Monday, November 1, 2010

'Tis The Season



One view of the booth at UNBC's Artisans of the North last weekend....



I have mixed feelings about displaying my textiles. UNBC is a smaller show, mid-range quality rather than higher end pricing and as such the booth rental fee is very reasonable. In return you don't get booth draping, though, so you can see right through my display to the space behind.

Plus I'm not sure I'm happy with my bright white hang tags. They don't look quite so bad in real life. Somehow the flash seems to bounce hard off of them and they stand out more in photos than when looking at the booth in person.

OTOH, my stuff is for sale and people need to be able to find my price and care instructions easily so hiding that information seems counter productive.

I've gone through the banking stuff and am ready to head to town to pick up books at the library, do my deposit and check the mail box. I think Doug forgot to do that so it will likely be crammed full of stuff to be tossed into the recycle container at the door. I'm glad the post office got smart and provided the box a few years ago. If people could see how much of their expensive advertising didn't even make it out the door they might think twice about sending out bulk advertising. OTOH (there seem to be a lot of hands around here today) if you don't get the word out somehow, how will people know you exist and find you if they want your products?

The past couple of years I've spent money on paid advertising in various venues. Unfortunately I can't track any sales from any of it so I've discontinued such ads - at least until I decide what direction to go with my business. Seems a waste of money that I can't actually afford right now.

Thursday we set up for Studio Fair - the higher end fair in town. Mizz B will be in town and will do booth relief for me Fri/Sat (I hope). It will be good to see her and what she brings to sell in the guild booth.

My cold is better so I'm hoping the stress of the week won't delay complete recovery so that I can clear the decks next week, figure out what I'm doing for One of a Kind Vancouver and the other things on the back burner.

Currently Reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a reason for not putting the tags at a bottom corner rather than higher up on a piece? The tags would still be easily accessible, but not so "in your face," and not interfere with the design of the piece.

Also, white,as you know from weaving,tends to come forward. You might consider using a pastel rather than white for your tags.

Best wishes in the various shows!

Janet

Laura Fry said...

Yes. If the tags hang below the textile they tend to get crushed in the packing/transport to and from shows. Rather than replacing them all the time I put them within the textile boundary.

I'll be thinking about options because my printer says the paper we've been using has gotten really expensive. :(

Sharon Schulze said...

The white is showing up in the flash because of the physics of it: white reflects all colors of light. Other colors absorb some colors (the colors you see) and reflect others. Black (at least true black) absorbs all the colors.

So when you snap a flash all the colors are happily absorbing light except the white items - they bounce all that light back so it hits the camera lens and shows up more intensely. That's also why it's so very, very hard to take pictures of a solid black cat - the cat just absorbs the light so there isn't much to bounce back and make an impression (digital or otherwise) on the camera.

:-) Sorry if that was too much of a geek out...

Sharon Schulze said...

Oops... think I have a typo in my last post... You see the colors that are reflected, not the ones that are absorbed. Duh! Should have proof-read better.

So for white you see all the colors, for black you see none of the colors.