Flair on the Farm Holiday Boutique & Craft Show Display Ideas

It's that time of year again!

Saturday, November 22nd is another amazing show at Flair on the Farm.  I will have a booth there again this year and I'm so excited!  It's my favorite show of the year!  

I was thrilled to be able to participate in Flair on the Farm Spring Fling show in April as well.  Their shows always have great attendance and an amazing selection of vendors.  The Spring Fling show was no exception and I'm sure the Holiday Boutique will be even better!

My booth at the Spring Fling show in April 2014.

Vendor booths along side a rustic farm building.

The setting is rustic and charming!  Set on an actual working farm, there are vendors inside a antique barn and also outside on a manicured lawn area.

Shoppers outside the historic barn.

The spring show boasted over 60 vendors, a wine and mimosa bar, a food truck and tea stand.  The holiday show is expected to be another great one, with the addition of a gift wrap booth, dessert vendors and more.



My craft show display ideas and tips...

Each show is a challenge for me to find new and better ways to display my items.  I'm constantly adding and changing elements and no two booths are ever the same.

This past show, I had a lot more tea towels and had to be creative in finding ways to display them.  I finally settled on this clothesline approach.  I liked the way it separated my booth from my neighbor's booth without feeling like a wall. 

I also had extra towels laying on the table, but found I had to constantly fix the display after customers went through them or after the wind picked up.  I'm still thinking about a better way to display the towels.

For some of my smaller items, I used assorted tins and dishes to corral the individual pieces.  Paper gift tags were used for my pricing.  I've found if your items aren't priced you end up repeating yourself so many times during the show, it's better to label everything from the very beginning!

These wooden apple crates were a new item I added to my displays for this show.  They were an inexpensive and easy way to add some height to my display.  I found them at a local craft store on sale and spent less than $20 for two.  Eventually, I'd like to paint or stain them a nice color, but in the meantime they still look nice in the natural wood color.  Bonus--I used them to haul in other display pieces from my car!

Another thing I like to have at my shows is a little bowl of candy and a big stack of business cards.  The candy lures them in and the cards are a great way to get follow-up business.  This little mug was from my grandmother's set of dishes and it was just right for holding some hard candies.  The card holder was purchased off of Etsy from a shop called Creative Works.

Gorgeous farm buildings against a bright blue sky.

This show is one of my favorites and always has a unique selection of vendors.  Plus you can't beat the gorgeous setting.  It's a bit of a drive out to the country, but it's well worth it!  Hope to see you out there on Saturday, November 22nd!

My new friend, the blind barn cat.

View of the farm from the road.

Craft Show Display Ideas #2

The spring craft show season is almost here!  I'm scouring Pinterest and going through my photos of past events and looking for ways to improve my displays.  My booth is different each time I do an event, and over the years it's evolved and changed.

Last November I was honored to be chosen as a vendor for the fall Flair on the Farm show and I think this booth was my best yet!   This was an outdoor event so I used a large canopy with a white backdrop to separate my booth from my neighbor behind me.

I made a fun fabric scrap garland to decorate the back wall of the booth and hold my sign.  I really like how that helped identify my booth and added some shabby flair.  For my upcoming shows I am going to work on improving my sign with a bit more homemade character.  Maybe embroidery? Or applique?

This was also the first show in a while that gave me a full 10ft x10ft booth.  I thought I would have so much room, but there just never seems to be enough!  I was one table short of what I needed so I ended up using my chair to display items. (I reclaimed it later in the day when my feet were tired!)

I was also given the challenge of a corner booth, so my other side of the booth had to be viewable from two sides.  This ended up being pretty challenging, I spent a lot of time shuffling things around.  I also wanted to be careful what items I placed on that table to detract from any possible theft.  The benefit of this corner location was a lot of traffic which outweighed any display challenges!

I put smaller items like rings and hairpins inside the booth where I could keep my eye on them. (Recognize that hairpin board from this post? I'm still so impressed with that late-night creation!)  Trays full of black beans provided an interesting display for the rings.   The shutters I found at a garage sale a while back helped hang some totes and added some height to the display.  I also had a sale basket on the ground with odds and ends that I wanted to get rid of.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this booth turned out.  I think I need to add at least one more table, or two, and maybe some more height for visual interest.  I really like this idea using those cheap wooden crates from craft stores.

I will be participating in the Flair on the Farm Spring Fling show coming up this weekend.  My booth is in the center of an aisle so my set-up will have to change.  I also plan on using another table and some new display pieces.  I will be taking lots of pictures of my booth this time so you can see how it all turns out.

If you are local come say hi to me at the show!  Here is the info:

DIY Hair Pin Display

As promised I am back to detail how I made one fantastic display piece out of and old picture frame, ribbon, fabric and hot glue!  (I apologize for the lack of pictures, but as you will see below, it was late at night and my mind was not functioning at full capacity!)

I ran across this blog post from Hip To Piece Squares in my search for creative display pieces for my upcoming craft show.  She used thick ribbons to beautifully display fabric covered button hairpins.  I pinned the post and vowed to come back one day and do this myself.

Fast forward a few months, and it's 11pm, the night before my first craft show of the season.  I suddenly realize I have no way to display my adorable hairpins.  I remembered this blog post, but had no thick ribbons or foam board, and a trip to the craft store at that time of night was out of the question. So I improvised....

I had an old 8x10 picture frame lying around that was missing it's glass due to an unfortunate household incident.  I took out the backing board, cut a piece of fleece the size of the board and then covered the board and fleece with a piece of linen blend fabric.  I pulled it tight as I could and hot glued it in place.

I had no thick ribbon on hand (of course!), so I used two strips of thinner ribbon placed close together.  I pulled them tight and hot glued them in place.  I would suggest measuring this part, since I eyeballed it and due to sheer exhaustion that night, mine are less than equally spaced apart.

I wiggled the backing back into the frame and I had a lovely display piece made from items I happened to have on hand at 11 o'clock at night.  I then proceeded to fall into bed, exhausted but excited for the next day!  I ended up selling many more hair pins than usual, and I can't help but believe it was due to my great new display piece.

Craft Fair Display Ideas

I just had my first craft show of the holiday season and I had such a fun time trying out some new display ideas!  I've been scouring Pinterest for weeks now, looking for new ideas to display my work WITHOUT spending a fortune.  (You can see my Pins here.)  Some of my display pieces are from the dollar section of Target, random household items or garage sale finds.

The first new items I used this weekend were a pair of cream colored shutters.  I had seen a blog post on Quiltish about using shutters for display, but cheap shutters aren't always easy to come by.  But I got lucky and happened to do a drive-by past a neighborhood garage sale and there out front were these beautiful shutters.  Painted off-white, in good shape, and only $10 each!

Once I got to my show, I wasn't sure how I was going to use them.  I ended up using them as height elements in the back of my display and hanging purses and totes from the corners.  Next time I want to get a little banner to hang between them with my shop name, like one of these from Bekah Jennings on Etsy.  I've been drooling over her banners for a while now!

Here are a few other display ideas from items I had lying around the house:

Elastic hair bands displayed in an old fish bowl. (RIP Goldy)

This tiered cupcake stand from Cost Plus World Market is now a mini wallet display.

Drawers make great display containers.  This drawer is from an antique sewing machine cabinet and it fits my tissue cozies perfectly!

I'm always on the lookout for great display pieces, and I would love to hear ideas you have in the comments below.

My next post will detail how I made a hairpin display from an old picture frame, some fabric, ribbon and hot glue!  Look for it soon!