Sunday was the December Blim Craft Marketplace, and thanks to a last minute cancellation, kdot & I were able to get a table for Christmas Selling Goodness.
It was grand! I’ve had some time to develop my table a bit more, and had hit up Wonderbucks (incidentally, if you are not aware, Wonderbucks is amazing. It’s like an affordable Bowring/Urban Barn type thing. A decent amount of junk, but some amazingly cool shit for ridiculously cheap prices. Like, the cool little iron frame holder I picked up for $10 to hold a picture frame containing my price list. Or the half dozen “burnt iron” candle plates I bought to display my soaps.
Overall? I’m starting to look good.
And apparently it worked! My last Blim market, I sold about enough to cover my table fees and buy a couple of small things. This Blim? I actually turned a really good profit AND bought some cool shit.
Popular items:
- I sold out of my soap sweaters! This pleased me so much that I’ve purchased this stunning roving off of Etsy. So. Pretty.
- Sold many skull soaps. Awesome! I have plans for making even cooler skull soaps, by embedding them into bars.
- My Ugly Soaps? Almost sold out. Had two people (as they were buying them) say “They look like meatloaf!” and two others say, “Wow, these are the prettiest soaps I’ve ever seen!” Huh. Well, maybe some people think meatloaf is pretty? Who knows. It IS superawesome soap, I’ll give it that. Even if it’s not the prettiest.
- Surprisingly, I didn’t sell a single Pope Soap on a Rope. Very odd, because they’re my favorite. Huh. I may need to come up with a way to draw more attention to them. They’re hanging on an awesome stand that cas & kdot picked up for me, so they’re a little separate from the rest of my soaps. Will have to make the stand flashier, perhaps. Will see.
- Christmas Tree soaps were a hit. I found a neat muffin/candy/whatever tree mold at Winners the other day, and mixed up some sparkly green trees, and scented them with … cinnamon? Damn, I forget. Something spicy.
- Totally gibbed myself with my fluted pillars. I tried to keep my prices easy — almost everything was $5 — so I didn’t have to mess about with coins too much. The exception was my large star candles & my fluted pillars. There’s about $5 worth of beeswax alone in each, so I upped the price to $8 for those.
Or at least, I thought I did. Apparently in my fucking around with my price list, trying to get it to look totally pro, I listed the fluted pillars at $5. And, of course, someone totally took advantage of it and bought the two that I had out. Crap on toast. Oh well, at least I broke even on those, and I only screwed myself out of $6. Still, dumb. In the future: Doublecheck price list.
Overall? I’m totally pleased. And best of all, I’ve discovered the WORLDS BEST CHAI. I left kdot to watch over our table while I wandered off to see if there was anything Super Awesomesauce. Of course, I’ve been to a bunch of craft fairs recently, so most of it was a repeat of stuff that is neat, but I’m not terribly interested in, or is neat, but more than I’m willing to spend (oh god, there were some gorgeous lockets… no no no, no $70 “I’ll never wear it” jewelry.)
But I did find something epic and fantastic. Trudy Ann, the creator, is sweet & warm & hilarious, and I really enjoyed chatting with her… but I had to interrupt her when I tried her chai by saying “Holy crap, this is fantastic!” Seriously, there are no words. This is the best chai I have ever, ever had, and I drink a fair amount of chai.
Seriously, it’s amazing, and you should buy some, drink it, and exclaim “holy crap, this is fantastic!” I’m not kidding. Go!