Getting Ready for a Show

I don't do shows very often. And I think I know why. I'm lazy. There's so much involved in preparing to do a show that I usually just avoid them.

I'm doing one this Saturday, though. It wasn't something I really planned, but my newfound friend and ceramic artist Cathey Bolton-Moore talked me into it. She's the curator of a shop called Art on Depot in downtown Waynesville (ok, technically her shop is located in the Frog Level historic district); and since the street right outside her shop is going to be blocked off for The Whole Bloomin' Thing festival this Saturday, she's making it pretty easy for me to participate by loaning me tables, a tent, the use of her cash register, AND her husband (to help set up). How great is that?!?!

Even with all that help, there are still a lot of things for me to do.

I just spent a couple of hours making tags for all the jewelry I'm going to be taking with me. A lot of tags. It's a good thing I have a lot of experience with graphics and printing, or that task alone would have been daunting. You see, since I sell online in my Etsy shop, I don't have to make tags for anything. I do have a spreadsheet with a list of all the pieces I create (well, almost all the pieces -- sometimes I don't get around to entering them, so there are "strays"), so making the tags was pretty easy.

I'd been wanting to incorporate the White Rabbit illustration somehow (I really love those Tenniel illustrations!), so I took this opportunity to make him part of my tags. Why the White Rabbit? And why that particular illustration, even though the Mad Hatter is really my favorite character? Well, because the White Rabbit is holding a watch, and the name of my business is time2cre8. It just makes sense, right?

Anyway, there are the tags. At least the tags for all the pieces that are in my spreadsheet inventory. After I round up all the jewelry and attach the tags, I'll have the strays all sitting in front of me and will be able to add them to the inventory also. I cringe to think how many of those strays there are. More than there should be, that's for sure.

Since I finally managed to incorporate the White Rabbit somehow, and since I was sitting at the computer fiddling with graphics anyway, I decided to redo my Etsy shop banner. My old banner was created by another Etsy seller, and it was never really "me". I'm pretty happy with this one... it has an image of one of my early peyote designs, Little Vine; my shop name and info in my favorite font, Occidental; and the White Rabbit hanging out over there on the right side, letting people know that custom orders are welcome! :-)

Now it's time to get back to preparations for that festival on Saturday. Two days left to have everything ready. I think I can do it. I'm making a list of all the things I need to take with me. You just never know what you're going to need at one of these things.

I just hope there's enough time for me to get everything ready and still manage to get a new peyote cuff design done for this week! I'm bound and determined to keep that New Year's resolution I made.