Silverlake Craft Fair

Sunday was the Silverlake Craft Fair and Kate and I exhibited for the first time. It was a lot of fun! According to the other vendors, who are regulars there, the traffic was much lighter than usual and sales were pretty slow. I did ok and it was a decent investment for me. The craft fair will have a new location soon and I might be back to check it out.

There were lots of neat things for sale and lots of handmade jewelry -- if you're looking for some great etsy artists to meet in person, this is a great show. I was proud of myself for not spending all of my earnings, although I did buy one thing (just one is allowed!). Roscata had a booth where the designer was selling her polymer clay charms that were all DELICIOUSLY adorable. I ended up taking home a pair of snow cone earrings. Look how cute these are!!

If you're in the market for snow cone (or Hostess cupcakes!) charms, I now have an official recommendation (for a snack attack, flip through her images on Flickr).

It was an overall great day. An excuse to chit chat with Kate for 8 hours PLUS we had a bunch of surprise guests! I felt so popular! Adam and his mom came by and stayed for a while, then Lori and Mickey showed up for a bit, I also randomly ran into my cousin Laila and her husband and baby, plus Kate's friend Joe (who is super awesome) came by. It made the time just fly by!

One of the vendors near us watched me set up and suggested that I raise my prices. I understand that everyone wants a certain price-level for these types of events, but the person who suggested it (and many others) were selling more intricate items, like hand-cast silver and hand-beaded jewelry, that are more time- and cost- and labor-intensive. My overhead for my paintings and embroidery pieces are very low and I charge commisserate to the time I spend on them. Which means that some things will sell for $10 or $15 and others for $25. Which I don't feel undermines anyone else selling in the fair (especially since there isn't anyone else selling dot paintings, so I'm not funking up the market for dots!), but instead allows people with a smaller budget to take home a little something, which makes me feel good and the buyer too. I feel bad for anyone else who had a less than awesome day, because we had a great time. I even took home a free sunburn! Cruise Director Kate* suggested that we put on sunblock and I was all 'pfft, I'm ok' and then HEY! Guess who has a lobster nose?

Afterward, I went and collected Ryan who was home with a sinus infection (he feels okay, but his right eye just tears up randomly, so he occassionally looks 1/2 sad) and we met up with Adam and Kate for a gluttonous dinner at Cheesecake Factory. Kate had to come down thisaway because she was hand-delivering a custom purse order to someone at Disneyland (she met them while they were in line for a ride for cripes sake! THAT is service, my friend!). We ate more fried macaroni and cheese than should be legal and remembered to save room for dessert (more gluttony). Dinner lasted something like 4 hours because MAN can we talk and only ended because I was running on fumes and needed to get to bed before work on Monday. I was the total buzzkill, because we were just getting to the good stuff, like 'which book was written just for you?' It was great to see Adam, who now lives out of state (ahem.) and hasn't been back to town since Christmas (Ahem!!). Luckily, he's already committed to hosting Ryan for a weekend writing retreat and then coming back to LA for the Paley Festival (3 unaired episodes of Pushing Daisies!!!) in a couple of weeks.

In a nutshell: it was an awesome day. I'd do it again, only maybe take the sunblock advice. And also maybe remember to eat lunch so that I don't have to eat the whole dinner menu afterward.


*For the record, she gave herself this nickname, but she lives up to it in every (good) way! Example: we asked about what she did while her mom was visiting and she pulled out an itinerary of all the places they visited. :)