In Which I Convince Myself That I Am Organized

I did get enough of this colour-way stitched so that I could photograph it so that I could make a kit cover so that I would have kits available for yesterday's show.

That's the good news.

Bad? The show appeared to have barely been marketed, so that not only were there not enough vendors to bustle up the place, but the crowds were non-existant and barely trickled through, so although my percentage of lookers to buyers was pretty good, there just weren't enough lookers to make it incredibly successful.

On the plus side, I have a couple more kits in my Etsy shop.

My booth turned out pretty well, though my very clever kit display-and-purchase theme neglected to take wind into account when designing both the foam-core board ticket holders as well as the paper tickets, as I spent much of the time picking up the displays and running after blowing tickets. I do have some idea for the next show though.

The tent worked well, and was a great eBay bargain. The tables and sheets, um, tablecloths worked pretty well, except that one of them was accidentally a fitted sheet, so I removed the elastic and used it on a back table and while it wasn't ideal, it wasn't screamingly ghastly.

My poster (printed on multiple sheets, glued together, covered with self-stick laminating paper, glued to a foam-core board and suspended by handmade split rings) was pretty excellent.

The kit sample display cases (large sheets of clear acrylic placed on perpendicularly placed black-painted 1x2s) was also a good idea that proved itself successful.

The weather was generally pretty good, if a bit cold in the morning.

At least I now have the setup to do other shows, which is certainly a part of what's been holding me back (that and inertia).

There's nothing like a frenzy of planning resulting in an avalanche of mess to inspire an organizational spurt. I had already organized my kit boxes, so I cleared some shelf space (of seldom-inspected items whose accessibility would not suffer by being placed somewhere less accessible) and put them within easy reach, labelled so that I can see the contents at a glance.

I still had enough left-over foam-core board that I was uncomfortable simply tossing, and then it struck me.

I store the kit supplies in baggies (a large baggie for the design containing a smaller baggie for each colour-way containing baggies and tubes and flippies of beads and supplies) which in turn are stored in miniature milk-crates (about 8"x7") and Ican never tell what's where, even when I label them.

I have to lift each baggie out and sometimes open them up to determine which kit is represented where, which gets annoying. I hate that the baggies are just stacked one above the other, and even if they're labelled (some have stickers on them) the label may be face-down and therefore not terribly much use. Generally there are up to four kits per crate.

Foam-core board works so very well for dividing crates into quarters, and now I can see what's in which crate!

Except I had enough foam-core board for only four crates, and there are eighteen in total, though not all are eligible.

Guess I'm not quite ready to put away the utility knife and the cutting mat.