Bohemian Mermaid Palace

  I talk to a lot of artists and craftspeople, many of whom have Facebook pages for their businesses. I'm always a little surprised that they don't do Facebook ads. I think to most people, the whole process is pretty mysterious. I don't claim to be an expert, but I can say after some trial and error... they are cheap to run, very easy to point at your specific target market, and have served me pretty well.  Cheap you say? Yes. When I run an ad before a sales event, ie craft show, I usually spend $10-$20 for a week. The cool thing about FB ads is that you set your own daily spending limits. You do need to check that number each time you edit your ad, it will default to some ungodly number automatically. I believe the trick to keeping the cost down is to choose the Pay per Impressions option. This charges you each time your ad is shown 1000 times. Usually less than .50. Hey now! I did try the pay per click, and I found they only showed my ad a few h...

    A lot happened I guess while I was away from my beloved blog. In November I opened a tiny store front in downtown Eureka, CA. I guess it was about a year before that when I started fantasizing about it... a place where I could sell my goods between festivals, even in winter when I usually pack all my stuff into boxes and get sad. A place where I could have some tiny bit of self discipline and a regular schedule to my work day. Something my husband thought I could never put up with... being tied to a thing like a schedule. Haha that is what I run from in normal day jobs, it's true.  But this is mine. That's the difference. This is all me, my place, my work... even my schedule. I dare say it's the best day job ever. Well, because it's not a 'day job' it's just my job. I love it.  It's still growing of course... I chose a location that is a little off the main shopping drag, but there is a lot of fun stuff happening in my neighbor...

Something fun happened to me because of this little blog... are you ready for this?? My goofy yet popular tutorial for making Beer Can Hats got the attention of one fabulous author in Portland. "Author of what?" you may ask, "A book about making stuff out of beer cans? Yeah right!" Yeah. Right!  That's exactly what happened. The lovely and talented miss Shawn Gascoyne-Bowman asked me to contribute a couple hipper variations of my crochet can pattern to her book Beer Crafts . She even put one on the cover! I am famous as hell now. Or soon will be, so get ready. But seriously... this book is SO stinkin cool! So many creative projects that I can't wait to make. Far beyond your old beer cap earrings, way beyond. Soon I will have these books for sale right here on my little blog thing. For now, please watch this book trailer video. This alone will show you the extreme levels of awesome this book reaches. So happy to be a part of it!  

This is part two of a series of posts I'm calling (5 Steps to) Get Started Selling at Craft Fairs . Read Step #1: Find Your Shows .   Booth Display Figuring out a booth display can be a little overwhelming at first. So many options and issues to address. You might not have much product to display or money to spend. I suggest, for this reason and many more, you find a friend you can share space with. That cuts your booth fee in half, gives you less space to fill, and a helper during the show for breaks and whatnot. In time you will grow more stock and maybe a desire to fill a whole booth alone. Help and company are still nice to have. Start by looking at other vendors' displays for ideas. You can find samples of booth setups all over the web , search for "booth shot" or "craft booth" on google or pinterest. If possible, attend some craft shows and pay attention to the displays of booths selling the types of crafts you make. Take notes, ...