Taking part in Got Craft this past weekend was the first direct sale craft show I’ve done in Vancouver, which seems strange now since I used to do them all the time when I lived in Toronto.

If you’ve never been to Got Craft it’s a terrific craft sale that happens twice a year in early May and December. The vendors are juried by a small panel of judges, and they do an excellent job of selecting a good variety of artisan designers and artists to keep the sale interesting. For the holiday edition, there were fifty vendors chosen from about two hundred applicants, which gives you an idea of the amount of competition to participate.

I decided to apply because I wanted to do more face-to-face sales, but I was also curious to see if it would be a good fit for my work. I created a bunch of small collages, postcard sets, and paper flowers to sell at the show, with the idea lower priced items would be an easier sell than the altered books. I was right (mostly), but things didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped.

I’m glad to say I made a profit on the weekend, but just barely. The most popular item that sold were the paper flowers because they were colourful, eye-catching and cheap. The Imaginary Girl and collage postcard sets barely sold at all, which is weird because people snatched them up at the Eastside Culture Crawl. Two collages have happily gone to new homes, including a recycled wood collage that was my favorite. None of the altered books sold, but that’s not a surprise at all because I was pretty sure they’d be too expensive for this type of event. I think there were many more sales I could’ve made if I’d been able to accept Visa or Interac payments.

The money bits aside, I had good conversations with shoppers and it’s good to know my work really “Wows” people (literally). I made a point of encouraging sign ups for my monthly newsletter and I came away with about twenty-five new contacts to add to my mailing list.

All in all, it was a positive experience to be a seller at Got Craft. I would definitely take part again if the opportunity presents itself, and use some of what I learned from this experience to do better next time.