Weer in ur bede show, scopin’ out ur displaze

Since DH decided not to go to his mar­tial arts classes today because he was still achy from this week, we went out to the Inter­galac­tic Bead Show in Duluth.? It’s not a show I attend fre­quently because it takes about 40 min­utes to get out there, and it’s not a show I’ve heard that many good things about from other lam­p­work­ers who have attended as ven­dors. But I real­ized that it would be a good oppor­tu­nity to check out dis­plays and mer­chan­dis­ing right before next weekend’s show, and Mr. Frosty agreed.

One thing vis­it­ing the show let us do was con­firm that some things I’ve heard really are impor­tant.? Rais­ing the table height with bed ris­ers (or PVC pipe) makes a huge dif­fer­ence in how eas­ily peo­ple can see your items.? We will def­i­nitely want that next week­end, so Things & Beyond just went on the errand list.? Floor-​length table drapes look infi­nitely bet­ter than shorter ones (actu­ally, I remem­ber that from Bead Mer­can­tile), so we will make sure that floor length it is.? I think that the lights we found yes­ter­day at Office Max and Ikea will do very, very nicely, and stay out of the way bet­ter than the stan­dard clamp-​on lights many ven­dors were using. Cork tiles (which I may have a cou­ple of around here) and grids (which I DO have around here) can be extremely use­ful for pin­ning or hang­ing up mer­chan­dise.? Cable ties should go on the “tool” list along with the always-​necessary duct tape.

As for shop­ping, I wasn’t in much of a buy­ing mood myself, but I did stock up on some very nice Karen Hill Tribe sil­ver to use in stuff for the GPC show next month.? That was it, though, for me.