Holiday show season is upon us!
In fact, this coming weekend we have our first event of the season. In actuality, tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon we will be going off to set up for an event that begins on Friday morning bright and early!
I wish I could say I felt more enthusiastic about it, but all I can muster at this point is a bit of "cautious hopefulness" that maybe a few people won't be freaked out about the rather sketchy economy and actually have a little money to spend on handmade things for the holidays.
We could sure use a little bit of good cheer to break what has otherwise been a rather dreary and unsuccessful year, creatively speaking.
From what I hear from fellow creators who also do outside events this season so far has been characterized as ”meh.” Could be that's part of the reason why I can get no further then cautious hopefulness.
I typically enjoy doing outside shows because it's one of the few times I get to actually put the painted stones in front of people and talk to them directly about how they're made and the underlying inspiration and so forth. It makes me feel like what I'm doing is worthwhile because it is otherwise extraordinarily difficult to create the appropriate impact to enjoy much in the way of online sales.
But I've already talked about that on this blog more times than I care to think about!
The event we're setting up for tomorrow is a relatively small local one, although it is often fairly well attended because it has been going on for a number of years now.
Our big event of the season happens the following weekend where we will be at a large regional holiday craft market which is now in its 38th year. In general we do fairly well at that one, although things have been declining for the last couple of years.
All in all, I don't think anything has ever been quite the same since the COVID years. People got very trained in shopping online, and in doing so the shop for things that are easily described and understood online. Sadly, it's a tough break for things like what I make, which depend heavily on the "see it, gotta have it" principle of shopping.
Not a lot of people sit down with Google and say "I think I'll search for painted stones today!"
But, hopefully things will go well!
Thank You!
If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2025.12.03 AS-TXT-347/317