Avenues Street Fair

I was sooo busy last week getting ready for our neighborhood's annual street fair! My friend and I decided to do a booth. There was a LOT of work that went into it. I wish I could report that things went really, well. Alas, the crazy economy is getting to EVERYONE 'cause it was really slow! Let me rephrase that . . . the fair was absolutely PACKED with people all day long (it went from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It seems that the only vendors who were really making a killing were the food/drink people. Honestly, nobody seemed to be buying ANYTHING from anyone else, either! Just a lot of looky-loo's! Anyway, here are some of the projects we created. I hope you get some good inspiration from them!

These first two projects were, by far, my favorites. I was inspired to make these glass Halloween treat jars by a project that was shared at Stampin' Up Convention. They had taken one of the new Decor Elements (a spider) and put it on one of these jars. Since we were only allowed to preorder ONE of those spiders, I decided to make a design of my own! I used my trusty ol' Cricut and cut out a bunch of fun and spooky shapes from some black vinyl . . . a rickety old fence, a creepy tree, some bats, a moon and a tombstone. I learned a LOT about vinyl doing this project, but it was fun! Sold ONE of these . . . to one of my best friends, Tammy (thanks, girl!). I used the Paper Dolls Cricut cartridge to get all the spooky shapes.

Second, we were selling this family name frames. I LOVE 'em!! I think they make an AWESOME wedding gift. We only sold, yes - count 'em - FIVE!! (Two of those were to really good friends of mine, too!) The fonts I used were Base Camp and Opposites Attract. I bought enough frames to make 40 of these babies!! Sigh . . .


I was inspired to make these little Frankie treat bags by a project I saw on Splitcoast. Okay . . . let's just admit that I totally CASED these babies!! Thanks to Vicki (justcrazy) and her darling idea! (She was inspired by yet another project which she links on hers!) Here is a link to Vicki's bag:

Vicki's Frankie Bag

I filled 'em with little cinnamon bears. Yummy!! Only sold a few of these, too!

My friend, Cheryl, made these darling witchy-poo brooms filled with peanuts! Aren't they great?? She was inspired by a project she saw of Martha Stewart's (face it, friends, I am NOT posting a link to her broomstick bags . . . she absolutely does NOT need any credit from me to get rich!). Stampin' Up also has a photo of one of these on page 29 of the new catty. (I think Cheryl's are MUCH cuter!)

Cheryl also made the most DELICIOUS homemade BBQ sauce to complete this adorable little gift combo. She also found this idea in SU's new catty - page 131. We had little bread cubes out on the table so people could sample it. Every last stinkin' sample was scarfed up. Everyone RAVED about how delicious the sauce was (it really was!). We didn't sell a SINGLE one! Can you believe it???



And these little magnetic coaster clipboards for the fridge!! What's not to love about THESE?? They have a little pen that goes with them, too! These are just too cute for words! I think we only sold 4 or 5 of these as well! Darn!! (Cheryl made these, too!)


These are pretty self-explanatory. I covered a bunch of composition notebooks with some fun paper and wrapped the same paper around the ink barrel inside the pen (RSVP pens by Pentel work the best). We did sell about 8 of these . . . and I still have 22 left!! We marked the prices down on a bunch of items, too - this one included from $7 to $5 - but still didn't get people to bite. They LOVED looking at them! Go figure . . .

I made the little 8-card gift card sets with my new Big Shot scalloped envelope die. I thought they were so super cute! LOTS of people looked at these, too! Not many takers here, either . . .

I started making these chipboard paperclip bookmarks over a year ago. They are so much fun. Super easy, too! Cut a flower or shape out of chipboard using your own diecut machine (in this case, my Cuttlebug), then cut it again out of paper and embellish. They were then glued to either side of the giant paper clips (which you can find for about $1 at WalMart). Super cute. We sold maybe 2 or 3 of these.

I set out a binder full of cards I have made over the last year or two. (I do so many challenges on SCS, that I have a BUNCH of extras.) These were also very well received, but, again, I only sold 5. (It cracked me up when someone would come up to the book, flip through the pages, and make some sort of comment to their friend like, "Yeah, my sister makes cards!" then walk away!)

Last, but not least, are these little pumpkin jars filled with taffy. I was selling these for only $5 and two of them found new homes. That's it. TWO!! As you can see, some of them were more Halloween themed with spiders, and the others were a fall theme with leaves. I have a BUNCH of these babies left over, too (18, to be exact!!).

This is us at the end of the day with a table still nearly FULL of fun projects. The only consolation we took from the experience was that most of the other booths were in the same condition that we were. Seems that no one was really in a buying mood . . .

We are down, but not out! I have a few ideas up my sleeve as to how we are going to get these babies out the door. Not the least of which is offering them here on my blog. I am offering the Halloween jars and custom name frames for $30 each (that includes shipping!!). If you are interested, e-mail me at ronandwendy85@smartfella.com. We can do the whole Pay Pal/check/money order thing and get ya taken care of!