It’s on again!! Yep, the Etsy Made In Canada markets have been so well received across the country for the past two years, that they’re at it again! AND less than THREE weeks away! I’m so honored to be one of the chosen vendors in Calgary and thrilled to be apart of the community! {read more}

After taking much of the summer off from “serious” making, I’m back at it and stitching up a storm for the Etsy market. I’m hoping to have a pile of Mermaid Dreamcatchers, both large & small, in stock at the show, so if you’ve been waiting to score one, now is your chance! I’ll also have a handful of unicorn & Dino Dreamcatchers, along with a rainbow of Love Catchers. Fingers crossed I even find a teeny bit of time to make up a few surprises that I’ve been daydreaming about.

Besides the “making” that needs to happen over the next few weeks, I also need to sort out my display, make tags, and tackle all the hundred little things that go with being a vendor at a market. Thankfully, the pure excitement of this show far outweighs any stress over it. No matter what, it will be a most excellent time!!

So here are the deets:

Etsy Calgary: Made in Canada
The Genesis Centre – Festival Gymnasium {#10 7555 Falconridge Blvd. NE}
Friday, Sept. 23rd 6-9pm
SNEAK PEEK EVENT, $8 tics
{go buy your tickets now for this & thank me later}

Saturday, Sept. 24th 9am-5pm
General Public Market, $5 admission

**Pop over to Instagram and follow the @etsycalgary feed. Lots of chances to win tickets to the sneak peek night. I even have two tickets to give away later this month.**

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This spring, I had the immense pleasure of being a vendor at two markets around Alberta! I don’t get to do too many markets & craft shows these days, so doing TWO (on back-to-back weekends) was a pretty big deal for me! There were lots of reasons to be excited, including having actual booths at both markets instead of a single table, and focusing primarily on selling my Love Catcher & Dreamcatcher designs. Today I’m sharing how I tackled my display at the shows.

Each market had a different size booth space, and as you discover doing craft shows, display setup can change {a lot or just a little} EVERY single time. There’s so many variables at each market: who your vendor neighbor is & what kind of setup they have, whether you luck out with wall space behind you or a spot on the corner of an aisle. Even the vibe of a show & the type of customers on a particular day can dictate re-thinking your display.

Be flexible and have several options for display

I was fortunate with my first market this spring to have a 10′ x 10′ booth, basically as big as it gets. It gave me plenty of room to be flexible with my display. I had never attended the market, and so didn’t have any idea what to expect. A week before the show, I marked out the booth size on the floor in the basement with some painter’s tape and I played around with a few different ways to setup my larger display units. I suggest you TAKE PHOTOS with your phone of the mock set-up, so once you get to the show {and your stress level is high & the excitement is building} you can actually remember what some of your plans were. A quick glance through pics on your phone should keep you on track. While I was doing my mock setup for the 10′ x 10′ booth at home, I also marked out the smaller booth size, 8′ x 8′ and determined some display options for that, at the same time.

Determine your work flow

When you’re considering your booth design, keep in mind how YOU will move around in it. Do you need space behind a table? Do you need a spot to sit? Where will you interact with customers? Where will you take payment or bag up purchases? How will you get to additional stock, if needed? Once you sort out your own work flow, you’ll be able to envision what’s needed {and what’s not} in your booth. Each vendor needs different things to make them comfortable. I’m an introvert, which means, I need to have a spot behind a table where I can retreat for small snippets of renewal & to feel comfortable. I would never be comfortable, sitting in a chair in the middle or to the side of my booth. I spend a lot of time out from behind my table {especially in a larger booth}, but for my own sanity, I need a table to get behind.

You can see how the different booth size determines how much of your display changes. In the 10′ x 10′ booth, I was able to have a 6′ table, a 4′ table and all three of my folding pegboards expanded, with lots of room for customers {and myself} to move around in the space. In the 8′ x 8′ booth, I went down to one 6′ table, my three folding pegboards {overlapped & not fully expanded} and a clothing rack. This worked because I lucked out with a spot right at the end of an aisle, so it was a corner space & I could simply step out into the side aisle to move from behind my table to into the booth. If I had a neighbor on both sides, this set-up would not have worked. I would have gone down to a 4′ table {which I had brought along in the truck, just in case… come prepared for a couple scenarios}.

One of my favourite display items for hanging product is a simple clothing rack {bought mine at Ikea}. You can take them apart, so they travel & store in flat pieces, and you can adjust their height and the height of the your whole display by setting it on a table or floor. Also, if you get metal ones, you can use simple magnets to hang thing from them, making it easy for customers to interact with your product. I actually sell button magnets at the shows, but I also use them to hang my Love Catchers from the rack.

My new favourite display item are the pegboards that my dad helped me build. They are two panels of pegboard, framed with wood on the backside for stability, and hinged together. The fold very flat for travel & storage and they aren’t too heavy for me to handle. I have three sets, which makes them the most flexible display option to date that we have built. Depending on the space, they can be placed in a zigzag configuration or they can be overlapped in lots of different ways to fit into smaller spaces, or I can just use one or two of them.

I painted most of the pegboards white on the front, with one dark grey. Customers did appreciate being able to hold up particular designs against the darker colour, as they decided what would look good in a room.

Display is all about play, play, play

Throughout both markets, I played around with how I arranged product on the pegboards. Product placement is one of those things you can’t necessarily plan until you see how customers interact with your product. Different days of the markets drew different folks, and I switched which product I featured based on how things were going {One evening, people seemed to be really looking for dreamcatchers for boys, so I moved those toward the front. The next day, people were focusing on things for girls, so I moved the product for boys toward the back, etc.}. Try it out, adjust, simplify, add a bit, play around.

I’m all about DETAILS!

So when my dad and I finished the pegboard displays, I realized using just plain metal hooks was not going to be good enough. I spent two evenings, gluing large colourful buttons onto the ends of every single hook. Not only did this addition make the hooks “on brand” with Bubblegum Sass, they were very functional (kept product from slipping off), and added more character to the display. When I looked at the pegboards with my unique hooks, it was very satisfying and left me with that “ahhhhh” feeling, which means they did their job. If things aren’t feeling quite right with your display, consider looking at some of the details. Is there something you could add or change, that would bring it all together? For me, it was the hooks. For others, it might be the table coverings, or how you tackle signage, or the bins/bowls/crates/plates that you are using on a table display. Small changes can bring the whole thing together.

Annnnd it’s HERE!! This weekend is the first Market Collective Holiday show of the season! Come on down to the Chinese Cultural Centre Friday 4-9pm, and Saturday & Sunday 10am-6pm. There’s a $5 entrance fee for the weekend (kids under 12 get in free) or you can score a THREE weekend pass for only $10 (limited quantities available). Yep, THREE weekends of shopping local, unique, handmade items. This little gal will only be at one of the weekends, so you best come out and say “Hi” this Friday, Saturday or Sunday!

I have a nice variety of Love Catchers waiting for new homes, including a few festive ones to decorate your home for the holidays.

I will also have some adorable stocking stuffer options, including colouful Button Hair Clips & the every popular Button Magnets, both of which I have in holiday colours & limited edition “Frozen” inspired colours. I know, right?! Very pretty, and very awesome.

If you’re looking for a super unique gift, then check out the one-of-a-kind Upcycled Cuff Bracelets in pretty much every colour you can imagine. I will also have the more simple Love Cuff Bracelets available. That my friends, should have you covered for some nice gifts for all the gals in your lives. And then of course, there’s all the other amazing vendors that will be at the show to meet your remaining gift needs. I’ve got a few items to pick up myself. Looking forward to seeing you all down there!

So SAVE THE DATE!!! December 5-7th you’ll find Bubblegum Sass down at the Chinese Cultural Centre. Of course, each of the three Market Collective weekends will be chalk full of different artists & artisans, so plan on doing a bunch of your Christmas shopping down there!

The line-up to get into Etsy: Made In Canada (and score one of the sweet swag bags) started at 9am, a whole hour before the market even opened! Once the doors were opened, it was a steady stream of people coming through until 4pm!! I kid you not. Things only slowed down a bit in the last hour, but other than that, it was busy, busy, busy. You’ve also got to picture that the weather in Calgary was, well, kind of miserable that day. Down right cold, overcast, light drizzle of rain mixed with the occasional snowflake. Did I mention that half of the vendors were outside, tucked under tents, but still outside? Yep, I was out there too. Layers of comfy sweaters, hot coffee, and lots of lovely customers kept us all warm!

So here’s what my table looked like this time around. I think I’m finally getting there in terms of a more unified display & product style. Years in the making, but it’s coming together. The Love Catchers were quite a hit (although tricky to photograph here). I’m looking forward to making some more… there’s a big box of supplies waiting in the sewing room for when we get back.

Bubblegum Sass was included in a nice feature on the UPPERCASE magazine blog. Some of the gals who helped put on the show have blogged about it too, including Hilda of Handmade Therapy and Lindy of Crafted By Lindy. BIG thanks to the organizers and volunteers who helped pull this wonderful show off! Sounds like Etsy: Made In Canada went really well across Canada. Hopefully, Etsy decides to do it again. For now, I’ve got my fingers crossed on getting into one of the Market Collective Christmas shows in December. Hopefully I’ll have good news about that to share with you soon.

Check out the Facebook page for further event updates. Not in Calgary, but wanna shop for handmade goods? Check out the Etsy: Made in Canada homepage to locate the city nearest you (over twenty cities across Canada are participating)!

Oh, and you are definitely going to want to be at the show at 10am sharp! The first 50 customers to make it through the Etsy doors (located in the bottom level of the market, through the marked doors), will get an awesome swag bag. I’ve been seeing some sneak peek photos on Instagram of the handmade goodies vendors have put together for the swag bags and folks are going to love them! You probably guessed that my contribution involves buttons:

I had already played around quite a bit with the shabby chic style cuff bracelets last year. So I used the inspiration from those and sprinkled it into my button hair clips and the new bridal accessories. The result is a whole lot of pretty in vintage doilies, lace, silks, tulle, yo-yos, and buttons. There’s a lot of hand stitching going into all of this, evenings spent sewing yo-yos & lace flowers while we watch our latest addiction on Netflix. Right now, I’m moving on to putting together the hair clips, and finishing touches on the bridal accessories. In a few days, I’ll be diving into button magnets (all in wedding appropriate colours… don’t you think they would make cute wedding favors?). I’ve also got several display details still to finish up. I’m really tickled with the display I’ve got roughly worked out. It will be quite a change for Bubblegum Sass (I won’t be hiding behind a table for once), but I’m loving the idea!

So here’s a peek into the progress:

Feeling very privileged to be invited to participate as a vendor in Calgary’s newest wedding market! The Boutique Wedding Market will showcase amazing local wedding vendors, designers, & artists specializing in unique, handmade items & services to help you achieve that perfect day! The talent in this show looks stellar! If there’s a wedding coming up in your life, and you long for hand-crafted details & high-quality creativity, this is the show to check out! Can you tell I’m just a bit excited about this new collective of local creative folks?! So here’s a quick preview of who will be at the show (besides little ‘ol me):

Kismet & Clover – Event Styling + Design (co-founder of the show)

by.Ginni – Accessories + Haberdashery (co-founder of the show)

Chris Amat & Mike Seehagel – Photography

Diane + Mike Photography – Photography

Willow & Whimsy – Ethical Floral Arrangements + DIY

Ali Finch – Graphic Design + Invites

Bloom Invites – Boutique Wedding Stationary

Orange Trunk Rentals – Vintage Styling + Rentals

Laura George Designs – Custom Bridal Gowns

City & the Sticks – Reclaimed Wooden Signs

Lannie Rae – Baking + Pastry Arts

Penetration Attempt – Live Music

Admission to the show is FREE! Don’t want to forget to mention that happy fact! There will be some DIY workshops available (which will have a small fee attached to them). The show will be located just a few blocks north of 17th Ave at the old Exes Hair Salon building (1412 1st SW). The show runs Saturday April 26th 10-6 and Sunday April 27th 11-5. I’ll be there all weekend! Did I tell you I’ve been busy whipping up a whole bunch of new shabby chic wedding inspired items just for this show? I’ll give you a peek at the progress later this week. Also, super excited to be offering custom orders! ‘Cause when you’re planning your wedding, you want it to be unique & just-for-you.

What’s the next step in preparation? Sitting down and figuring out just how much stock I need to make (and hopefully sell) to make this show a success in my own eyes. This is likely to be the one and only show I attend this year, so from here on out, I’ll be designing & sewing like a mad woman to make stock. Oh and I need to come up with a new booth design, since the products I’ll be focusing haven’t been sold at any past shows (*insert heart pounding just a bit faster*). Deep breathes, lots of coffee and a hubby who is willing to spend lots of time with his son… Make It! here I come!!!