At The Market Again

For Change I took a picture from behind my market booth on April 5 of this year. If you want to see the complete photo impression of the Sunday Spring Market at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam click here.

This venue is at five minutes walking from my home and my only possibility to bring out all my stuff without having to worry how to get it there. Basically it all goes on a trashed Maxi-cosy style baby push cart (cradle removed) that holds two large house moving boxes and much more. If necessary I walk twice. And those boxes themselves? You didn't think I bought them, did you? One's on the left under the table holding extra paper and bags for packaging and one's on the right, nicely covered as a high rise for my tea cozies.

Covering my table is my usual curtain. Here you can clearly see this booth is a big size professional one but the sheet is still large enough. Covering the box and display board is that purple silk sheet I talked about in my earlier post mentioned above. So yes, I found it again but last year Octobre found out the hard way it's not suitable as a table cover. Too light, it blew away in the wind! The board itself is the larger version of the one I showed in my first post about craft fairs and how to cut costs taking part.

It was a lovely sunny day but April can be still chilly so in the foreground you see my winter coat - once trashed because of a broken zipper, but it closes with push buttons over that, so who cares? And it's hanging over my handy fold-up stool that I took from a renovation dumpster.

Making a high rise on your table with boxes or boards is not only good for display, it serves to hide your personal stuff from the visitors as well. On the right you see my blue thermos that was brand new when it was trashed. At home we use one of my own tea cozies of course, so in fact I believe this rescue had its inauguration this day. Next the lunch bags I use for wrapping. Then my hand/back bag. Very practical, trashed and never used probably because the ugly company logo printed on it. I covered that with a piece of crochet from my own hand.

If you take a closer look (click on image for a larger view) you can even see the old-fashioned green school notebook I use to keep my 'sales administration'. Found in a box of children's books and when this one is full I have a pile more. You can see there's a pile of shoe boxes behind the board as well. Shoe boxes are great to store small items and perfect to protect my handmades from dust and smells in the house and when I don't have to travel lightly I just bring the stuff in them. Problem is though I never buy (new) shoes, so can you guess where I got them from? And if the neighbours are really nice they leave that silky protection paper inside too. It makes the best protective wrapping for delicate work when shipped to online customers!

Here's a picture from my second market this year, June 6 at the Craftymarkt in het park. Also in Amsterdam, but a little too far to walk.

Though I could have loaded up my bicycle, the very next day I had to go to Eindhoven (by train) and I didn't want to repack from boxes to my suitcase, so I came here by city bus with my Samsonite (the bulky black suitcase gave up last year unfortunately) and a large bag on a fold up trolly. Last one being a super handy curb find I often take on trash tours as well. Light weight and fits in the bag before using it! When filled up one of those large reusable supermarket bags fits perfectly on it. Those sell for about 5$ here, but the fun (or sad thing really) is that a lot of people only 'reuse' them to put trash in, so I have a whole pile of them at home and never paid a cent. For my train travel it just held my lunch, some drink cans and extra warm clothing so I traveled pretty conveniently.

This was a very windy day and what's new here is that I hung up my wind proof flower brooch display (made from a trashed fold-up curtain) vertically instead of horizontally and push pinned it at the bottom to the table planks to prevent it from flapping. And with no boxes or boards available in the same time it served to hide my personal things.

This venue is actually at the bottom of the office where I work so of course I had to rally there for visitors and to finish this post I want to thank my co-worker Natasja who 'just' came to visit but ended helping out selling for almost half of the day.

That's her behind the booth and here's the item she chose as a reward. That means it's sold out for the moment, but still available in pink in my Etsy shop.

I have no pictures from Eindhoven yet as my camera failed that day and I'm still waiting for the shots my booth-sharer made. Next up is the Summer edition of the Sunday Market at the Westergas fabriek on 21 June, where I will be sharing with the organizer of the Eindhoven market herself. Sharing a booth is another great way to cut costs if you want to bring out your work to a real live audience! Coming up some day soon!