Craft show report- Swartz Creek art in the Park

It was a wonderfully nice show to do, in that the Kiwanis people who were running the event were great, lots of volunteers to help, there were snack and water for the artists (they even brought me cookies!), and the weather was ideal.  But it was a dismal event in terms of sales . . . .I did manage to cover my booth fee, but not the time, gas, etc that also goes into doing a show.  Why were sales so bad?  Musings on that later, first my breakdown of my booth (since I am my own worst critic)

I was pretty happy with the 'look', it was more of my style than the previous booths I had done recently:

Originally I had been trying to go for 'plain' and 'professional' but it just felt bland to me, so I added in some table runners, curtains, and my favorite thing, took the glass out of my display cases, kept them closed and voila:

Recognize the background?  I wanted to use river rocks, but decided hauling pounds of rock would be ridiculous so I went with black beans.

What I didn't like about my set up? The table orientation made for too much congestion/crowding, so I'll go back to having them like my previous set ups, but with the bits of 'flare'.  Also I need a better way to hang my curtains and my banners need to be lower . . .

So, reasonably good set up, ideal weather, my stuff doesn't suck TOO badly ;-P so why such dismal sales?  Well, it wasn't just me, all the artists were grumbling around me, there was a decent crowd and they took time and looked but no one was buying.  The economy?  Back to school and too early to think about Christmas??  Both probably contributed, another factor might have been finding the right crowd for MY work, a lot of my jewelry is not for everyone . . .but even though sales were low, at least today I didn't hear any crazy stuff from customers as I often do (that's another blog post).  Next up?  The Funky Ferndale Art Fair this Fri-Sun in Ferndale, Mi . . .am I Funky enough?  We will see.