21 Tips For Your First Craft or Art Show

Here are some tips based on what I did and learned while preparing for my first art show. Preparing for an art or craft show requires more thought than I realized! When you think about it, you’re creating a mobile shop with merchandise, displays and payment systems 😮. This took a bit to wrap my head around, so I decided to share what I did to prepare, along with some lessons I learned. Since then I’ve learned a lot with each show I do.

What I did and what I learned

• Business cards and/or something I can hand out with my details (Moo.com is where I ordered my cute cards but I also got a stamp and some generic “thank you for supporting my small business” cards. The Moo.com cards turned out very nicely, thick card stock and super cute!

• Bags for merchandise (Amazon and The Dollar Store). The Dollar Store & Dollar Tree store have a lot of things for craft shows from little bags to price tags. I bought my bags from Amazon & picked up more at the Dollar Tree. TIP - “chalk markers” don’t work well and are messy and useless; the one’s I got anyway!

• Accept debit/credit because I know I never have cash! I am glad I decided to do this because most of my customers paid with Debit. TIP - Get the Square Reader if you can. Encourage Debit & “TAP” payments as they are by far the lowest fees for you.

  • I bought this Square Terminal, but I really wanted to get this Square Reader that will accept both credit cards and debit cards, but I couldn’t get this anywhere in time for the show.

  • You can get the Square credit card reader for free but only accepts credit cards. Plus, I had no idea you could get the credit card reader for free as you see these for sale on Amazon. —-> Go to Square and sign up, and they will mail you one of these for free.

  • I purchased the Square Terminal at Best Buy in Toronto. This can take Google Pay, Apply Pay, Debit, Credit and it prints receipts. No one used Google or Apple Pay, no one asked for a receipt. 99.9% paid by debit.

    • The Terminal was hard to read in the sun. My phone would have been difficult too, but the phone used with the Square Reader for debit didn’t require that you had the phone to anyone in order to pay, all they need to do is tap or swipe on white plastic square you hand them which has no screen. With the terminal you have to hand them this big heavy bulky thing, with a screen they struggle to see in the sun or outside light just to know where they have to tap or what they have to do. My advice, get the Square Reader if you can because it’s easier to use, easier to work with, far cheaper & likely to last longer due to its simplicity. I will manage with my Terminal as it was very pricy in comparison and I’ve bought that now. I will make it work!!

• Display table that’s foldable and easy for me to carry. I got this one and it was excellent! Light and very sturdy when setup. It was perfect and I like that the height is adjust.

• Table cloth don’t do what I did and buy a cheap Dollar Store one mine was as thin as tissue paper and ripped just from my arranging a display. I’ve heard that drop cloths work well if you can find one that is big enough to fully drape over your table. I only found small ones.

My table top easel was too big in the end

The cutest pink petty cash box

Don’t forget a cute cat helper!

• An umbrella for the sun and a stand - I borrowed a friends umbrella as mine is a bit beat up after launching itself into other peoples backyards on windy days when I’d left it open. I brought my stand.

  • Sunscreen and a hat maybe? I fried my poor friend because we couldn’t use the umbrella due to the unusual wind 💨. I should have a couple of these to fix the weather situation with wind putting the kibosh on umbrellas. Note to self -try not to fry your friends in the sun ☀️ 😎.

• Something to hang framed art on (see images above). This was a challenge and I ended up using what I already had after thinking of a few other options that required some DIY projects. I used one standing easel like this one here. And I managed to display 7 framed pieces of art on it in the end! Yeah. I employed little framing nails and hooks along the sides, leveraged the main “shelf” and leaned one big frame at the bottom. See some image examples of my experiments below.

  • I loved these DIY options however as well and may try them next time:

    • Chicken Wire on Large Frames

    • Sandwich boards with “shelf-like” ledges for framed art

• Bowls or small containers -something to put little stickers in. I used 2-glass bowls from The Dollar Store and one nice glass dish I owned already. I played around with many things before I arrived at my final display.

• Small tabletop stands to display frames and postcards. This was tricky. I wanted to display some framed art on my table and I wanted them standing up. I needed something strong enough to hold a 10 x 10 framed piece of art, and something to hold postcards upright. After many searches I found these and these. They were both great value for the money both worked wonderfully. I ended up using all of them to display prints and postcards around the table

• Create simple pricing for all items - I didn’t want to have to make change unless essential and wanted sales to be simple and quick.

• Get cash from the bank for change - I had $150 in change and didn’t need that much as most of my sales were debit or credit.

• A sign for my pricing & one for my name and website. I purchased a lettering sign that looked like this and a small chalk sign and got both at The Dollar Tree. I also got a few small whiteboards that are also magnetic if I needed them for signs. Each of these signs were under $4 each.

• A lockable petty cash box. Can I tell you how much joy a small pink cash box gave me when I found it? This is the one I got.

• 2 big storage bins for under the display table. I got these from Home Depot. I used these to pack EVERYTHING I needed for the show for easy transport and for neat storage during the show.

  • prints not on display

  • display materials, tablecloth, containers, signs etc

  • bags and bag stuffers(thank you cards) for customers

  • extra frames

  • petty cash box

  • point of sale terminal

  • extra tags, tape, scissors

• Chairs to sit on! As with everything -I got one of these (super comfy) Camping Chair and one of these (sturdy and a bit more classy for indoor shows) Folding Chair. Both are collapsable and portable. The camping one takes more space in the car and is a bit more to wrangle than the small folding chair. Both are very sturdy. I got both at Home Depot.

• Wrap/package all merchandise not on display. Note to self -don’t get fancy and use sparkly tissue paper to wrap prints. The sparkles get all over the place! I used tissue-paper and bought a big bag of elastics to hold the rolls together. I used watercolour paper and paint to make little tags for each

Prints wrapped and priced of ones I had on display

• Order inventory (prints of my art and a few cute stickers of my art). This took time and planning, and it was a lot of guesswork regarding what prints to bring and how many of each! I learned which printers produced high-quality prints and which did not. I tried two different ones, and there was a clear winner. Canadian printers were much better as well due to duties and shipping. My postcards were printed in the USA and took a very long time to arrive. I will not order from the USA for any Canadian show in the future. It takes too long, and you get nailed with duties that don’t make sense.

• Purchase frames to display each print option. Frames can be pricy, but I found some good options on Amazon.

• Test display ideas. This was so essential. I had no idea if everything I had would fit on my table or how to display everything. Testing was essential, and my biggest takeaway is to start testing out display ideas early.

• Add inventory into my POS (point of sale thingy from Square -my Square Terminal). This didn’t work. I did add all my items to the software that comes with Square Terminal, but during the sale, I could not figure out how to add more than one item from my inventory when someone bought more than one print! I must spend more time with the device to get it working better. Fortunately, you can accept generic payments, but you will then have to reconcile this afterwards. There is a learning curve with this, for sure.

• Pack up everything the night before. You will thank yourself in the morning and have a much better day.

Final thoughts

Include a cat helper 🥰

Start planning and preparing EARLY.

Everything takes more time than you think it will.

Walk through how you will actually sell your stuff step by step and make it easy for people to make a purchase and think of the experience from the customers perspective.

I certainly don’t know everything and still have a lot to learn, but I had fun!

Here is me experimenting with my display at home

Since I was a bozo and didn’t think of taking any photos of myself at the show - here is me trying to figure out how to display my things at home before the show. Turns out I could cram several framed pieces onto one easel and was so happy with that 🙅🏽‍♀️. And the wind 💨 it was so windy on the day of the show! I didn’t think of that and my framed art and postcards took several flights.

It was eventful but still lots of fun. Thankfully I had some friends with me who were quick to grab things when the wind blustered.

Next time, I will have to have a plan for the wind!

One wood easel could hold 6-framed pieces

Another foldable table & loved the lettered sign

My tiny easel added needed hight

I bought stands so art didn’t have to lay flat

Plastic flowers added a nice touch & a spot for a sign

Ultimately placed by 2 biggest pieces on the easel

No I didn’t get photos of me at the show 🫤

Gah.

I was so focused on other things and didn’t get one photo. My display on the event day changed from hour to hour as I tried to negotiate with the 💨! And I also found that most people wanted to purchase the art with the frame so I had to grab extra frames from home to display the art that was purchased (good thing I had extra frames).

So many lessons.

Art is healing for me. This was a good thing and I look forward to more opportunities to create and share and meet others doing the same 🌻🎨❤️.