The Mouse Market

The Booth is Taking Shape

I can definitely say that I’ve never been quite this excited about my booth display before, and I don’t know if it’s just pre-show delirium setting in, but I’ll give you the lowdown on my plan, and you can be the judge. So, after setting up my table risers and a few ever-present components, like my mailing list and business card holder, I decided to lay out my jewelry inventory, just to get an idea of what I have, and conveniently enough, themes began to emerge, and I sorted the pieces accordingly. (Note: In the accompanying photos, all of my dollhouse minis are still in their baggies, but they will be bag-free and nicely arranged at the show.)

Cupcakes!

What I ended up with were the following sections: Trick or Treat, Rise and Shine, Cupcakes Galore, Cookie Monster, Sushi Bar, Farmers Market, Day at the Park, and Cake and Ice Cream. What makes this booth design different than my displays in the past is the fact that I’m mixing in my dollhouse miniatures with my jewelry pieces. You can see in this photo of a previous jewelry booth how my earrings formed an overwhelming expanse of white cards, and this layout has taken care of that problem.

Farmers Market Area

A few details that I’m particularly pleased with are, one, the use of the cupcake tower to display my cupcake jewelry, and two, my childhood dollhouse on the top riser, which will be transformed into a haunted house for displaying my Halloween pieces–yay! I’m also really happy with the Farmers Market section, because all of my vegetable and fruit jewelry are arranged in rainbow order, a vast improvement on the days when they were simply lost in a mass of earring cards.

Sushi Bar

But, my absolute favorite part of all is that I won’t need to build any special jewelry display units for this show. I will need to do so before my show in November, but I don’t have enough jewelry inventory to warrant an additional 135 slot earring rack and necklace/bracelet t-bars at the moment. Which brings me to another happy fact: I only need to make about a dozen jewelry pieces to round out my inventory (a few popular sellers need to be restocked), and then I’m done! Dollhouse pieces are selling well in my Etsy shop at the moment, and I’m happy to have the extra time to work on additional pieces. All in all, this booth dry run has brought nothing but good news, so I’m one happy mouse. (Visit my Flickr page for more photos and descriptions of the booth plan.)

Mapping Out the Table

Yesterday evening was quite exciting, because just as I was getting ready to take a work break and make dinner, the doorbell rang. Mr. UPS had a little box of treats from Aztec Imports, and when I finally had a chance to open it before bed, it was like a mini Christmas. I have new cake stands, three-tier dessert displays, witches’ cauldrons, cookie sheets, serving platters, and other kitchen goodies, along with a pretty white table that I’ll be using for a dessert piece and a gorgeous, round mahogany table that I hope to use for a Halloween display. I can’t wait!

My Childhood Dollhouse!

As promised, I brought my show table upstairs this morning and started working on the booth mock up. I still need to run to Home Depot tomorrow to buy the wood for my earring display and the necklace/bracelet t-bar displays, but I have a much better idea of what still needs to be done. So, here’s what I’m thinking…The cupcake tower will be a super cute way to display dessert jewelry, and I might go through my dollhouse sweets and see what I have to fill the miniature pastry case alongside the tower. I’ll probably tape the cupcake liners to the wire stand and partially fill them with a few tablespoons of green sand in which to prop up a jewelry card.

The Sweets Section

The blue place mats are in need of some serious ironing, but I think they add a lovely splash of color to the table, and I’ll use those for more jewelry display areas. The green topiaries are actually sign holders (so cute!), which is handy, and the wooden dollhouse on the top riser is [drum roll, please] my childhood dollhouse built by my dad. If you’ve read my bio, you’ll be familiar with the story of my beloved Miss Suzy house, and there she is, in the flesh. Or the wood–whatever. I’ll be displaying a small selection of dollhouse pieces in the house, and I’ll use the topiary to the right for a sign that will read something along these lines: “No dollhouse? Display a collection of minis in a shadowbox to create the perfect gift for your favorite foodie!”

Mouse Market Propaganda

The open area to the left of my blue table risers is the site of the future jewelry card display, which hopefully will be well on its way to completion by the end of this weekend. (If you have no clue what I’m talking about, take a peek at this post.) The cardboard box on the table is actually the box that the topiaries came in, but with a little modification I think it will be perfect for displaying my tutorial CDs. All in all, I’m super excited with the way this display is shaping up, and I think it will be much more varied and visually appealing than my traditional jewelry show booths.

I'm Loving These Sign Holders

Today, I need to wrap up a few custom orders, and I really hope I can squeeze in a bit of time to create a few Jewish dishes, since I’ve already missed the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. Then, it’s back to more jewelry making as I hurriedly attempt to fill out my booth!

Sketching on a Bumpy Road

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had a number of changes I’d like to implement in my booth display, and hopefully in time for my next show in a couple of weeks. These ideas are specific to my jewelry table, and not really applicable to my dollhouse show display, which will make sense once I explain what I have in mind. I sketched out a rough draft of the idea on a napkin while driving back from Knoxville–well, I wasn’t the one driving, as that would have been pretty impressive (or incredibly foolish, depending on how you look at things)–but since it’s about as intelligible as hieroglyphics, a little explaining is probably in order.

Summer in Paris Macaron Necklace

First off, I’m going to continue to use my blue table risers (which you can see in this picture), but I won’t be using my cork display boards, at least for this next show as I experiment with things a bit. The risers take up two-thirds of my table length-wise, and the remaining third typically serves as a spot for my mailing list sign-up, business cards, and other odds and ends. This time, I’d like to construct a simple wooden earring rack, and what I’m envisioning looks much like a book, propped open with shelves lining the inside (think science fair display, but with only two panels). My plan is to take two rectangular pieces of wood for the “pages” and one strip of wood that will serve as the spine of the book. Each rectangle will be attached to the spine with hinges so that I can fold the shelving unit up after each use. The inside will be lined with little wooden strips that will become ledges for my earrings, and I’ll stagger the strips so that the “book” will close easier.

Makeover: Fauxstess Cupcake Earrings

This wooden display will completely open up my table risers, and I plan to construct a few t-bar style necklace and bracelet stands out of wood scraps and collect random bowls and plates from the thrift store to create a more varied jewelry display on the risers. Ideally, I would like to have little “clumps” of products, such as a bowl filled with Parisian pastry earrings propped up in colored sand accompanied by a t-bar bracelet stand with similar accessories (and possibly a small selection of related dollhouse minis). That way, my table isn’t just a huge sea of earring cards, something that I think is a bit overwhelming for many shoppers, and I’ll also be able to fill more space with less product, something that will be helpful with the massive amount of room I have at this next show.

Poorly Lit View of My Tutorial CDs & Flyer

That leaves the space on the table surface in front of the wooden jewelry display. I’ll continue to use that as a spot for my mailing list and business cards, and I also have a set of CDs with my Summer Berry Tart tutorial that can be displayed here. The holiday custom order flyer that I brought to my last show was a huge hit, so I’m going to showcase that, along with a new flyer featuring custom jewelry options for the holidays, and these items should be more than enough to fill that space.

Replacement Buffet Section Minis

Well, believe it or not, I’m actually ready for the show. I’ve finished all of the miniatures that I needed in order to fill any gaps in my display created by Etsy sales, and since I typed up pricing placards weeks ago, all I had to do was double check that any sold items had been removed and hit “print.” I do need to make a quick trip to FedEx Office to get a copy of my holiday custom order flyer printed and laminated, but that’s about it. I can’t wait!

Cookies Galore!

Last night, I had a few unscheduled hours after dinner, and it was too dark to make new jewelry pieces, so I worked on my Halloween-Christmas plan. I managed to fill two pages with ideas, and then I carefully went over every piece and compiled a list of any additional supplies that I would need to create them. Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday, and I can’t tell you how eager I am to start making spooky cakes, cookies and other treats, along with a few miniature paper decorations and other non-food items that I’ll be experimenting with this year.

P.S. Check out my Flickr page for more photos of my recent minis.

Large and Small Pizzas To Go

I was on a total pizza kick yesterday, and I printed up a bunch of little to-go boxes with “The Mouse Market Ristorante” emblazoned on the tops for my new mini pizzas. In addition to being really popular at my last show, the pizzas have the added feature of taking up a considerable amount of space, so my display is looking significantly less “gappy.” With the completion of these pieces, the Italian foods section is totally done, and as I was going over my progress before bed last night, I realized that the breakfast section is full as well. Hooray!

Plans for My Booth Layout

One of my wooden stair step displays has been divided between Asian and Mexican foods, so I think I’m going to call it a wrap on those, and I just need about five pieces to fill out the beef/pork/poultry sections, which combined, take up two entire stair steps. Not bad. I’ve also finished a turkey dinner spread and a roast beef dinner table, a seafood section (although I still want to make a few platters of roasted fish, as those sold out at my last show), a huge sandwich display, two tables of assorted soups, and an entire cardboard riser section of desserts. All in all, I think the booth is shaping up quite nicely, and if I can make roughly thirty more pieces in the next week, I’ll be feeling quite good.

Visit my Flickr galleries to see a larger photo of the booth layout, as well as an image of my cardboard risers with the dessert display.

Brightly Colored Minis on the Baking Sheet

Well, this is it, folks. Jake and I will be leaving tomorrow to tie the knot, and when I return to posting on Monday, I’ll be a married mouse! I’m fairly certain that we’ll forget at least half of the things that we need since we’ve both been so busy with work stuff, but I suppose as long as we have the marriage license and ourselves, we’ll be good. The index cards with our vows would be an added bonus, too, but those can always be improvised if the situation demands.

Classic Confetti Cake Earrings

I bought a handful of different colored scrapbook papers yesterday as part of my rainbow colored booth plan, and things are shaping up nicely. I put together one of the cardboard stair-step risers that will be transformed into the pastry section, and it was quite the experience. The risers were shipped in a flat box as foldable pieces of cardboard, and the directions were a little hard to read, so I had to get creative. At one point, I had essentially formed a yurt, which, while eye-catching, wasn’t exactly what I was aiming for, but after another fifteen minutes of forceful bending and spirited mashing, a stair-like shape emerged–voilà!

Orange Fiesta Cake Earrings

Today, after listing a few new things in my Etsy shop and packaging up orders for a post office run, I finished cutting out coverings for the mini tables and arranged as it will be at the show, and from here, it’s just a matter of filling in gaps, which have been widening due to online sales (hooray!), so I’ll be busy, busy when we get back on Monday. I’ve already burned through two Martha Stewart cookbooks, and I think I’m going to move onto a Food & Wine magazine cookbook for my new dishes.

Just a reminder: The June newsletter will be coming out on the 1st, so if you want to be in the know like all the cool kids, be sure to sign up using the mailing list box on the upper right hand corner of this page. Until then, have a fabulous holiday weekend, and I’ll be back with more mini madness next week!

Ginger-Peanut Somen Noodles w/ Miso-Glazed Cod

It’s getting to that point in the pre-show preparations when I need to start organizing my time a little bit more, and at the risk of taking up even more space in my room, I’m going to put together one of the new cardboard stair-step displays that I recently purchased so that I can set up all of my desserts, which are currently lumped in with the rest of the foods in my booth mock up. With everything together, it’s hard to tell how much more I would need to make to fill out, say, the pastry display or the world market section, so a little rearranging is in order.

Surf 'n' Turf Pizza w/ Grilled Sirloin & Smoked Salmon

I’ve also decided that I’m going to organize my booth by color, and the pastry section on the cardboard risers, which will be on the far left-hand side of my table, will be pink/red, and I’ll move through the colors of the rainbow in each section of the table from left to right. Now, the foods themselves won’t necessarily be matching in color, but any table coverings, party decorations, signage, etc., will be, and while I’m not sure how it will look once it’s all said and done, I’m excited about the experiment, because I always find myself drawn to color-grouped items.

Pop Rocks Pink Ice Cream Earrings

In addition to the foods and table settings, I need to start mapping out little gaps in the display where I can prop up photos of the Nutmeg family, i.e. a picture of their family picnic in the BBQ/picnic section, birthday party photos in the dessert section, that sort of thing. In addition to adding a touch of cuteness to the table (something the mice seem to excel at), the photos will also take up a little space, easing some of the pressure to make a bazillion more pieces between now and June 11.

Bittersweet Chocolate Fondue Spread

Speaking of a bazillion pieces, as my fall show schedule starts to fill out, I’ve started thinking about the logistics of filling a miniatures table in August, filling an enormous tent in September, creating strictly dollhouse pieces (no jewelry) for another show in October, making enough for two huge shows in November, and who knows what for December, all while keeping my online shop well stocked, particularly as holiday shopping season rolls around. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining–it all sounds rather exciting in a way–but after my show in June, I’m going to have to be very wise about budgeting my time and planning ahead, or I’m guaranteed to go completely batty this fall. Well, battier than usual, that is.

Peep Presiding Over Potato Salad

Well, good news: I was able to put a deposit down on another show, the Three Blind Mice show in Louisville this August. I’m doing the Chicago version of that show next month, and I’m looking forward to having an excuse to take a little road trip in the fall, particularly when the excuse involves miniatures. As soon as I can scrape together a little more money this week, I’ll be applying to one more Missouri show that may or may not already be booked, and then I’ll have to put the rest of my show applications on hold until after my June event, barring a really phenomenal sales month in my Etsy shop.

Proposed Booth Changes

Yesterday, it occurred to me that I haven’t started planning my display for next month’s mini show (duh), so last night I sat down with all of my magazine clippings of food photos and my inventory list from my last show, which tells me what I have left, and I started putting together a little map. After planning out the top riser of my booth I started feeling a little overwhelmed by the abstractness of it all, so I think I might bring one of my risers out from the garage, set up my little tables, and put out my leftover foods, just so I can clearly visualize exactly what I’m working with. With many of the meals I’ve sold some of the side dishes, or one of the main courses, etc., so it will be helpful to see where I have gaps to fill. Also, I want to focus more on the table settings this time, creating little place mats or table decorations to create a more cohesive look.

Pippen Prepares the Picnic Table

Last but not least, in a week or two I’m hoping to order a box of cardboard risers from Gershel Bros. A number of vendors were using them at the last mini show I did, and they seemed to work really well. I should be able to fit one, and maybe even two, of the cardboard risers next to my longer, wooden risers (the blue pieces in the above photo), and this will greatly expand the amount of room I have for my dessert section, which is always a good thing.

P.S. I’ve decided to open a DaWanda shop, which is targeted at European shoppers. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be slowly but surely adding new items to the shop, so stay tuned!

Custom Mix & Match Earrings

Throughout the Gateway Miniatures Fair, I spent a great deal of time thinking about ways to improve either my display, my inventory set up method, my pricing, you name it, and today I’ll share a few of those ideas. And, of course, if you have your own brilliant craft fair tips, comment away!

Starting with the pre-show preparations, here are some things that I would like to do differently. I saw a number of (clearly veteran) craft vendors who had rolling suitcases and other back-saving components, and all of their pieces fit neatly inside. What I would like to do for my next miniatures show is buy a set of stackable drawers (like this, perhaps) that will fit inside my rolling suitcase. Each drawer will be labeled with the name of a different area of my display so I don’t have to spend half of my set up time hunting for things, and as I’m creating the pieces, I’ll carefully tuck each of the finished items into the appropriate drawers. In addition, I’ll start my pricing list right off the bat. I’ll create a spreadsheet in Excel, which I’ll gradually add to as pieces are completed. With this method, not only will I avoid having to pack everything up at the end (a tedious, tedious job), but I’ll also do away with an entire day of pricing! Now why didn’t I think of this before…?

Ketchup w/ Digitally Drawn Label

In terms of the actual show, the drawers, once emptied of my inventory, will be a great place to keep all of my behind-the-scenes junk in order, such as receipt books, extra bags, etc., and I would also like to buy one of those heavy duty artist portfolios with handles to store all of my larger signs, paper table and riser covers, and other flat pieces that can’t be bent. Last but not least, one of the artists sitting behind me at this recent show had a really nifty pouch system for storing pens, bags, and other odds and ends. You can see it in this photo–look for the fabric pouches strung onto the edge of the table behind me.

Custom Soy Sauce & Noodle Earrings

A few random thoughts on the display: The price tag method that I used for this show (you can see it in this photo) worked very well, and a number of people commented on the ease at which they could determine prices without having to pick individual pieces up. I’ll continue to refine that system, utilizing more of the vertical spaces to hang signs, so the table top itself is less cluttered, but overall it worked beautifully. A number of vendors had display components from gershelbros.com, and I’ll be hunting through their online catalog in search of good jewelry display units (particularly for the dreaded necklaces and bracelets!), as well as another stair-step style piece that I can set next to my current wooden table risers, just to maximize the display area.

On an unrelated note, I finished a custom order this morning, which included a little bottle of soy sauce and a teeny ketchup bottle, and I was initially planning on shrinking down a regular label, only to discover that the resulting image looked more like a spot of bird poop on the paper. Not really what I was going for. I ended up drawing my own labels in Adobe Illustrator, and it was so much fun that I now want to come out with an entire line of miniature packaged goods with Mouse Market branding.

Roast Chicken Dinner

I just realized that the title of this post sounds a bit apocalyptic. Rest assured, this is only the last dessert display for my upcoming mini show, but dessert-making frenzy in general is sure to continue indefinitely. This morning, I finished the last three dishes for the Woodland Cafe: a roast chicken dinner with baked potatoes, a spring vegetable and alfredo pasta meal, and a rustic flatbread with zucchini squash and red onions. I’m super hungry for real food at this point, so before I start on the dessert display, I’m going to have to scare up some lunch.

Spring Veggie and Alfredo Pasta

The end truly is in sight at this point, and I have only to finish the produce/bread/cheese area, two prep board sections, and a food cart area. I also have a holiday area planned, which is likely going to be a repository for sale items, but I might add a few more pieces, such as Halloween desserts and mini Christmas trees, if I have time. I did manage to glue together six tables last night, and it was a remarkably quick job, so as soon as I can get to the store and buy more table legs, I’m going to finish up the rest and get that task over with.

Flatbread w/ Zucchini Squash and Red Onion

Either tomorrow or Monday, I plan to set aside some time to start taking finished pieces out, grouping them on the tables to make sure they actually fit, photographing them, and writing up my price list, and I think I’m going to spread out my shopping trips over the next few days after yoga classes, so it’s not so cranky mood-inducing (I hate shopping). I think I’m going to forgo a fancier table cloth for this next show, simply because the tables are being provided by the venue, and they’re larger than the table I will normally be using, and I don’t feel like getting a larger cloth and having to shorten it every time I’m using my own table. For now, I think I’m going to head over to the party store and get one of those cheap, paper table coverings, and then the paper can be repurposed down the line for random wrapping needs.