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Last year I experimented by selling my art/prints at craft and art fairs. I personally love going to these events. They're packed with local small business owners (as small as business's can come) who not only create their products but package, transport, sell and market everything about themselves). It's beautiful and it's so traditional. These tiny business's are directly linked to their owners and therefore are fully responsible for the quality of their products (the product is also a "face" and a personality). I adore also (and maybe especially, having grown up on a farm) farmers markets where you can smell sweet freshly baked bread and walk by rows of organic and locally grown potatoes and carrots, beautifully washed and glowing. Necklaces shining in the sun and jars of homemade mustard that make your mouth water as you pass. I don't even mind (some people scoff at such things) older women who sit together, knitting needles clacking as they chat behind rows of perfect mittens and quilts.

Becoming a vendor, however, made me aware of the true work that being a "craft fair" person entails (besides, obviously, creating your products). Fairs are costly: often I rarely earn much of a profit for my business and what little profit is earned is usually spent at the various booths who buddy up with my table (a carton of free range duck eggs here, a pair of fair trade earrings there...). The hours I put into packaging artwork, cards and making sure they don't fly away in the wind has been known to exhaust me. But with that said, fairs can also be addictive. I can't describe how wonderful it is to have real live feedback about your art to an illustrator who usually sits at home (alone) handing in illustrations via the internet. The connections I make and exposure that I gave myself are priceless (plus it gives me the opportunity to educate the public on what illustration is and to quite frankly create whatever the heck I want to try to sell). While the early morning running around (ahhhh... where's my calculator!... geee I forgot to get change again!) and long days hoping for more foot-traffic were nice to escape for a couple months I've decided to do a few more this year, because heck, these fairs and beautiful.