Art This Way Preparation

For a while now I have wanted to take part in some sort of arts fair to sell some of my work, get myself seen and hopefully make a bit of money. I didn’t really know where to start though. This summer, the opportunity arose for me to take part in a local art trail called ‘Art This Way’ in Loughborough. The idea is that a number of houses, all within close proximity to each other, open up their houses and gardens to host an arts and crafts sale. Local artists and designers sell their work from all disciplines including textiles, painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics and various other crafts. They also sell tea, cakes and homemade pizzas to raise money for charity. It has been running for a number of years now and this year there were twenty artists taking part, spread over five houses. 

Other than what I had seen when attending this event in previous years, I felt like I was going into this a bit blind. I had my stock ready after packaging up what I had made to sell on Etsy, but I knew that compared to some of the other artists selling their work, I would have very little. The problem for me was that I didn’t know how well my things were going to sell and I didn’t to make a huge loss on this or end up with tonnes of leftover stock. Cathy, the lady whose house I would be showing my work at, was kind enough to talk me through what normally happens and she also gave some help with pricing my items in accordance with the other goods on sale. I was wary of underselling my work but at the same time, I wanted the pricing of my work to fit in with the tone of the event and the pricing of similar products to my own. 

Cathy was really helpful and while we were chatting she also gave me an insight into how she got into the job she is doing now. She is a textile designer and currently works for Bentley cars. It was really interesting to hear how she got into this industry and it was actually down to the RSA which I had not heard of before. She won a competition brief designing upholstry for Ford cars while she was studying at Loughborough University, part of her prize was a placement with Ford and she has never looked back. It really shows that it pays off to get involved with any opportunities you are given! 

I made some last minute business cards for the event, the reverse side of these all have my patterns printed of them so there are a variety of different designs. I struggled to know what to describe myself and I think this is why I keep putting off getting some business cards professionally printed. I am really looking forward to the weekend, I will be there on all day on the 2nd and 3rd of July. Hopefully it will be a positive experience and I will learn a bit more about what to expect from these kind of events.