On Saturday I was fortunate to be invited to have a stall for my Greeting cards at the local East Melbourne “Picnic on the Green” at Bishopcourt . It was a community  event organised by East Melbourne Group to gather friends and family and was a wonderful day.

Bishopscourt is the residence Melbourne’s Anglican Archbishop. It is a blue stone building in a style of gothic architecture and was completed in 1853. The red brick wing was added in 1903.

The grounds were open for a picnic, with children’s activities and face painting, sausage sizzle, cool soul and jazz. It was a pleasant 20 degrees (after a week of cold weather) and many local families set themselves up for the evening from 4pm.

I was one of five stall of local craftspeople and artisans. This was my first solo market stall and it a great introduction to running a stall. It was a friendly environment, and I had a huge amount of support, style guidance and assistance from a good friend Louise. I had done a bit of planning and thinking about set up and things we would need, such as change and a float and a mailing list . 

I took fifteen of each of my card designs, with five cards out on display. We were flexible on the day as we did not know what size tressel table would be provided or where it would be situated. I would not change anything that I did on the day. It all went very smoothly. I sold 26 cards on the day . The most popular seller were the squirrel (there are no squirrels in Australia) and the red books on the library shelves. All of my cards are available on my online Etsy store.

It started weeks before locating and ordering display shelves from United States. I knew the “look’ I wanted my stall to have and thankfully, when I opened the box, they were just right. Then I put them together and filled them with cards to see what they looked like. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selling my cards  was exciting. But most importantly I met some local friends who did not realise that I drew the cards or had not connected me with the displays of my sketchbooks in East Melbourne Library last year.  It was lovely to be able to proudly stand behind my stall and explain that I was the artist and talk about my drawings and sketchbooks.