I love this moment I captured in our booth on Saturday. Jeff was bouncing Bracken on his knee and then they put their heads together in a moment of quiet sweetness. (I also love the way Bracken’s pointy elf hat sticks straight up in the air!)

Thanks to everyone who came to visit us and to those who supported our business.

Since many of you are far away and not able to visit in person, I wanted to give you a tour of our booth in pictures, so you can experience it with us. 

As you know, we made a lot of changes to our market booth last week. (It’s still a work in progress.) We are continually changing our booth and are loving it more all the time. We like our booth’s colors to be earth tones to match our art and we love to be surrounded by wood because it feels so good, so that seems to be the overall theme. Some people enter and say “it feels like a forest in here” and we take that as the highest compliment because that is exactly the feel we are going for. We like to bring the forest with us when we go to town, making our booth our home-away-from-home.
We made so many changes, I couldn’t possibly list them all, but I’ll mention a few. We raised up the table on the left so that it would bring things closer to eye level. It made it so much easier for people to flip through the boxes of buttons and necklaces. We found a branch to put across the top, for hanging spoons and kitchen stirring paddles.We had a large display board on the left, but not as much on the right, so if people were walking from one direction our booth did not look as full. So Jeff made a board for the other side. We are in the process of putting more on both sides so it will be more balanced (better feng shui… even though I don’t know much about that, it just feels better.)

Jeff made two new display boards with corkboard, and cedar framing. They look so good and make set up so easy (with the super easy attachments he built on the back.)

I love them!

Closer look. It really shows the necklaces well. We also hung a set of Jeff’s hand-carved buttons with trees in them (they didn’t get enough attention in the button box), and rooster feather earrings.

He made wood covers for this table. Our entire booth smelled like cedar and people kept commenting on it all day. Earrings hanging up and the other corkboard display.

 Another view of the wood covering. I love the way it makes our booth feel. So warm.

This is our rack of $20 pendants (or 2 for $35.) Sometimes Jeff and I referred to it as our “bread and butter” rack because it made up the majority of our sales and played a big role in getting our bills paid. These days, our sales are becoming more spread out between lots of different items we offer.

Up close. Jeff made these wood pegs so that the necklaces stay in when we transport them. I appreciate how endlessly creative he is.

Wood spoons and stirring utensils hanging down. People are drawn to them and gravitate into our booth. We hang a few at the front of our booth and they spin and twirl in the breeze.

Love Knot carving on his ‘Love is Sweet’ spoon.

More pendants on a myrtlewood display board Jeff made.

We decided to decrease the amount of glass cases we had in our booth. Although they were beautiful, they were heavy, awkward, and difficult to travel with. Also, people were intimidated to look in them and much preferred to be able to easily touch and handle the polished wood creations. Our art was meant to be touched. So we simplified to bringing this one glass case. It has a carved wood journal, belt buckle, bracelet, bookmarks, scrimshaw box, hair sticks, wood rings, more scrimshaws etc. You can see the reflection of the spoons hanging above it.

A myrtlewood display board that he sanded and refinished. The wood is so beautiful in person and I really think it displays the necklaces nicely.

Earrings on our earring rack. We have another earring rack in the works that will be a new addition to our booth soon!

(I took this picture before dusting the mirror off!) We set the mirror on the high table, which people appreciated having easy access to.

These are at the very front of our booth so people can browse as they walk by. One box has buttons and the other has $18 necklaces (a new item Jeff just started making) with carvings in reclaimed bamboo wood, with hemp or cotton cords.

I made this little sign that says buttons. When people are walking by, they can more easily see what we have available this way. I am so excited that our buttons are getting more and more popular by the week. I’m crazy about them!

We still have more things we would like to do in our booth.
For starters, we want to get a bamboo covering for the back and Jeff wants to carve us a beautiful wood sign. (And someday new -more comfortable- chairs too)

We really enjoyed being in our booth. It felt so much more zen, peaceful, and simple. But not only did it feel better, set up was so much quicker. We were set up an hour before opening time! Set up felt like a breeze! And it was nice to start our day in a much more stress free way.

The lesson it reminded me of is- if you don’t like something, change it! We all have the power to change things in our life and creative power in action is a mighty good feeling!