Booth Envy

On Friday, as my previous post described, we found this gorgeous dining table on the curb:

On Saturday, Mark and I went garage sale-ing where I got this: 

It cracks me up!

Then we hit the "cash and carry" sale at the Salvation Army where I spent $8 on this chair:

Mark and I now having a running debate over whether it's cool or ugly.



Then we went to Prairie Grove where I fell in love with THIS:

Which the main character in my book will wear and which I will borrow from her frequently if I go back and actually buy it.

I also got all inspired/intimidated by all the wonderful flea market booths like these:

On Sunday Mark talked me into renting our THIRD booth (at Southtown Flea Market next to the Salvation Army on 15th Street) -- shown here BEFORE they cleared it out for our stuff. 

This is where the table and chair pictured above now reside.

On Monday I got my largest check ever from booth #1.  Which is encouraging.

Now it's Tuesday and I'm still not sure if booth #3 is a good thing or a bad thing.  I do know that there is still stuff this in the garage:

and this in the front hall:

And there's more that won't fit in the booths at the moment and stuff is always finding us -- so I think keeping the booths supplied won't be a problem. 

If only the booth decor fairy will grant me inspiration I might be a bit less panicked!  Or maybe it could all just sell before I get to prettifying it?

More Chalkboards

 I whipped up these three chalkboards last night.  The large red frame came from a dumpster a couple of weeks ago.  The other two frames were loitering around in the project room.

I should probably be ashamed to admit this but... I prowed around in my garage and found six more frames to make chalkboards out of. 

At least this way there's hope that the garage will get cleared out eventually!

My Best Seller: Chalkboards

When I started my flea market booths, I interrogated the owners of the flea markets about what sells best.  I was given several answers: "I sell books/videos/clothes every day", "unusual sells", "ugly sells" (UGLY? Really?), "painted furniture sells", "red sells". 

I've noticed that there often seem to be nice-looking, high-end home decor items being processed at the cash register.  These sorts of items have sold quickly out of my booths as well.

I've noticed that color sells.  And color is also fun to look at when I browse through the flea market.  So I've tried to focus on having lots of color in my booths. 

To that end, I started slapping colorful paint on large picture frames (that I usually find for free).  After a bit of experimenting, I figured out that the backside of sheets of old paneling (also usually free) make great surfaces for chalkboard paint (I learned recently that chalkboard paint can be applied right over the glass in a frame as well).  Sometimes I find the chalkboard paint for free too!

I painted up about a dozen frames in fun colors, added chalkboards, and threw them into the flea market.  They have FLOWN out the door.  To the point that I am completely out of them at the moment!  Time to find more frames! 

As you may have gathered from the last paragraph, these chalkboards are usually free to make and don't take very long to assemble.  They sell for between $12 and $28 each depending on the size and style.

Here are a couple of before photos:



This is the "before" of the  turquoise one below.




This one went red (sorry, no "after" photo).



And a bunch of after photos:

And here are a couple more in my booth (light green above and dark green below). 

Please bring me any large empty/ugly frames/framed pictures that you have laying around!  I think I'm in the chalkboard business for good!