This was our second year doing the arts and crafts festival in (downtown) Syracuse, NY. It's all part of Syracuse's ARTsweek sponsored by the Downtown Committee. If you live in, by, or have even been to downtown during this event, you know how vast and wonderful it can be. Just to give you an overview; There were close to 200 artists this year, a huge variety of food vendors and live daily performances.
Here's a look at last years show just to give you an idea.
This year (as always) Syracuse University had a used book store,
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| photo from Syracuse.com |
there were various classes that you could take, where local artists taught the public their craft,
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| Photo: Syracuse.com/Post Standard |
and there was even a sidewalk chalk contest/event.
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| photo: Syrscuase.com/Posts Standard |
Even the littlest characters participated!
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| photo: Syracuse.com/Post Standard |
Can I get an Amen!
And if things just couldn't get any better, The North East Jazz & Wine Festival is during this time as well, so you can imagine the hoopla that goes on downtown-IT'S FABULOUS! Our local news did a couple different broadcast about it, one of which is here.
In our little corner of the world there was a lot of activity too! When we arrived to set up that morning, it was a bit chaotic to say the least. Maggie and I always have a small disagreement about how the tent goes up (seriously, Maggie and I do a lot of things great together, but this my friends, is not one of them), we were only aloud to pull our van onto the street and unload everything within 10 minutes and then we forgot our screwdriver!
Sigh...but as always we got it worked out.
We got the tent up, with the flaps backwards of course (but that would be another project, left for the evening pack-up) we borrowed a screwdriver from a friend and then managed to sort through our goods (which had been dropped off in a hurry). We were finally ready to present ourselves to the world.
ON TIME! Yeah us!
The second day the weather was just beautiful! St Paul's Cathedral offered a free continental breakfast to all the vendors, which I thought was pretty darn cool of them, because we were starving!
We had done pretty well our first day and even better on Saturday!
These were big sellers, believe it or not.
We sold a couple of our larger items that day as well. Those you'll see in some upcoming posts. I'll show you the "before they were stars "photos next week.
Me trying to get his darn table together! Okay, I'll admit it, I threw out the original hardware and we spent the next 3 days (after the show) looking for the correct screws to put it together! Maggie finally found the correct ones, so the piece was ready for sale by Sunday.
BUT
on the 3rd and final day....it looked like this!
We moved the furniture and the set up, about 4 times to avoid the perpetual rain fall, but around 2 the rain stopped and traffic started moving again.
Then just around 5, when we had packed up for the day, it started to pour AGAIN! LOL! That's Syracuse my friends and the chances you take doing out door shows.
I'm excited to say though, I made two sales after the event and have a couple large, commissioned pieces that I have agreed to do, all because people saw me here. So, I guess the networking part of this whole thing pays off rain or shine.
Check out my friends who were also at the show!
Now, onto the wedding! Which, as y'all know, is August 9th-Hahahaha! Oh my God, this summer has been crazy!
Oh, by the way...this is our new logo for The Decorative Paintbrush! What do you think? Remember, we do take "Everyday things and turn them into art!"
Take a minute to check us out on FaceBook, Pinterest or LinkedIn for all the updates and goings on, and we always have something going on people :D
Happy Painting!
Mary
