It is my aim to hone my craft stall display down even more to a cohesive colour scheme, which I hope will result in a more elegant look overall and allow my pieces to add the 'colour'. By a process of elimination, this will be black and cream - black because many events I've attended have specified black table coverings and although I've always adhered to it, I've never seen it enforced and usually find myself much in a minority. So having bought black table coverings and found they work well anyway for highlighting jewellery, I am happy to continue with them.
As a side note; my main covering as shown in the following photos comprises a decent length of crushed velvet fabric - used as it came, cut from the bolt. It's the synthetic, slightly stretchy jersey-knit-based crushed velvet that's used for little girls' party dresses and trousers and it has proven to be ideal. The synthetic knit base of the fabric does not fray, it has a heavy slinky feel which drapes nicely over tables. The velvet type pile is very good for things staying in place, it acts in a soft Velcro type manner to prevent things slipping. The crushed finish hides a multitude of sins and finger marks without it looking at all shabby.
But perhaps the biggest single bonus is that it's synthetic and doesn't crease - I've used it for a couple of years and it's not actually been introduced to my iron yet, nor do I expect it to. I can scoop it roughly into a box at the end of an event and it doesn't take any harm left like that. I don't want you to think I'm slovenly, I do remove it and fold it carefully for storage, but on the odd occasion that boxes don't get properly unpacked immediately - when looking after stock is always my priority - it doesn't actually come to any harm or look any the worse for the experience.
Many people advocate using cheap plain dyed bedding sheets for stall coverings - they can be had cheaply per area of fabric, but even polycotton fabric will crease if left folded and is likely to need ironing for every show. My crushed velvet perhaps cost me around 20 GB Pounds when I bought it - I seem to think it was £6.99/m and I bought 3 metres. I feel that it was very well worth the investment. I supplement this for larger stalls with 2 small black fleece blankets - bought from Ikea for under 3 Pounds each - polyester fleece has many of the same attributes that I like in the synthetic velvet.
Why was I telling you that . . . oh, that's right, my black and cream colour scheme. The complimentary cream was arrived at for similar practical reasons; some pieces look good against a dark background, some need a light display to show them to their best and as I always keep a supply of cream vellum card for my photo greetings cards and also bought some riser shelves that happened to be already painted cream, this was an obviously complementary light to my dark. The photos show one or two busts of different colours - only used on this occasion as I ended up with gaps on display as pieces in boxes sold and happened to have them with me. By next time, I'll have a fuller compliment of matching display materials.
At the event illustrated, I ended up making more of the small earring variants whilst at the event, as they seemed to prove popular with buyers. They show the earrings off well and can easily be picked up for closer inspection or to hand to me to parcel up once they've made a selection.
Over recent events, I've gradually moved away from having earrings on communal displays with lots of items together - observing customers, they do like to pick them up to look more closely - or to put a few different items together for comparison when making a selection. I do use some larger display busts based on the necklace ones that hold a dozen or so pairs, usually in themes, but found that I sold more on the individual free-standing cards - or on pierced cards inside gift boxes - that they can pick up and look at. I will gradually move towards putting most of my earrings either in individual boxes on single displays if this assists customers to make a purchase. It has become very evident over recent fairs that customers prefer this format of display and I've gradually mothballed my larger display boards.
I later updated my free necklace display bust template to include the individual earring bust, which can be found in this earlier blog.
1 comment:
This is really interesting boo, thanks. My earrings were all gropued together, and I think customers just got overwhelmed by it all. I can see how having them on their own little stands would help a great deal. HOpefully I'll remember!
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