Getting ready for the show

No mat­ter how orga­nized you are, there is always a cer­tain fran­tic scram­ble in get­ting ready for a show.? I’ve been pretty good about keep­ing my dis­play stuff all packed together, but since the tables at Down the Street are eight foot tables and my dis­play stuff is for a six foot table, I had to find another table cover.? I tested all the light­ing tonight and it all works, hooray!? Since the busi­ness and pack­ing sup­plies stay con­sol­i­dated, it’s an easy mat­ter to put them into the car­ry­ing cases and get those ready.

The pack­ing chal­lenge is always get­ting the mer­chan­dise together.? What to take and how to set it up changes from show to show, and so how to pack and store it changes as well.

The other big chal­lenge I have is pric­ing.? I don’t want to devalue my work but I don’t want to price it out of reach, either.? I did decide that for this show, it’s time to move out some of the old beads.? I have a ridicu­lous num­ber of soft glass beads from early on in my lam­p­work­ing career, mostly just basic round beads rolled in frit, and they really do need to go.? So I’ve priced them to move.? With any luck those will pay my part of our table fee and expenses.? I also have put a lot of the tinier and wonkier beads into a jar, and am going to put them beside a Good Mews dona­tion bucket with “Donate a Buck, Pick a Bead” or some­thing like that. That way I get rid of them and raise some money for the kit­ties.
Pric­ing with focal beads always seems to be a crap shoot any­way.? This time I’ll see if my dis­play method of last time is why they didn’t seem to attract attention.

The boro sets I will have to actu­ally price in the morn­ing when I get there, but I am cer­tainly going to price them higher than the basic soft glass sets.? They look a lot cooler any­way, so I think they can com­mand a higher price.

Setup tomor­row morn­ing will come way too early to suit me — it opens at six a.m. but no way in hell am I going to be there then!? Still, time to get the car loaded and get some shut-eye.