Running a market, leading up to......

Running Miss Johnsons Vintage and Handmade market involves months of planning, advertising

finding stall holders keen to follow the look we are trying to achieve.  Emails and more emails, meetings and more meetings.  And then there is making our own personal stock to sell.  Hours and hours of sewing to make new and hopefully exciting products for the customers.  Phillipa spent hours sewing the bunting that went right around our perimeter, while I took over the organising and communication with stall holders.

We where down at the park at 5 am in the dark, relying on car lights (which flattened Johns car battery) so we could get our tents up and decorated, direct stall holders as they arrive to their sites.  Lending assistance when required putting up tents.  there are all sorts of drama's in setting up, mine was John not feeling well and then a flat battery in his car which had to be off the park by 9 am.  Sounds of minor disputes between couples as they get their tents up, we all have them at some time or other.  

 We where so proud of all our stall holders efforts in decorating their tents, we provided ideas and then they ran with it.  The overall look of the market was exactly how we hoped it would be.  Doing our first one outdoors had different challenges.  When we ran the market in a hall, we would start Thursday night decorating the hall usually until around 2 am, then back at before 9 am Friday to set up our stalls before all the stall holders arrived to set up for 6 pm opening.  Outdoors it was much more rushed, I had managed to change my clothes in the Ladies toilet before the customers start arriving but poor Phil was still setting up her stall and was late changing quickly behind her counter, phew....

 I tried to go around taking photo's for further advertising before the rush began.  We received amazing support, a big crowd in the morning people converged ready to spend and find the bargains of which there where plenty.

 Phil in white selling a beautiful long bench to a happy customer after they missed out on my little antique stool with revolving seat, all nice and chipped white paint.

 It was a beautiful day, although it did get rather warm in the afternoon, we where lucky as other years it has been 38 degrees and today it is supposed to rain (that I will believe when I see it)

 One of our first time stall holders Vanda in amongst her lovely products made from recycled timber

 Lisa was another first timer, she bought her beautiful vintage caravan and spread out her wares outside it looked amazing.  That beautiful ruffled skirt front on her tables took many hours of sewing and over $150 in materials, looked very pretty.  All the photo's where taken before the rest of the park was set up by the Guildford Heritage Festival that we joined, our market was only one small part of the park.

 Some snippets from my stall

Checking around at the end of the day, all the stallholders where happy with the results and want to come again, a positive sign, it was certainly a success for us.
4 pm closing time, its time to pull it all down, pack it in our vehicles, take it home, unload and put things away, some of that waits until the next day.  An exhausting day and was glad to see my bed that night.  We will do it again next year.  This is a once a year event.  You may ask why we do it, many stallholders comments will give you an idea, we do it because we love what we do, do we make a lot of money, hah, don't thinks so.....