Christmas Shop in Pen-y-Lan

My last weekend was fab. For the 1st time I had been participating in the Christmas Shop sales in Pen-y-Lan (see the earlier post). The whole selling-buying machinery started on Friday with the opening, mulled wine and carolers but it was last Saturday morning when I and my other better half turned up in person there. On a chilly Saturday morning we were greeted by a line of cars trailing a long way away from the place where the shop was set up. ("Look! Everybody's queuing to buy your stuff!" - my bf loves to tease me :D I did hope so!)

The big marquee was set up additionally to a small room in a building where the crafts were displayed.

 

Inside there was a big array of hand-made artefacts of all sorts from over 30 local crafters in North Wales.  18 of my own items went on sale there. A few sold. Good :)

There were also the tables tops and chairs to sit and have a sip of tea or coffee and munch the mincemeat pies.

 

I loved all the decorations - perfect for Christmas gifts and the displays were good too. The idea was: the items for sale were all mixed together so I was finding my stuff being displayed in all corners but this makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. You never know what you may find on shelves round the corner. 

I loved that tree with ceramic decorations. The two white ceramic birds came home with me :)

I just loved this folksy jug. Sadly, this one wasn't for sale.

Found my painted glass among the other items too! :)

... and spotted some of my seasonal pictures and votives ...inside the display room

 

There were lots of chunky wooden ornaments - reindeer, star, Christmas trees, birds, angels and votives. The stock from that crafter must have been massive as it outnumbered all the others.

The display room had some hanging decorations with Christmas lights and some metal / glass clanging items...

In the middle - the table with more stuff displayed and walked around by customers...

I absolutely adored those machine-sewn purses and pouches with the woodlife. Soft, cosy and tweedy foxes, squirrels and owls...  just right for this time of year :)

This cute purse with the cat in red hat has been mine now! Just couldn't leave without one!

The boss being busy at the till :) Nice when the money flows and customers leave happy.

The event proved to be a success and received a lot of public attention. Apparently it has been the 3rd one and the biggest one so far. Let's hope Lisa, the boss, will keep it up in the future. Would love to see more of these.

Summer Fair

Yesterday I took part in a fair in Wrexham. For the last week I had been preparing myself for it and it was the only thing that really occupied my mind. Was getting really excited to go! I devoted all my after-work afternoons to finishing up the projects and prepared a list of painted glass and beanbag chicks that I wanted to sell. Sadly, yesterday's fair turned out to be a big disappointment to me due to some unlucky circumstances. First of all, we (me and other "crafters") were put in the furthest corner of the event area (yes! yes! the location of your stall DOES MATTER, it's one of those things you learn and experience in your life as a craft seller) and as a result not many people were bothered to come up and see our stalls. We were simply very much out of the way, put behind the school instead of the front of it. The only good thing about our location was that we were right under the school canopy in case it rained. Only people going to the school toilets at the back of the building were passing us by! Instead the carboot sale took place at the most strategic place. Secondly, people didn't show much interest in buying hand made stuff as these were mostly mothers with buggies and little kids. Also, I had an impression that people weren't prepared to spend more than a couple of quids on a bacon butty, cup of coffee and some car boot junk. In fact there were only 4 crafty stalls - me with my painted glass, a pyrography crafter with his wooden products, a lady with her jewellery (which was ready made anyway) and a lady selling gadgets for the Air Ambulance Charity. Standing a few hours in the windy weather made me almost freeze so my bf was helping with some hot freshly brewed tea. And the last straw that made me leave the site quicker than I planned was a bunch of school boys who decided to play football right in front of my table with the displayed glass!!! Their ball kept rolling right under my table! (Surprise! surprise! For some reason I'm very "lucky" with finding myself and my table with painted glass in the proximity of men playing football, which was the case last time I was selling my crafts). Fed up, cold and disappointed we left the site and me were off to Pizza Hut for some food, warmth and consolation :)

It was the 3rd fair I took part in but profitwise the worst one. But, hey, that's life! Chin up and I'm moving on now :) especially with another fair in W. on the horizon. In 2 weeks time! Just trying to arrange it at the moment :)

Good or bad, I'll show you my craft stall :) This is what it looked like:

And this is what I'm currently working at - a wedding sampler card with folky birds for my cousin in Holland:

the sampler card is going to look like this:

I just decided to swap the blue canvas for the light pink one!

And now! Time for Handmade Monday. Tonight I'm linking up the 1st Unique Gifts blog for this crafty link-up. See what other crafters have been up to!