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I was a vendor at an interesting event today.

It was the annual Fall Art and Craft  Festival for employees of Delta Airlines, and was held at their offices near, not surprisingly, Tampa International Airport.  This came up kind of at the last minute-- another vendor at the Hyde Park Market had thought I might like to do this event, but when I contacted the organizer, she said they were full.   Then late last week I got an email saying they had a cancellation and they would really like me to come.  So I thought, "why not?", loaded up the car this morning and ended up having a fun day.

My main goal for this event was to refine my Indoor Show Setup.  The only other indoor show that I've done was the Holizaar last December (see this post).  I've spent a lot of time since then thinking about how I could improve visibility and accessibility to my products within the confines of a small space.

 I paid for an 8 foot space, which included an 8 foot table provided by Delta.  But I told them I wouldn't need the table.  Because, when you think about it, I don't need a lot of table space-- I need FLOOR space.  I just brought one of my small tables and turned it sideways, which was totally adequate and made for more floor space. I used a tripod style hanging rack for table runners (on the left side of the picture) and a ladder for 3 quilts.  Leaning against the wall are the 2 wire grid racks that I use with my tent at outdoor events.

This space was right by the door.



 Here was the view from my area.  It was in one of Delta's "all purpose" rooms, on the 4th floor of the building.  There were about 35 vendors.

A thoughtful touch:  there were volunteers waiting for us in the loading area this morning with big carts for unloading, and they showed up again at the end to help us pack up and load up our cars.  I had been fully prepared to expend a lot of energy hauling merchandise and displays myself, so that was really, really nice.  

Vendor highlights:  you can see in the top picture that this pumpkin vendor was right next to me, making my table runners look good!  Those pumpkins are hand made out of air conditioning filters, and were just quirky enough to be really great looking without being too "country", if you know what I mean.

This is lovely packaging on these hand made soaps, and they smelled as good as they looked.  I treated myself to a bar of lavender-lemongrass.

There were also nice baked goods, very cute dog treats, candles, bags, and an interesting clothing vendor.






Vendor bummers:  Tupperware does not belong at a show being billed as "Arts and Crafts". (I love Tupperware,by the way, just not at a craft show).  And the jewelry vendor list needed to be curated much more carefully---there was a whole lot of Ugly Mass Produced, and not enough handmade, and we all know how many incredible handmade jewelry artists there are in every community!

So it was a fun day, and I feel like I made a lot of improvements to my indoor display, which is a good thing, since I'm doing the Holizaar again next month.  I'll be ready!