Catching up

Hi Everyone,you may think I've dropped off the face of the earth but no, I'm still here! I've not been getting much patchwork done lately though.

You may recall that a few years ago I started making glass-and-paper pendants, rings, earrings etc. I made hundreds that year and was greatly encouraged when I sold lots to people in my office that Christmas.

Then 2 years ago, a friend and I made thousands of dollars selling them at the pre-Christmas markets. That was so exciting! We didn't have time to do it last year though, and my stash of pendants kept growing. (I couldn't stop!)

This year, some other friends were looking for extra income so we decided to team up and do some markets together. They live close to one of the biggest weekly markets in Sydney, the markets at Fairfield Showground, so that's where we headed.

It is clearly THE place to go for a bargain. There's something like 600 stalls, with lots of fresh fruit and veg, beautiful cut flowers, and absolutely gorgeous potted orchids at low prices. Lots of clothes, shoes, toiletries and other imports, kebabs and other yummy things, and jumping castles for the kids. 

So my focus in September was clearing out my cupboards and getting organised for that market stall.

Everything went smoothly (easy parking and undercover) and we had a great day out ... but we made absolutely NO money! I did not expect that at all. The markets I did a couple of years ago was quite small with not much traffic but we still made lots of sales. This was a huge market, but we made zilch!

We tried again and I made extra signage, made some different stock that I thought might sell better, and our prices were really really low, but the second time was worse. There was nothing we could have done better, it was just the wrong market for what we were selling.

So it's back to the drawing board. There are lots of other markets we can try, but I think we'll focus on the smaller ones with an arts-and-crafts focus.

Got any suggestions?