In Order to Display - - -

Whew! Now where was I?

I believe waaay back in July (and July is a wonderful thought isn't it?! Warm and sunny and when the world wasn't covered in 3 feet of snow . . . ) I digress, in July, I had the thought to share my lessons learned from my first year at the Buyers Market of American Craft. (By the way, I will be there again this year! It's in Baltimore, MD August 23, 24, 25!) So, seven months later, it seems like a good idea.

One of the things that I am always keeping an eye out for is great ways to display work. As anyone probably has told you, your displays should be a reflection of your work. It should compliment while not distracting the items that you are selling. For years, I sold only at outdoor festivals/arts and crafts fairs/etc. For that, it was simply tables covered with "pea soup" color yards of fabric, old barn boxes for varying heights, some baskets and a few burlap covered boards with hooks for hanging my pins.

For the Buyers Market, I knew I wanted a very simply display, I wanted my pins (which are all packaged on shipping tags) to look like they were hanging in a salon gallery. So, I went to ABCTarget .com (here) first . But I didn't want it to look cheesy or department store-ish. But I liked the ideas of portable "walls" to hang my work on and they weren't ridiculously heavy, so I bought six 2 by 6 feet grid walls in white (here.)

My original thought is that I would cover them in fabric panels. So, I figured out how many hooks I would need, and then all the proper hardware, legs, connectors etc. and a couple of gridwall shelves for displaying my cards on.

These are the hooks, I got the small ones - I think I got 160? So, I went a little hook crazy . . . )


Okay, so at this point, I am well aware that this is looking department-store-ish and also very non-pea soup-ish. But I was confident I could do something to it.

Here's what I ended up doing - not making fabric panels! I was in a time crunch. What I did was lightly sand all of the gridwalls, hooks, and legs with steel wool (don't skip this step!) and I spray painted (I used rust-0-leum) everything a java brown. Now, if you are thinking about spray painting the way that I did, think ahead to the color you are going to use and buy the grid wall system in the closest color! For example, I should have bought black because white is too light! If there is a missed spot or a chip - you can really see it! I chose brown because on all of my tags, I use brown ink and the tags themselves are a light tan/brown - it complimented my work without overwhelming it.


You may be asking yourself - so when are we going to see the final results!?!?! Here you are, a lovely (blurry!) picture -






Now, everyone's display needs are going to be different. And you are going to want to convey the feeling that your products emit. But all displays have a few good rules of thumb, like keep everything at eye level so that your customers don't have to strain to see your product, keep your displays clean and neat and let your work be the stars of the show! Let the little touches (for me, the color of the grid walls, the fabric on my table, my sign, height boxes and trees) really be the icing to the cake that is all of your handmade goodies!!!

Until next time!