Sprucing up my space at Stars.

 . . and for now the bed is gone!  

This is the view looking into the booth from the backside, the dresser is now where the bed was.

I LOVED how the bed looked.  And everyone who saw it did too!  I got TONS of compliments on the bed.  Alas, it was ‘just a prop’ and not a piece that was for sale; so I just could not justify letting it take up that much floor space for long periods of time.

While it was there, the bed DID ‘earn it’s keep’ though.  I sold three chenille bedspreads, one of the net canopys, and one pillow.  I’m sure I’ll bring it back in from time to time, but I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic with so little room to walk in the booth.  Now there’s room for 2 or 3 people in the booth at the same time!

I did leave the chenille spreads and pillows in the booth, for now at least.  Testing to see if they will still sell well without being displayed on a bed.  Put some on a shelf, with an old baby bassinet on the bottom filled with the big bed pillows.

And one of the chenille spreads (the really HEAVY one!) and a couple of pillows on the white high back bench.

This space doesn’t NEED lamps as much as my former space did, being more open and directly beneath an over a ceiling light.   BUT I still have several lamps that I need to sell, and with the bed taking up so much space, I didn’t have room for other furniture that I could set the lamps on.  Only managed to create space for these two for now.    Will work on creating space for the rest of the lamps over the next few weeks.  Even if you don’t NEED lamps in your space for lighting purposes, they really add a lot of warmth to your space and help draw customers in.

I also brought in a little upcycled bistro table.  (an old wood bar stool base and plywood top).

And a chair to go with the table.  Had hoped to have room to put the chair on the floor.  Atop a table is always an option when space is limited though.

Brought he white bird cages in, 2 sizes.

A newly repainted foot stool, with a stenciled design on the top.

Moved the stack of benches to the outside end spot where the dresser had been.  Will be changing that up again soon by moving a bigger display shelf to that spot; which will be ‘back to back’ to a shelf on the inside.  That will give me a little more space INside the booth.

At that point, the entire outside of the booth will be lined with permanent (as in not for sale) shelving.  Walking UP the aisle from the front of the store, this is wat you see first, starting on the left.  Tall skinny shelf – opening – big hutch.

Rounding the corner (this booth is a back end cap, open on two sides) is another big aqua shelf.  With Michael’s help I just made a ‘hutch top’ for this shelf, and will be adding that soon and taking the two smaller shelves off the top.  I COULD have butted these shelves right up against each other at that corner, but couldn’t think of any place else to put this tall skinny spinner rack filled with smalls.

A small bench with a little hutch on top is alongside that big outward facing shelf, and flanks the other opening.  The far left is where the dressed USED to be; and the stack of benches is now.  And where the other tall aqua shelf will eventually go!

My ultimate goal is to have all the outer facing shelves be ‘permanent display shelves’.  Not that I couldn’t sell these shelves, but I don’t WANT to.  With the quantity of ‘smalls’ that I stock my space with, it would be an absolute nightmare to unload those shelves if the did sell!

So then the smaller shelves that ARE for sale will be on the INside of the booth; and hopefully that logic will evident to the shoppers.  The Stars staff is very good about explaining those kinds of things to shoppers.  AND I do put ‘not for sale’ tags on the display only shelves.  But it’s mostly the smaller shelves that shoppers inquire about buying anyhow.

A new little painted cosmetics case.  (does NOT open though)

A three compartment aqua trug embellished with sand dollars.

Hopefully, now that the furniture is more accessible, it will start selling better.

STARS will be OPEN July 4th!

Latest photos of my booth at Stars:

It’s a difficult piece to display; look to the right of the shelf, just behind the buckets.  It’s a BIG OLE piece of vintage white molding!  Would make an awesome mantle piece or wall mounted head board.

And here’s that white sea horse planter I just showed you.  OH!  And if you look reeeeeeeeeeeeally closely in the bottom right hand corner, you can see the crowns I put on that cherub soap dish that I an using for my business card holder.  I’ll TRY to remember to take a ‘proper’ photo of it next trip.

A pretty good stash of white pitchers on hand just now.  While I’m ALWAYS on the look out for them; the bigger ones are really hit/miss and hard to find.  The creamer size are much easier to get ahold of.

The glass ‘vase’ with jute wrapped around the top is one I just made, and forgot to take a separate photo of.  Just happened to have this ONE sand dollar with the hole in it to tie on to the neck!

Galvanized buckets make fun trash cans for an office or craft room.

THE big lantern with a new interior display.

The art of STACKING!  Two benches, a small curio shelf AND a little corner shelf with a lamp on top!
Gotta make the best possible use of every square inch of display space!

 Just one bench on the bottom of this stack; two tier end table on top.  Treasure chest topped with a few smalls.

Stack of white dishes.

White elephant creamers.

White cow creamers.

NEW 100% cotton dish towels in neutral tones.

Interior of the vintage washing machine shelf.  Perfect for storing all your laundry products out of view.

Blue and white cotton dish towels.

Little metal scoop light.  Perfect for lighting up a wire door cupboard.

Lotsa old wood utensils in vintage crocks.

STARS is open 11am – 6pm; seven days a week.

What a difference ‘presentation’ makes!

 RETAIL AND DISPLAY TIP:

I got these BIG ivory colored candles some time ago.  And they have sat and SAT, awaiting an idea for how to display or use them.   They are lovely candles, but a tad bOOOOOOOOOOOring.

Inspiration finally hit while I was putting away my new stash of ribbons from Costco. 

I just took some kraft colored tissue paper, scrunched it up into a ball, then smoothed it back out to wrap around a pair of the candles; then tied on a snippet of the ribbon.

What a difference a little bit of paper and a piece of ribbon makes! 

So many of the items in our shops can be easily ‘dressed up’ to make them uniquely our own.  There are probably THOUSANDS of other stores who have these very candles, but I have put a signature touch on them and made them our own with very little effort.

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Now see what happens when it’s so darn cold outside that no one wants to leave their house and come shopping and I am left all alone to my own devices in the store?!?!?! PART II

I had originally displayed these vintage blue canisters on the blue step back cupboard.  They looked ‘okay’ on there, but just blended in too much.  So, I decided to move them to this little black shelf on our newest brown primitive table.

I’m really liking this red/turquoise color combination!

Decided this big turquoise platter ‘needed’ this red glitter heart!

This is how this rearranging project got started. 

I decided I wanted to have the scrapbooking section back by the counter.  So, I had to move the stuff that was there to make room for it.  Then I had to figure out where to put the stuff I moved!  At one point mid-day there were five big pieces of furniture just sitting in the middle of the store and I had NO IDEA where I wanted to put it all!

So, I took a break and had my lunch and pondered the possibilities. 

Moved this white shelf (previously in the scrapbook section) to the pink/yellow section and used it to display an assortment of gift items, flanked by the two card racks.

Then the middle section in the previous post finally fell into place. 

A few new ‘little groupings’:

So, did I earn my 25 cents this week?!?!?!