Sometimes You Have a Bad Show

A couple of weeks ago, I had a booth at a local street market.  It was my first show after having a baby and I was excited to get back into the swing of things.  My show did not go well.

This was the only picture I got of that day and you will have to excuse the poor lighting.  You see, the day started out with a little bit of wind and a chance of rain.  By the time I left at 3pm (3 hours early), there had already been moments of pouring rain and almost constant wind gusts.  I pretty much spent the whole day holding onto my canopy to try to keep it from blowing away.

Don't worry, I wasn't alone.  All the other vendors did the same.  My booth-neighbors eventually braved the chance of rain and took down their canopy after it launched six-feet into the air.

Because of the weather, there were almost no visitors that day.  In the course of six hours, I sold $3 worth of merchandise.  Needless to say, I did not make back my $35 booth fee. 

The final straw occurred when there was a small house fire across the street from my booth.  Don't worry, it was immediately under control and no one was hurt; I'm pretty sure it was a kitchen fire and there was no property damage.  But the fire department was called in and all the vendors got moved to a small, disorganized cluster on one side of the street.

I'm not sharing this in a "poor-me" kind of way.  It's fine.  Really I'm just sharing this so other artists know that it is okay if you have a bad show.  I've had great shows where I get lots of good feedback and am selling regularly throughout the day.  Other times, I have a slow show where I barely sell more than my show fee.  And then there are days where I have the worst show I've ever had where my metal canopy frame bends from the force of the wind and one of the few comments I get is "why are these so expensive?"

But the good news is that sometimes a bad show means you get to attend a wedding with your husband that you thought you were going to have to miss because your art show was ending later than you originally thought.