This Saturday I'm taking a leap that I've put off for some time in years past- I'm getting ready to show at my first art booth at the Art Star Craft Bazaar here in sunny, hot, humid Philadelphia! Art Star has been running successful arts and crafts shows for several years in the area and I feel like I'm in pretty good hands. This is a pop-up show, which means it's only one day for a few hours. The first date for it is Saturday, 7/28/18 from 12-5pm.

There's a few reasons I've put off boothing at art fairs, but I think one major one was not feeling like I'd ever had a large enough body of solid artworks to show. I don't feel like you can do this sort of a show without 10-12 images you feel strongly about. There's also a fair amount of start-up costs to running a booth- there's the cost of inventory (and the packaging of said inventory) and the display and booth decor items aren't particularly cheap if you don't happen to have what you need on-hand and want to have a certain level of professionalism to your presentation.

WATCH MY THOUGHTS ON GETTING READY TO SHOW AT MY FIRST ART BOOTH | ART STAR CRAFT BAZAAR IN PHILADELPHIA

Speaking of professional presentation, there's a few people I'd like to thank for inspiring me with best practices, either from watching their content or sending them the occasional frantic Facebook message. I've been following the independent genre artist podcast One Fantastic Week's YouTube content for a couple of years and I think there's few better resources for entrepreneurial artists and they've a great community of like-minded people. I also owe Pete Mohrbacher a beer for recommending El-Co Color Labs- they've produced some really fantastic prints of my art. Crystal Sully, creator of "Untamed Beastiary", was also super helpful in helping me track down a couple of vendors for booth supplies. Rather than have you track Crystal down, I'll list the vendors I've used for booth display.

Craft Show Vendors

• Printing: http://www.elcocolor.net/

• Banner: https://www.nextdaydisplay.com/product/fabric-wrinkle-free/

• Print Bags, Cardboard Backing, & Shopping Bags: https://www.clearbags.com/

I'm doing four of these shows and I'll let you know how they ultimately went- fingers-crossed that it was worth it! To be the first to know when I launch new polymer clay art videos, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell icon (but because YouTube's wonky, you can also join the newsletter). Catch all of my videos here:  https://www.youtube.com/thedreamsyndicatearts. You can also find many of the supplies I use in crafting here: https://www.thedreamsyndarts.com/supplies-gear/. Thanks so much for joining me on this journey and until next time: Make. Believe!