This is a legacy blog post, originally from my previous website, Mouse House Blog. To see more MHB posts, check out the MHB tag here on my blog.
So in case you’ve missed it in my last few posts, last weekend I had my first experience selling at a festival. My hometown held its first annual ArtsFest, and my mother and I were artisan vendors for the weekend. My mom had been taking a class at a local business called the Creative Hub – some of the people behind the festival – when her teacher noticed her handmade jewelry and encouraged her to apply as a vendor. Knowing that I would be interested as well, my mom told me about the festival and we considered it together. We thought about all the costs, the time we had, and ultimately decided it was worth a shot.
After a while our application was accepted with an enthusiastic phone call from one organizer, Brooke, who was really excited about my mom’s jewelry. She talked about how they were trying to closely moderate the quality of the talent they were letting in, and by the end of the call my mom’s impression of the festival had changed a bit – it seemed a little higher-standards than we had initially realized, so we worked hard in the following weeks to make sure that our work was up to snuff.
You probably noticed in my last couple What I Made This Week posts that I’ve been doing TONS of soap. That’s the main thing I was selling last weekend, as well as my alcohol ink necklaces. My mom was selling some of her awesome, unique jewelry, which you can see on her Instagram account here (and her Etsy store is coming really soon). We toyed around with names for the joint business venture, with her eventually coming up with “Snips and Snails” for her own work, tying into her focus on using recycled and reclaimed materials. From there it was a natural extension for me to add “and Little Mouse Tails,” keeping the cadence of the original rhyme and connecting back to the Mouse House name I do most of my work under.
The stain and green-and-blue paint treatment was done by my boyfriend, and I painted our name on with white acrylic.
We spent a lot of time in the weeks leading up to the 20th working on our products. We really weren’t sure how much we needed to have, since neither of us had ever done anything like this before. On top of that we worked out display ideas – with my lovely boyfriend being kind enough to build us some beautiful wooden displays for our table, which received many compliments themselves – and signage. We even printed out basic business cards with an at-home kit my dad picked up at Staples, including our ‘coming soon’ Etsy URLs (which, don’t worry, we did reserve).
We were set to have our table on the second floor of the pop-up gallery in the empty building next to the Creative Hub, which is unfinished and waiting to be bought or rented. It had no bathroom, no blinds in the windows, and plaster dust everywhere, but otherwise it was a good venue – after someone brought us a portable air conditioner from next door. There were four vendors (I’m pretty sure?) on the main floor and nine others on the second floor with us. Originally there was one more and we were crowded into the middle of the room with one other table, but when the last artist didn’t show up we were given her space against the wall and it really opened up the middle of the room for way better traffic flow.
Sorry it’s a little blurry, I was rushing! This was early on Saturday – by the end of Sunday our table was much more crowded with jewelry…
My anxiety about the event didn’t really kick in until the Saturday morning when we were setting up (hello, social phobia, good of you to make an appearance). I actually spent much of the morning dashing off every half-hour or so to the washroom in the next building. My nerves-induced stomach ache finally dissipated after a few hours and I slowly started to get more comfortable. Anxiety-wise I wouldn’t say I was ever doing Super Great, the weekend as a whole was definitely exhausting, but I think I coped really really well! I gradually got better at speaking to visitors to the table and to other vendors during lulls in traffic. Luckily, my mom is amazing at chatting people up, and has the added advantage of already knowing half the town after working for the (very busy and successful) local optometrists’ office for fifteen years.
I want to pause for a moment to give a quick shout-out to everyone who helped us out. My boyfriend, Keynan, was a huge help, not to mention our number one cheerleader throughout the entire process. He lent us his family’s trestle table for our setup, built and painted our gorgeous wooden displays, helped us carry things and set up/take down our table, and did a hundred other little things this last month or so. My best friend Susie also helped out with some of my soaps and little things, and both Keynan and Susie kept us company (and bought us snacks) almost all day on Saturday. My mom’s sister, my Aunt Sandy, also came out both afternoons (bearing Iced Capps for my mom) and kept us company and helped run the table. Aunt Sandy’s daughter, my lovely cousin Shauna, also came out with her boyfriend on Sunday to keep us company for a while. My dad and my brothers also deserve shout-outs for visiting multiple times and bringing us anything we had forgotten or requested from home. (Special recognition to my brother Corwin for being the one who answered my texts, woke my dad up from his nap, and brought us lunch on Sunday.) All of their help made the weekend go way more smoothly, and I’m so grateful to have so many wonderful people in my life who came to support us in this wild endeavour.
Again – so sorry for the blur. I was trying to get out of the way of the first handful of customers! (And yes, the jacket is my work. One of the best things I’ve ever made.)
What took me by surprise about the weekend was the cool little artist community we developed with the other vendors on our floor. Every time traffic lulled (especially on Saturday, when the weather was absolutely sweltering and people weren’t coming in as steadily) we would chat with each other and talk about our work. Probably the coolest part was during a quiet twenty minutes or so on Saturday afternoon. Across the room from our table was the woman who owns and runs the local goldsmith, Joan, and she showed everybody how to use a jeweller’s saw to cut brass. A few people gave it a try, including my mom. She and my Aunt Sandy actually ended up signing up for one of the jewelry classes that Joan runs, starting in September. My mom is really looking forward to it, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with – I know she’ll do great. It’s something she’s wanted to learn for a really long time. In general, though, we just had a really great time making connections with the other artists in the gallery. Everyone was really talented and really nice. One woman, who was actually also selling alcohol ink jewelry (though somewhat different from mine), even gave me some helpful tips for my own work. Honestly, the community we had going in that room was definitely the highlight of the experience for both of us.
On the other hand, sales were not great. Everyone seemed to come to basically the same conclusion – the festival had been heavily advertised as an arts event, and we think people were expecting more of an art show and less of a shopping opportunity. I made a little over forty dollars, and my mom around three times as much as I did, since her items were more expensive. But, it was a learning experience, and we both feel overall positive about things. All of our work was received with an overwhelmingly positive response, and a number of interested people took our business cards. My mom’s jewelry will likely sell really well on Etsy, and I’m going to enter the local Christmas craft sales in November with my existing soap inventory. Honestly, soap is an awesome gift item, and will probably do really well at that time of year, especially considering how much people liked it this past weekend. I’ll probably just supplement what I still have (which is a lot!) with some more of the Doctor Who and Marvel soaps, since those were my most popular items this weekend – and tiny novelty soaps would be awesome stocking stuffers, am I right?
To end on a high, if slightly unrelated, note, I wanted to mention the best part of the whole weekend. ArtsFest was organized chiefly by True North Gallery, related to True North Records. With that connection they were able to book some awesome Canadian talent, including the one and only Fred Penner. If you didn’t grow up in Canada, you might not know that he is the single greatest children’s entertainer of all time. I’m not even that familiar with his whole body of work, honestly – I never really watched his TV show, though I understand it was wonderful – but I can tell you this: I had a copy of his first album, The Cat Came Back, on cassette, and for much of my early life it was the most important music in my whole dang world. The three albums of my childhood are this, Turn by Great Big Sea, and Gordon by the Barenaked Ladies. (Good job @ my parents for getting baby me hooked on good Canadian music.) Of the three, The Cat Came Back was the only one I owned for myself, and I listened to it often, sometimes constantly, until I was at least twelve and finally learned how to find other music via the internet. Even then, the album has a special place in my heart and I still listen to it sometimes – it’s on Spotify now, I was excited to discover! As a fun tidbit, in grade six, my teacher asked us to write an essay about our favourite song as a get-to-know-you assignment at the beginning of the year. I don’t think he expected me to write about “The Cat Came Back.”
Penner was absolutely delightful on stage.
All this to say, Fred Penner played on Saturday afternoon and Susie and Keynan were good enough to accompany me to the show even though neither of them had ever heard his music. (?!?!?!? How, though.) Leaving the table in the care of my mom and Aunt Sandy, we went out and found a good seat to watch the performance. Penner was totally charming on stage, and just as popular with all the parents in the crowd as with all the little kids they were holding onto. He played my favourite songs, including “Sandwiches” and “The Cat Came Back,” and my delight was much to the amusement and, I think, bafflement, of my companions. Best of all, Penner was greeting people at the merch table after his performance, and Keynan kept me company in line when I went to get a CD signed (I picked Fred’s Favourites, if you’re curious) and he even took a picture of us together. Penner was exactly as warm and friendly as I imagined him, really taking a moment to focus on and chat with every fan, and I couldn’t be happier. There’s nothing like meeting a hero and having a super positive experience. I’m so grateful. (Also, super thankful I look nicer in the picture than I felt. It was really damn hot and I was sweating like crazy!)
I still sing “Sandwiches” at least 60% of the times I make a sandwich. This man’s influence on my life is significant.
Fred Penner was definitely the high point of the weekend, and probably of August in general – Motion City Soundtrack still takes the cake for the summer as a whole, though Penner is a close second. (: ArtsFest was an amazing experience, and I actually feel really positive about it despite the anxiety it induced and how little money I made back for my investment. I think we learned a lot, it gave me something to work towards this summer, and I think my mom and I can continue to move forward with crafting as a business. I’m excited for future opportunities to explore this possibility, since making things is such an enormous passion of mine and I’d love to be able to share those things with the world and make money from it as well! I can’t wait to see where Snips and Snails and Little Mouse Tails/Mouse House go from here.