Posted with permission from Roxycraft.com

I was going to post about my experiences on each day, but covered the demo end and now I’ll cover my experience vending at San Francisco Bazaar which was at Maker Faire.

Sorry I’ve been MIA since my last post. A bad cold had my energy sapped and my brain fried and I’ve had barely enough energy to watch movies much less type and think.

In short, my experience at Baz Biz this year was super awesome! The crowds were insane in a good way…I can only think that if you didn’t do well as a vendor, you should look at yourself, because people were there and they were buying! Everyone around me seemed to be doing very well and it was so crowded most of each day that it was difficult to walk down our aisle.

I sold tons…above is a picture of my booth at the start of Day 1 and let me tell ya, it was stark by the end of Day 2…stark. I said goodbye to all my mushrooms, the Hippo and Rhino, Tough Love, Chilly, all my Flamies and Buties, the Yellow Bear, all my copies of Tiny Yarn Animals, most of the Booklets and Kits went too. The Flamies were very popular.

My neighbors were great too! To my left was Kelso Doesn’t Dance who had the coolest wallets made from old maps and books. (very popular too) On my right was Petals and PineBlossoms who had some of the most well made bags I’ve seen at a craft fair…not to mention they had super cute owl and fawn motifs. (also extremely popular with customers) Behind my was Claire from Absolutely Small and she’s always fun to be around. Billy and I fell in love with Roger the Pom-Pom dog and brought him home to live with us!

I also got around and did some shopping. We bought a card from Dutch Door Press, an apron from PenguinBot.com, some amazing prints and a  screen printed wood piece from Tiny Sparks Designs.

But Maker Faire was chock full of amazing designers! I wish I had a million dollars because I would have spent them all there!

Posted with permission from http://www.penguinbot.com/blog/view/79

I’m extremely behind on blogging this, but I’ve spent my PenguinBot time this week on custom orders and oven mitts and trying to get the shop updated (I’m still working on the totes, they’ll be up soon!), but I was about to write a blog post about something entirely unrelated (cupcakes!) and figured this should probably go first.

The second day of San Francisco Bazaar was also really good. We sold more tote bags than we did the first day too! Since it was a little slower, I took about 20 minutes away from the booth to go check out the Life Size Mouse Trap contraption that was near San Francisco Bazaar. I only played Mouse Trap a few times when I was younger, when I babysat some kids up the block from me. If I had one of these I’d probably play with it all the time though.

Life Size Mousetrap!

There were lots of people surrounding it, so I didn’t get the best view of ground-level parts in motion when it was actually going, but I saw everything up top. It was pretty awesome. Some guys next to me commented that the Mouse Trap folks were more “crafters” (said with disdain) and not so much engineers. Whatever dudes. I thought it was great (though I am just a lowly crafter), as did all the people around me. If this ever comes near you I’d highly recommend going to see it in action.

This was another one of the attractions right outside the San Francisco Bazaar hall, the Neverwas Haul.

It’s a steampunk house. On wheels. It’s self-propelled. It’s kind of amazing.

Also near us, this big metal snail.

It shoots fire.

I wish we’d had more time to walk around the Maker Faire, especially since I kept missing the giant cupcakemobiles (people kept telling me about them after they passed the hall). Maybe next year!

I also want to mention one of my favorite vendors at San Francisco Bazaar. He was actually my next booth neighbor, Tiny Sparks Design. Brad screenprints original artwork on wood and paper, makes key & coat racks, and is just overall an extremely talented and neat guy. This was his first craft fair too, it was great to have another newbie to chat with.

You’ll have to forgive my pictures – I forgot to take pictures until right when they started tearing their booth down. It looked even more awesome during the fair. I absolutely love the colors he uses.

Brad and his wife were awesome. We couldn’t have asked for nicer neighbors to spend our 12 hour days with. If you’re going to be in the San Francisco area on July 18th & 19th, you can see his stuff in person at the Renegade Craft Fair!

It was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong day. My brain is kind of mushy. Since we’re going to do it all again tomorrow, then follow that up with an 8 hour drive back to San Diego, I’ll keep this short and sweet. We had a fantastic time today! PenguinBot got some great love from the folks at San Francisco Bazaar, and we had some awesome vendor neighbors to boot. (Hello to everyone that picked up a business card today! It was nice meeting you! Our shop will be back up as soon as San Francisco Bazaar is over!)

Less talk, more pictures:

Stocked up PenguinBot booth. Note the awesome t-shirt Dr. Pants made me – “I (PenguinBot logo) SF.”

Reversible half-aprons & oven mitts!

Coin purses & knit purses!

Hello purse rack!

Aerial view of our table.

Look at all these people! It was serious fun – definitely worth the drive up. Very tiring, but we’re both excited for tomorrow. Dr. Pants is already asleep, so I’m going to call it a night. I’ll write more about the whole weekend early next week, and include some pictures of the amazing things at the Maker Faire.