Nicolette’s Design Diary

Friday show days are usually slow days. Most everyone is at work. In general, the people that attend a Friday show day are retirees and stay at home moms and their kids. And while it’s great talking to retired folk (I get a ton of advice on carpel tunnel, restaurants, and travel tips) and it’s fun to look at the adorable children the mommies have in tow, there’s not a whole lot of y’all out there on Fridays. So, Fridays are the days that we have leisurely talks with our customers and it’s also the day that we artists visit our neighbors.

At every show, you meet someone really cool and interesting, and everyone seems to have a story. This weekend, I seem to be located in the international section of the Sugarloaf Craft show. My neighbor to the right of me, Ivetta Moore is originally from Russia and now lives with her husband and kids in Maryland. She immigrated to the U.S. when she was 18. She does these lovely pictures out of pressed flowers and plants and handmade paper. She was even featured on HGTV’s show “That’s Clever!” last April.

The lady across from me, Wioletta Marek Hada is a photographer who is originally from Poland who now lives in Connecticut. She and her husband met on a airplane when he was taking a trip to Poland. She takes photos of a variety of subjects including nature photos and the coolest photos of children. She has a framed photo of a little Mexican girl selling bracelets on a street corner in her booth that’s one of the adorable photos I’ve seen in a while. Her web site is currently under construction, but hopefully she’ll have it up soon so you can take a look at her photos yourself.

To the right of Wioletta’s booth are a husband and wife jewelry team, Jos

Show set-ups…sigh. Life would be so much easier if…

1. Spaces were always the same size.
2. Everyone stays in their space.
3. There aren’t any immovable obstructions in your space.

In general, booth spaces at most shows are a standard 10 foot by 10 foot. Sometimes if you need the extra space and have the extra cash, you can get a 10 x 15 foot space, or even a 10 x 20 foot space. But for the most part most artists design their booths to fit in a 10 x 10 space. If you get anything smaller than 10 x 10…that can be trouble.

Well, things here at Gaithersburg appear to be a bit different. The Sugarloaf Gaithersburg show takes place at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. The show consists of a number of exhibitors setting up outside in the Fairgrounds with some setting up in open sided barns located throughout the grounds. There are also a number of buildings on the grounds in addition to the barns. Booth spaces outside and in the barns are the standard 10 x 10. Those located in the buildings are 9 x 8…or 9 x 10…or 8 x 8…or some such thing. Now I was aware of this before I arrived at the show site. My booth is pretty flexible, the four walls of my booth can be as small as 6 x 6 and as big as 12 x 12.

So I arrived to claim my space, and saw immediately instead of 10 x 9 space, it was going to be closer to 9 1/2 x 8. One reason was because part of the back wall of the building jutted out into my space. Since the back wall of my booth can’t curve around this part of the wall sticking out in my space, I would have to shorten my booth by almost a whole foot. What also made matters worse is that the lines marking each space appeared to be off by almost a half a foot. Now 10 x 10 foot space is not very big…so 9 1/2 x 8 feet is just miniscule. Why such a fuss about how big my space is? Well, when you’re paying for booth space, you start to become very keen on making sure that you get the amount of space that you paid for. Because I have to shorten my booth in order to work around this piece of wall invading my space the back of that space it essentially becomes dead space…unusable. It’s also unfair because I’m paying the same price as those who have a true 10 x 9 space, but I can only use 9 1/2 x 8 feet of it. Needless to say…I was not a happy camper.

But as it turns out, I wasn’t the only unhappy camper in the building. My neighbor to the left of me arrived around the same time as I did and discovered that her space was lacking a half a foot. Unfortunately her walls are fairly inflexible and she had a carpet that was going to overlap in my space. The crafter to the left of her had already set up…so she couldn’t shift to the left. The crafters to the right of me had already set up…so I couldn’t shift to the right. Someone was going to have to lose some space. I was already somewhat irritiable, I had gone to bed at 1:00 a.m. last night and woke up at 6:30 this morning so I could make the drive from Chesapeake to Gaithersburg before noon. All I wanted to do was to set up my booth so I could check into my hotel and take a nap before dinner. I also wasn’t too keen on losing more space, especially since my booth was already going to be short to begin with.

Fortunately, we took our concerns to the show director and we were able to “make it work” without either one of us losing more space or without me taking a sledgehammer to that back wall. As it turns out, that dead area in the back of my booth space makes for pretty good storage.

[tags]craft shows[/tags]

The sun and blue skies mocked me as I drove from Alexandria to Timonium this morning. After enduring 12 hours of cold and the wind at the Art on the Avenue in Alexandria yesterday, the sun came out to make a perfect fall Sunday. I arrived back in Timonium to find James and Mary in good shape. They hadn’t killed each other and Mary had learned how to make sales and everything was running fairly smoothly. She’s still a little uncomfortable when it comes to checking out credit card orders, but because of it she developed a way to pre-prepare shopping bags so she could quickly package purchases after processing the credit card. I like her system so much that I plan on using it from now on.

James of course managed to make friends with everyone at the show…I doubt that anyone even knew I was gone yesterday. And as usual, he was on dog patrol seeing as we haven’t seen our babies since Wednesday. While on patrol, he discovered Maestro a 3-year old Pomeranian who is a certified therapy dog trained specifically for assisted living and nursing home environments. He was a real sweetie and petting him just made us anxious to get back home to our own poms.

James also filled me in on a bit of terrible news from one of my fellow artists. It appears that Friday night, one of the jewelers at the show, was robbed of over $100,000 worth of inventory, practically her whole stock. It appears that the thieves broke into her van while she and her husband were eating dinner. What makes this lost so crushing is that this jeweler had spend most of the summer creating this stock and it’s now gone just like that. And not only was she robbed of her inventory, but she’s also forced to pull out of all her fall and winter shows because she has nothing to sell. And as anyone in our business knows, October through December is prime selling season because of the holidays, some artists make anywhere from 50 to 80% of their yearly income during these three months. For artists who may be just living on the edge, thefts like this can be a business ending blow.

Unfortunately theft and shoplifting is not an uncommon occurance at shows. You have people shoplifting merchandise out of your booth, thieves stealing money out unattended cash registers and cash boxes, customers making purchases on stolen or invalid credit cards, and thieves breaking into hotel rooms and vehicles to steal both cash and merchandise. And the shoplifters aren’t always the people who steal because they can’t afford to buy from you. At the Princess Anne Show last year, James spotted a nice well-dressed middle-aged woman slipping a pair of $9 earrings into her purse while her daughter was buying a $60 bracelet. James attempted to confront her about it, but didn’t want to blow the sale I was closing with her daughter by making a big scene. It was clear from her reaction to James that she knew what she was doing. Clearly this lady could afford to buy these earrings, they were only $9 after all…so why steal them? One of our artist friends from Harpstone told me about a lady who stole a pair of earrings and then had the audacity to bring them back for a refund! But it’s usually the fact that artists are small one to two person operations that’s the reason that thieves feel more comfortable targeting them. We’re small, we can’t afford high tech security systems, we often work alone, and we’re mobile, making us easier targets for theft and fraud. But because we’re so small, theft especially large scale theft like what happened this weekend can cripple or even end our businesses when they do strike.

It’s more than likely that the clowns that pulled off this theft will never be caught…I can only hope that karma kicks in and they get exactly what’s coming to them. As usual, my fellow artists banded together and did what they could to help. Saturday morning a group of artists helped the jeweler pack up her booth and load up her truck so she could make the return trip home. And on Sunday we took up a collection for her and managed to raise over $4,000 in donations. I know that will hardly make a dent in what she lost, but we can only hope that it helps her out at least a little bit.

One great thing about having three people working in the booth is that I finally managed to take the time to take a leisurely walk around the show floor visiting friends, checking out new artists, and taking in the atmosphere. And breakdown was a breeze, packed up and out in 1 hour. I’m sure going to miss the help next weekend!

[tags]craft shows[/tags]

Well it looks like the show gods have granted me my wish. It wasn’t raining today at the Art on the Avenue show in Alexandria. Unfortunately, I forgot about hoping for warm weather and no wind. Last year at Art on the Avenue, it was the perfect fall day a warm 75 degrees, with lots of sun and blue skies and practically no wind. This year it was cloudy, in the mid 50’s and windy with gusts up to 30 mph. Fortunately, I had learned my lesson in Frederick earlier this year and made sure that I had my tent weights, because if ever was there I day that I needed them, it was today. Some of the other artists at the show weren’t so lucky and their tents went flying when the wind gusted particularly hard. Even with my weights my tent was rocking back and forth and there wasn’t anything that could keep my jewelry from being blown off my tables. Mom and I didn’t even attempt to hang my earrings on the wall of my tent…that was futile from the get go.

Fortunately, the cool weather and the wind didn’t keep away everyone. There were a number of brave souls that came out today keeping warm with scarves, gloves and steaming cups of coffee. And like last year, the Art on the Avenue was also a pet parade and many visitors brought their four-legged friends with them. These are the cutest pair of Corgis I’ve seen at a show. Didn’t catch their names, but the owner was gracious enough to let me get a picture of them.

50 degree weather with wind gusts up to 30 mph is tolerable for an hour, maybe even two. 50 degree weather with wind gusts up to 30 mph for 12 hours gets to be quite unpleasant after say, the third hour. By the end of the day, Mom and I were happy to pack up and go for a hot meal, a hot shower and a warm bed. All I have to say is God bless my mom, there aren’t many people that will put up with getting up at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning to spend all day outside in the damp, cold, and wind. Thanks again!

[tags]craft shows, dogs[/tags]

I had said at the beginning of the week that two shows at one time means that there is a possibility of two million things going wrong instead of one million. I’m beginning to think that I’m psychic…

Yesterday went fairly smoothly. James, Mary and I arrived at the show site, found our space and set up the booth in the unheard of time of an hour and fifteen minutes. With two of us setting up, it usually takes two hours. If I’m setting up by myself, it usually takes three to three and a half hours. The extra set of hands really helps and will be such a luxury this weekend. They also convinced me to try using the colored side of the booth flooring this weekend…so we’ll see how it works out.

This morning, James offered to iron the shirt that I was planning to wear to the show today while I took a shower. Just before I got in the shower, he came into the bathroom and showed me a rip a the bottom of my shirt and asked me if I noticed it before. I was kind of PO’d because that particular shirt is my favorite. I examined the rip and noticed that the fabric around the rip felt…well…decididly crispy. I asked James, “Did you iron this already?” This part seems like it’s burnt”.

“I only ironed half the shirt and stopped when I noticed the rip”, he said.

The rip wasn’t noticeable at first glance, but wearing a ripped shirt is such bad chi. Well okay, I had two other shirts I could wear, so I told him to iron my green shirt instead and proceeded with my shower. Then while we were driving from the hotel to the show site, I noticed that my shirt sleeve felt a little scratchy…I looked down at my sleeve and noticed I could see my arm through a couple of holes in my shirt and I yelled, “What the h—!”

“What?”

“You burned my shirt!”

“No, I didn’t!”

I stuck my fingers in the burn holes and wiggled them at him, “Hello! We’re Nikki’s fingers! Look at us! Look at the holes in Nikki’s shirt!”

After examining the holes, he looked properly ashamed and contrite. He also said he doesn’t understand how it could have happened…he’s usually excellent at ironing. Unlike many husbands I know, James is pretty good with domestic tasks…he’s been doing laundry since he was a boy, he’s one of the best cooks in the family, and one of his regular chores when growing up was doing the family ironing. So him burning holes in not one, but two of the three shirts I wear to these shows was definately out of character. I’m hoping that these aren’t a sign of things to come. I’ve been checking the weather report every hour. Of course the first nor’easter of the season has to be this weekend during my last outdoor show of the year. James and Mary should be fine here at Timonium as the the show is indoors, I’m mainly worried about how Mom and I are going to fare on Saturday in Alexandria as that show is a one-day outdoor show. I’m hoping the day isn’t a washout and I’m keeping both my fingers and my toes crossed.

[tags]craft shows[/tags]

One of the interesting things about doing a show is that you’ll never who who you might meet there. I’ve met old friends at shows, met for the first time customers who I’ve been doing business with for years, and met people who ended up changing the course of my business.

But occasionally, you’ll meet someone that you totally don’t expect.

It was a beautiful day at the Litchfield Jazz Festival. The music was great, the weather was lovely and for the first time in over a week the temperature wasn’t ridiculously hot. It was late afternoon and I was sitting in the shade right outside my booth sizing a bracelet for a customer. I like to work on jewelry while sitting by the entrance of my booth. People like to watch and it sometimes builds a crowd. While I was working, a person stopped and stood in front of the chair I was sitting at. I looked up and saw that it was Danny Glover. Danny Glover from The Color Purple and Lethal Weapon 1, 2, 3 and 4. He held out his hand and said, “Hi, how are you doing today?”

I said, “Hi Mr. Glover, I’m doing fine. It’s so great to meet you! I love your movies. I hope you’re enjoying the jazz festival, the music here is great.”

At least, that’s what my brain said.

My mouth actually said, “Hi!” That’s all…just “Hi!” That’s right, I’m just too smooth for words.

Before my mouth could catch up with my brain a crowd of people came into my booth. A lady who I later found out was Maxine Waters, a senator from California asked to try one of my necklaces and I spent some time with her explaining my work. By the time I had the time to find my camera and something to write with, Mr. Glover was nowhere to be seen. So how did he end up in my booth? It turns out that Danny Glover is in Connecticut helping with the campaign for Ned Lamont, who is running against Joe Lieberman for the Democratic primary election. It just so happened that the Jazz Festival was one of their stops and the crowd of people that came into my booth with him included Ned Lamont, his family and the senator from California…no she didn’t buy the necklace…bummer. My first celebrity sighting and no picture or autograph… double bummer.

Well…at least I managed to shake the man’s hand.

[tags] jazz, jewelry, craft shows, art shows, Danny Glover, Ned Lamont [/tags]

Sooner or later, if your on the road for any amount of time, it will happen. It’s inevitable.

We were heading up to Litchfield, Connecticut yesterday to attend the 11th Annual Litchfield Jazz Festival when we encountered the inevitable. Starting out at 9:00 a.m. we arrived in Richmond with no problem and stopped off to pick up a few things and to eat lunch. Afterwards, we headed out toward Washington D.C. Somewhere in Northern Virginia while I was enjoying catching up on podcasts I noticed that I was stomping on the gas pedal, but the truck wasn’t going any faster. In fact, it was slowing down. I quickly pulled over into a closed HOV lane to keep from getting run over by a 16-wheeler. My husband James who was dozing over in the passenger seat woke up. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

I had no idea what was wrong. One minute the truck was going down the road, the next minute it decided to go on a coffee break. I re-started the engine. The truck re-started fine, so I pulled back out on the road again. Five minutes later, the truck decided it wanted a second cup of coffee. I pulled back into another HOV lane and tried to figure out what the problem was. The radio was still running, the AC was still working, in fact the only thing that wasn’t working was the engine. James and I looked at each other. This definately wasn’t good.

I restarted the truck and drove for another mile. The truck went out for a danish to go with the coffee. That was the last straw. We restarted the truck and pulled off on the next exit which happened to be to Woodbridge, Virginia. We consulted the GPS to see what the closest gas station was. The trusty GPS found a Goodyear and a Merchant’s Tire and Auto less than two miles away. We pulled into the Goodyear before the truck decided it was time to go out for lunch.

I was very concerned about the whole situation. We’ve never had any problems with the truck before. The East Coast was in the middle of a heat wave and it was about 1000 degrees outside, so I wondered if the heat had anything to do with the truck’s bad behavior. I was hoping that whatever was wrong with the trunk was simple and cheap to fix. There’s nothing like blowing your show budget before you even leave the state.

We discussed the problems with the truck to Nate the Goodyear service manager and he reassured us that he would find the problem. We ended up sitting at the Goodyear for the next three hours while they ran diagnostic tests and actually ended up having a nice time. James made friends with the other people waiting in the service area and I put on a small jewelry show for them. Even Nate came over to take a look for something for his wife and I offered to pay for repairs in jewelry. We both laughed, but I don’t think he knew that I was serious.

After a couple hours, Nate gave us the good and the bad news. Bad news was that they couldn’t pinpoint exactly what the problem was. If we wanted to know for certain we would have to wait until tomorrow because a more thorough diagnostic might uncover the problem. The good news was, whatever the problem was, it wasn’t serious enough to be dangerous or enough to leave us stranded on the side of the road. He then noted that the fuel injection hadn’t been cleaned for a while and it might be a good idea to go ahead and get that taken care of. At best, it may take care of the problem because it was possible that a sensor somewhere was being tripped because the engine wasn’t getting enough gas. At worst, nothing would change, but at least that was one more piece of maintenance we wouldn’t have to worry about. We figured that we’ve been there for the better part of the afternoon, so if there was a chance that this may fix the problem, we may as well.

While they cleaned the fuel injection, we decided to get something to eat as by then it was getting close to dinner time. We went to the Mexican restaurant next door and shared a meal. The waitress couldn’t speak english, so I had to drag out my middle and high school spanish to order our meal. After a meal of fairly decent fajitas and very hot salsa, we went back to Goodyear to pick up the truck.

Now, this was a situation in which if a mechanic had the inclination could have given us a major scalping. We were out of towners, in a hurry, dealing with a problem we knew nothing about, and didn’t have a lot of choices or time for second opinions. I’m happy to say that Nate was was a very nice guy. He charged us for the fuel injection cleaning and for only half of the diagnostic testing since it didn’t uncover the source of the problem. In all, the service only set us back a couple hundred bucks and three and a half hours. While I wasn’t too thrilled to part with my money or my time, I was thrilled that it wasn’t more. As it turned out, we didn’t have any more problems with the truck after that. The three and a half hour delay may have turned out to be blessing in disguise, because by the time we got back on the road, we had missed the intolerably bad D.C. and Baltimore rush hour traffic.

As it was, we didn’t arrive at our hotel in Connecticut until 1:00 a.m. The trip ended up taking over fourteen hours long. Not a good way to start a show weekend.
[tags]jewelry[/tags]

On the last morning of the Frederick Festival of the Arts, the festival coordinators throw a really nice breakfast for the artists. During the breakfast, the coordinators award prizes and ribbons to the artists for excellence in each medium, Judges Choice and Best of Show. This year’s Best of Show winner was awarded to a truly amazing artist. John Petrey of Orlando, Florida. John is a mixed media sculpture artist who creates truly amazing 3D sculptures of dresses in a variety of unusual materials including vintage French maps and dressmaker patterns, roofing tiles and bottle caps. This picture from the festival web site no where near does this guy’s work justice. If you get the chance, zip on over to the Festival web site to check out John Petrey and the 2006 winners.

[tags] jewelry, craft shows, artists [/tags]

The Frederick Festival of the Arts is the last show in my spring schedule. It takes place in the quaint historic section of Frederick, Maryland by a small canal and is also the first show of the year that takes place outdoors. Being the control freak that I am, I prefer doing indoor craft shows. Rain, wind, temperature, and humidity can kill a show and kill sales. This is the 13th year for this festival, but according to some of my fellow artists and customers, the last couple years proved to be bad ones weather wise. Last year, it rained all day on Saturday. The year before, a windstorm tore down several tents and tossed both booths and artwork in the quaint little canal. One artist lost $10,000 worth of work in 10 seconds because of that windstorm. A hazard of the trade I really prefer to avoid.

Being that I’m so paranoid about avoiding the weather-related perils of an outdoor show, it’s ironic that this weekend I forgot two cardinal rules of outdoor shows. I guess I’ve been spoiled by having all of those indoor shows at the beginning of the season….

Cardinal Rule of Outdoor shows #1- Always secure the roof of your tent against rain

Set up day for the show took place yesterday, on Friday. My husband James, and I arrived Friday afternoon, took about 2 hours to set up the tent and the interior display and then secured the booth for the night. That night it rained. Not a hard rain, but a slow, steady rain that lasted most of the night. I was mainly worried that the rain would continue on through Saturday. But as we left the hotel and headed toward the show grounds we saw that while the skies were cloudy, the rain had appeared to have stopped for good. The temperature was a cool 65 degrees and the overcast weather would help keep the temperature mild. I felt good.

When James and I arrived at my tent, we were in for a nasty shock. The steady rain didn’t roll of the top of the roof of the tent like it was supposed to and several gallons of rainwater had pooled on the roof of my tent. There was no question of leaving the water there. While the roof is water resistant, it’s not water proof. Which meant that the pool caused a steady drip of water inside the tent. To get rid of the water, James and I used a broomstick from a neighbor and prodded the roof until the water rolled off on one side. Fortunately, no one had set up on the right side of us so we avoided pouring several gallons of water into the tent beside us. Unfortunately, we were set up on a road that had a slight incline, so the several gallons water we prodded off our tent rolled down to the tents across from us. We were mortified. I went over to the artists and apologized for pouring water into their tents. As most artists are, they were quite gracious about the water and there was very little harm done. Further investigation showed that I had forgotten to secure the roof of the tent properly to keep rainwater from pooling on the roof. The outcome of that mistake resulted getting off on the wrong foot with some of my fellow artists and the extra 30 minutes spent cleaning up some of the mess caused by the rain that had filtered into the tent.

Cardinal Rule of Outdoor Shows #2- Always secure your tent from wind

Before arriving in Frederick, I had spent so much time checking The Weather Channel to set if it was going to rain this weekend, that I didn’t occur to me to worry about wind. Most outdoor tents can be prone to flying away in the wind because the frame of the tent has to be lightweight enough for one person to transport and set up. When you add canvas walls to the sides of the tent, it basically turns it into one big heavyweight kite. To counteract this, you have to stake the tent down if you’re set up on grass. If you’re not set up on grass or if you want extra security, you also have to anchor your tent down with heavy weights. Unfortunately for me, I had forgotten to pack my weights for my tent. Even more unfortunately, we were set up on asphalt, so I could not anchor my tent with the tent stakes. Worst of all, that nice, cool, overcast, morning turned into a nice, warm, sunny day with wind gusts of up to 29 miles an hour.

With every gust of wind we were sent running to grab the corners of the tent to keep the frame from being blown away. To add to the fun, my clever way of using mini-blinds to display my earrings only made it easier for the wind to blow my earrings off their displays. We had whole sections of earrings blown off in one gust of wind and several times the frame of the tent actually began to lift off the ground. After a while, it almost seemed that the wind was making our lives miserable on purpose. As soon as we would re-hang earrings that were blown off in the last gust of wind, the wind would shift and blow off another section. Or the wind would blow a section off into the faces of the customers browsing through the tent. Eventually, James and I spent the last couple hours of the afternoon standing at the entrance of the tent, each holding the corner as the wind because the wind was gusting almost continuously. Finally in desperation, I went to the show managers and asked them if they had any extra weights that I could use, because I didn’t want to spend the rest of the weekend holding on to my tent. Eventually volunteers came by and used some asphalt nails to stake my tent to the road. Didn’t know these things existed, I’ll have to remember find some to include in my set up equipment.

The day didn’t turn out to be a total bust however. The flying jewelry and moving tent didn’t seem to drive people away and James turned the whole situation into a running joke with visitors to the booth. And I had plenty of volunteers to help run down flying earrings. One person actually bought a pair that flew off the wall and landed in her shopping bag!

We ended the day with an awesome meal at a local Frederick italian restaurant called Taurasos Ristaurante located on East Street in the Historic District. With great food, a nice outdoor seating area (which we didn’t use because, hey…we’ve been outside all day), and reasonable prices it was a great end to a somewhat difficult day. If you’re ever in the Frederick, Maryland area, be sure to check it out!

[tags] jewelry, craft shows, artists [/tags]