The weather is heating up and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do anything productive on the weekend, but it cooled down to a tolerable temperature today and I managed to make a few things I’d been meaning to.
Simple gathered skirt
Homemade pasta
Mini cherry tarts
Just returned from another Handmade Market! I’ve been a bit too busy lately to make enough things to sell, so this time I got to be a customer and check out everyone’s stalls. I was so so impressed with the number of talented people and the quality of products here in Canberra, so much that I spent pretty much all of the cash I brought with me. Here’s my loot from the day:
Chai tea from Real Chai, kitten bag + purse from H for Handbag, cherry wine from Wombat Heights, birdie necklace from Klei
My favourite is the birdie necklace – yes, it made me think of Twitter so I had to buy it.
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:
Some more photos from the day:
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