2nd Annual Bear Boutique

As I mentioned last month I decided to participate in the 2nd Annual Bear Boutique this year. Since I sent my application along with my $25.00 fee I have been a little dissapointed and frusturated. I had to have the application and money in by Oct. 5. Then I would be told if I would have a booth by Oct. 9. I had submitted everything in plenty of time. Oct 9 came and went as I was waiting. Oct. 19 (10 days later) one of my many messages was finally returned and I was told that I was on the list for this year. This gave me 2 weeks before the big day. I didn't want to spend money and waste my time if I wasn't going to be able to participate so I waited until I knew for sure before I began crafting away.

Thanks to a good friend Mandy she and I pulled some very late nights making these magnet boards. We had supplies to make 16 big ones but only got 6 of them done. We made 3 Christmas and 3 everday boards. To give you an idea of how big these are I had Hunter stand next to one. This is my favorite Christmas board. The greens and stripes go with my kitchen. I'm going to hang it above my kitchen table and it will hold all my christmas cards we recieve this year.
This is Madelyn's favorite. Lucky for her it is now hers. She is so thrilled. My fridge is always covered with school projects and different papers she and Hunter bring home from school and nursery. It's not until I run out of magnets and space on my refrigerator that I can finally take some down just to be replaced with more. So this is her future spot for all those priceless pages.
Besides the big 6 magnet boards we also made 6 12x12 board. The thoughts for these are they can sit on a kitchen counter and look decorative or can hold a recipe card, notes, phone numbers, etc.
So for the big day I had 12 magnet boards, several hair bows, flannel boards with 4 different stories/songs (The Very Hungry Catiperpillar, Brown Bear Brown Bear, 5 Little Snowflakes and 5 Little Speckled Frogs). Now that its over I'm so thankful that my scroll saw broke and I wasn't able to make my 20 puzzles that I already have the pictures glued to boards and all they need is cut out. The boutique was from 9-4 today and was a very good learning experience. I will NEVER participate in another one. (I did another craft show about 3 years ago and sold only 2 items). Today I sold 2 hairbows and 4 flannel board stories. During the 7 hours of waiting for someone to buy something I continued to price my items down. So how much did I make for those 6 items???? $22.00

It wasn't just me. There were not many that made money. Most people earned the $25 booth fee back but not much more. There was very poor advertising and very poor directions. The friend that helped me with the magnet boards had a hard time finding us and she knew we were at the highschool. Over all it was most definitely a bomb. I did not make a little extra money as I was hoping for.

Kory mentioned that since this is the 2nd time this has happened to me the next time I want to do something like this he'll just give me $100 to go spend however I want. We'd probably still come out ahead.

Despite the dissapointment of almost not selling anything I did have a good time. I met many knew people and had a nice break out of the house and from my children. My booth was next to a friends so we had each other to keep company. Being I didn't sale any magnets boards they are going to make nice Christmas gifts this year.