser’s spare gazebo tent, which worked out wonderfully.

My idea with the stall was to try and make it look like a little cartoon world, with the faux grass and little wooden signs. The grass turned out to be too small for the table and my white tablecloth doesn’t really work too well the with the metaphor, but I have some more ideas for next time!

I was really happy that a lot of people seemed really into the things in my stall, were impressed with my work and took a business card. I managed to sell more than enough to make back the cost of the stall and materials too, so I’m very happy with that! A huge thanks to everyone who dropped by my stall and/or bought something, especially to all the fantastic Twitter people who came along.

Overall it was a really good experience, and definitely something I’m planning on doing again in the future. I have about half of my stuff left, so I won’t have to be making things so manically next time. I’m thinking of setting up that online store I’ve been meaning to for ages, but we’ll see if I have the time!

A quick comment on prices - I know some of my things were considered quite expensive. I did lower some items through the day based on my observations and I think I have a better idea of what to charge now. I do think that some people come to markets with the wrong mentality - some people think that things at markets should cost less than those in a regular store, without thinking that a huge amount of time and effort, not to mention costs of material, go into making these things. My logic was that if people (and I’ll admit I’m one of these people) will pay so much for mass-produced plastic costume jewellery then why not pay the same for something unique and handmade? Just some food for thought.

Things I’ll do differently next time:

• make some sort of frame to hold some of the grass at an angle to give everything more height
• more plushies!
• more low priced items like button badges, bookmarks and stickers
• some better stands to give more height variation
• green tablecloth

Some more photos from the day:

I really should have posted this sooner, but better late than never! Next month I’m participating in Canberra’s Handmade Market, with my own little stall selling my crafts. I checked out the previous Handmade Market earlier this year, and was really impressed with the quality of work and how many creative people there are here. It’s absolutely worth checking out if you’re anywhere in the vincinity of Canberra, so please drop by and say hello if you can!

Here’s the details:

Date: Saturday 23rd May
Time: 10am - 4pm
Location: Albert Hall, Commonwealth Ave, Yarralumla
Price: FREE (so no excuses)

And here’s a sneak peek at what I’ve been making so far!

There are plenty of things that I love about Twitter - in fact, almost all of the freelance work I’ve gotten has been through Twitter in some way or another. But now that I’m getting a few new followers every day, certain things annoy me enough to decide to now follow back:

No bio/cryptic bio

The first thing I look at when I click on a new follower’s profile is their bio. If they look like they’re somehow related to something I’m interested in (and don’t fail in some other area), I’m likely to follow them back. If they have no bio it’s a bit harder to figure out if they’re interesting or not.

Longitude and latitude for location

The next thing I look at is location - if someone is local or from somewhere interesting, they might be worth following. If you have a bunch of numbers as your location I have no idea where the hell in the world you are, and generally don’t care enough to look it up. Sorry.

Only retweets

I think that retweeting is a fantastic idea, and have found some really interesting articles and sites through it. But if all you do is retweet links and never introduce anything of your own, it’s really hard to figure out your personality or anything about you.

In a bubble

Twitter is all about being social (for me anyway), so if all you have is post after post about your own little bubble without replying to or engaging anyone else that (to me) defeats the purpose.

Automated anything

Perhaps I’m not a unique and special snowflake, but I like to believe that I am anyway. So getting automated messages on Twitter annoys me because it makes me feel less special, less cared about and less of an individual. So your generic ‘thank you for following me, please check out my website :D’ DM doesn’t make me feel welcomed, just irritated and faceless. I (and most people, I think) check out a person’s website when deciding whether to follow them or not, so if you don’t need to make that push for attention.

Constantly mentioning follower count

I don’t want to feel like you just followed me so I’ll follow you back so you can have x number of followers. Snowflake, remember?

Protected updates

I can absolutely see why someone would want to protect their updates rather than having them all public, and have no problem with them doing so. It does make me wonder why I should follow you when I can’t see how you use Twitter though - especially when you have no bio and your location is a jumble of numbers. Give me a reason to care about you!

Ads

There’s a service or two out there that gives people money in exchange for allowing automated ads to be tweeted from their account at random intervals. Not cool. If you’re happy to inconvenience me for a few cents, why should I be following you?