Art and Creativity Journal: One More Time — This Time With Feeling!
So, we're coming to the end of the 2024 Arts and Crafts show season!
Not my favorite thing, but people buy lots of these heart stones!
Tomorrow we go to set up for the final — and also the largest — event of our holiday show season, and when we get done on Sunday afternoon we get to finally take a bit of rest!
Well, perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement because we actually just get to go ahead and put up the Christmas tree, decorate for Christmas around the house, bake cookies and make sure everything is in order for the holidays. Busy... but that's all fun stuff, right?
Doing shows on back-to-back weekends is always a bit of a trial. We are trying to make it a bit easier on ourselves this year... for example, I didn't even unpack anything significant from last weekend; just left most of the show bins sitting in our staging area in our downstairs TV room. It's a bit messy, but there's no point in putting a bunch of show stuff away if you're just going to turn right around and bring it back out five days later!
The show we're going to is a pretty big deal, at least regionally, and this is its 37th year of operation. Historically, it has been one of our biggest selling events of the year... and often spills over into a few late online sales, as well.
I have been painting like a fiend for the past four days trying to fill any gaps that were sold out at the previous event, along with any spaces where we seem to be a bit thin. I have never been big on producing a whole lot of work "on demand" so to speak, but you do what you've got to do!
My drop-dead cutoff for applying finish coats is this evening for items to be brought to the show on Saturday morning... as always, running up to the last second of the deadline!
In spite of having been through this process literally hundreds of times, I still can't ever shake the feeling that I have missed doing something critical... but I expect that's simply a manifestation of human nature.
One of the things that's making me feel somewhat happy about 2024 is that we finally seem to be back close to the level of attendance and sales (all events) that we had before Covid.
I lot is written and reported about merchants losing more and more ground to online sales... but locally handmade goods are still a pretty popular thing with many people, and I am very grateful for that.
And now, I must resume my preparation duties and add a few more finishing touches... tomorrow's set-up begins at 7:00pm (the event takes place at a nearby high school, so we can't start till all school activities are over for the day) and we're crossing our fingers for a dry evening... in past years we have almost always had to set up on rainy days. It's surprising just how wet your stuff can get, just going from the truck unloading area to the building!
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If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2024.12.12 AS-TXT-298/268