This is my third season selling my wares at craft fairs, and I decided it was time for a booth makeover. I remember my first craft fair, I just had tables with white covers and jewelry displays sitting on the tables. It was pretty dull. Since then I have looked at a lot of booth shots, checked out a lot of craft fairs, and made a number of changes to my set-up. In all of my research and trial-and-error, the best piece of advice I came across was to think of a craft fair booth as a tiny pop-up store. How would you decorate your own brick and mortar shop? Keep those ideas in mind as you design your booth space.
My goals in designing my booth space were to:
- Have a coherent color scheme
- Create a welcoming space with room for shoppers to come in off the walkway
- Incorporate the entire space into the design of the booth, including the walls of the tent and the ground.
- Create a balanced display with enough repetition for cohesion but also enough variety of shapes, sizes, and heights to create visual interest.
Before
After
Side walls still looking a little plain, needs another element
Maybe a few more risers to create some more height
Here is a list of the changes and additions I made:
- All displays fit within the limited color palette of spring green, cream, beige, and black. I purchased linen-colored display components and painted my blue displays black.
- To make better use of the space and extend the color scheme, I covered the cork boards I had used in previous set-ups with cream colored linen-esque cloth to create hanging displays
- I also added a green and cream outdoor rug and a green and cream curtain to hang at the back of the booth. To me the rug is the thing that really marks out the space as your own and creates a welcoming atmosphere. I bought my rug on clearance but I have seen lots of tutorials on the internet for painting your own outdoor rug on the cheap.
- I pushed back the "counter" to create more room in the front of the tent for customers to stand and browse. This is a bit of a risky move with jewelry because it is hard to see from a distance. I hope to add some large images of my jewelry to hang on the booth walls to further enhance the display and draw in customers.
Overall, the only new items I purchased for this makeover were the rug (on clearance) the curtain, and the beige displays. If I had more time on my hands I probably could have made more things myself and saved some money, but overall I didn't spend much over $100 on the whole makeover. As always it's a work in progress but I have gotten a lot of positive comments from both customers and other vendors so far!
