When I first started making beaded jewelry, it was just for family gifts. I didn’t really intend to run a business, but I found myself making earrings like crazy. Pretty soon, there just weren’t enough ears in my family! The only way to justify and pay for my bead addiction was to share the fun by selling my creations. So, for nearly two decades, we did just that–at regional arts and crafts shows, mainly held outdoors in the summer.

There’s quite a bit of equipment involved if you want to do outdoor shows without collapsing from heat stroke or drowning in a torrent of rain (which sometimes happens anyway). Little by little, we upgraded homemade shelter and displays with professional gear: a zip-up tent with vinyl sides and back flap; steel panels that displayed foamcore boards (covered with velcro cloth for attaching jewelry cards with velcro on the back), a heavy table with some large display cases, and so on. Of course, we also did a few indoor shows where we didn’t need to set up and take down the tent.

Outdoor shows are a lot of work, physical work in particular, and take a lot of time. Sometimes they don’t bring much financial return. But they are fun. We enjoyed doing them for the most part—traveling around a bit in east central Illinois, being outside in the summer weather, meeting other artists, chatting face-to-face with customers, and soaking up the general atmosphere: art, food, people in a good mood, out with their kids and their dogs.

But during the past year, outdoor shows got to be too difficult. A few times, we hired a “roadie” to set up and take down, but it wasn’t easy to find someone reliable. Our final outdoor show was in June 2009 in our hometown. The “helper” arrived late and immediately started complaining about the hard job, the hot weather, etc., and went home.

We finished set up ourselves. The tent zipper (on the last side) stuck just as the sky opened up and the rain came down in earnest. Huddled in the tent, we waited out the heavier rain, hail, crashing thunder and lightning, and then, terrifyingly, the sound of big branches breaking all around us (in the middle of a park with enormous trees).

The show sponsors, not realizing we were still in the tent, hadn’t come to tell told us the show was canceled! When the storm let up a little, we peeked out and saw everyone gone. Power lines and tree limbs were down all over town. A huge trunk had fallen near our tent, and there were big limbs near where our car was parked.

So, then and there, we decided to make the Big Transition: to doing primarily online sales after that experience. I had just opened my Etsy shop one month before. (http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.etsy.com).

For the two local indoor shows in our town, we decided to adjust the displays, turning everything into for easy-to-carry equipment.

We moved the inventory off the velcro-covered boards that hung on the steel display panels. The boards were empty for the first time in many years!

We sold our tent and panels and bought small, lightweight revolving display stands to use on rented tables.

The necklaces are each tucked into a plastic bag and resting comfortably in a tote, ready to be laid out on the tables.

The earring inventory is huge, too much to put it out each time. Solution? Lightweight plastic displays stands, already filled with earrings, transported in apple boxes (that’s right, the guy at the produce department saved them special for us).

We needed eight display units to handle the earrings. (I told you before, it’s an addiction!) And it wasn’t easy assembling the units, which were made in a developing country by some company that most likely pays the employees almost nothing and gives them no tools. The holes in the lucite weren’t lined up right, so adjustment had to be made (by husband David and friend Bob, thanks, guys!).

And the bottom rows were shorter than the others. Okay, so that’s where we put short earrings, right? Well, it’s complicated. We purchased a big bag of new 2×2 inch grey cards for all these sweet little beauties to hang on, but in the new cards the holes were a quarter-inch lower than in the old cards. Time to switch a bunch of cards (sigh).

One of the chrome and plastic stands is devoted to earrings (on sterling silver and goldfilled earwires) designed using special handmade or vintage beads that are more costly and hard to find. The other displays each contain a unique mix of many styles of earrings (on surgical steel earwires).

Eventually, I hope to get everything photographed and listed on Etsy and to see sales moving along regularly (she said optimistically but not, hopefully, delusionally). So keeping the display units easily accessible makes it easier for me to find the pair in question when a sale comes through.

For VERY obvious reasons, our six cats are NOT allowed to go in the room with the display units—LOL! They like to help, of course, but that kind of help can be disastrous!
In a way, it’s been kind of sad making the Big Transition. We’ve enjoyed a lot of things about doing the outdoor shows. But things change, and it’s best to make the best of changes whenever you can. I’m looking forward to the next, physically easier, phase of online selling. It’s all about my passion: the beads and the designs I can make with them, creating something beautiful. It’s magic.