Diane Clancy’s Art Blog

Can you believe it?  You can see me again … Twice in a week and a half - can you stand it? Saturday we went up to Rowe MA to do a fair.  One of our friends was coordinating it and loves our work so she invited us to come up to the annual Old Home Days.  We had lots of looking but only a few buys - even though we dragged half our house up there! The economy is taking its toll big time on the buyers at these kind of fairs.

Rowe Fair, Photography © Susan Elkin

It was great that we went though - for a couple of reasons. One - it has been a long time since I just sat somewhere and didn’t do a lot all day (I know - you keep telling me to rest!) It felt like we had been at the beach all day.  Also, Susan now gets why I want to focus a lot on online marketing and she has gotten on board.  This will make marketing life much better!!

More pictures may be coming later.  I would LOVE to hear how you are!! Thanks for stopping by!

~ Diane Clancy

We have no phone and internet right now. Our line with mucho static apparently signaled the police last night and they came at 1 for the 911 call we didn’t make. Hard way to wake up. But I would much rather have it that way than have an emergency and they not come. We are down at the library parking lot to get our mail and for me to upload this post. Luckily I had written it already. I will catch up when I have internet again.

Two days ago I started the story of our first craft fair if you would like to read it. We worked lots and lots to get lots of prints, cards and matted images all ready to go. I made up little display tags to show the prices. We didn’t know enough to bring our own table at the point, but we did bring a card rack that we had bought from a local bookstore (who sold our cards and they did very well there) … so we dragged it all in and then had LOTS more in the car still. We took both cars to make sure we had enough to sell everyone who wanted our work.

Ah, the naive hope of the inexperienced!! We did sell some .. but it wasn’t much for all the work. Besides the hats, scarves and potholders, there was also homemade fudge for sale … did I mention we bought fudge? Many of the other sellers worked there and so had established relationships with the customers.

But it was some exposure. We watched very carefully who looked at what … doing our market research … And we met incredibly kind and generous other sellers, particularly one woman who works there. She gave us advice and let us know about other fairs. We are all still delighted to see each other - she is just a gem. The second year she also insisted on giving Susan and I each one of her scarves.

She was was one of the biggest silver linings. Also the work we donated for the raffle (do I hear a theme here?) was utterly appreciated by the residents. I will continue.
By the way, these are some of the new ornaments I put into my CafePress Shop.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: craft fair, donations, CafePress, merchandise

First an update. An ice storm prevented travel plans … so we are here. And a wonderful piece of good news!! I called the place where we had left our items on consignment for their craft fair. They had already decided to honor our reckoning of items and had put a check in the mail. I mentioned that some items were not returned the year before either … I found things missing but not until the summer. I said I understood that it was too late. He said no, no … we want to respect our artists. And he insisted on paying me for some of the items for last year!!

I had stopped counting during the summer because I was mad I had lost merchandise, but this makes me feel appreciated and values! I had brought up the merchandise loss in terms of I thought their accounting needing to be better. They had already talked about how they want to change how they work with us in the future. Because we have many similar things, like say 50 cards, next year they decided they want us to put the same item number on all 50 cards and that way they can just keep track of the numbers of items instead of individual items. I am delighted! It will make our job much easier.

If I hadn’t followed up and let them know I was disappointed in not getting credit for the missing merchandise, none of this would have happened. Let’s face it, most people want to do the right thing! So a happier ending!!

I will continue with the other craft fair tomorrow … I just wanted to share this good news with you!

By the way, you can get these and other items at my CafePress Shop. 

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: respect, accounting, craft fair, itemizing

We got started in craft fairs because Susan was photographing elders in a nursing home. She went in several times to give lectures and take some photos. The recreation department was run by a wonderful woman who loved Susan’s work. She encouraged Susan to come and be with the residents. Then she set up an opportunity for the family of the residents to hire Susan to take portraits so they would have wonderful mementos. A few people took her up on it and were delighted, but in general it seems (at least around here) there is a better market for people photographing their children and animals than photographing their elders.

Sebastian in Flowers, Digital © Diane Clancy

The recreation director wanted to make it up to Susan for spending all the time (and money) so she invited us to several craft fairs they have for residents and staff. Plus she is a gigantic fan of our work … so she wanted an easy chance to buy our work.

Susan had taken a picture of her corgi dog and I had put him in flowers and butterflies (two separate images). She was our best customer! And there was one other employee who loved our work .. so she bought 3 8 x 10″ images and framed them herself. We were delighted!!

It was a lot of work, we didn’t have an ideal location and we were competing against very inexpensive handmade pot holders, hats, scarfs and then lotion and such. It was hard selling our archival prints against the other items. People LOVED our work, would admire it … but, as Susan says, as a museum … wanting to take it home, but not wanting to buy it. More tomorrow ….

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: nursing home, craft fair, Susan, photography